Transformation: Doctor

When I visit a physician, I become a martyr,
forced to wear a backless tunic. Large white
spiders crawl all over my body, touching,
probing, tapping. Then flies swarm
around my head, each with a number painted
on its back. Then the needles. At last
I'm sent down into a dungeon of potions
and sacrificed to constant worry.


hans ostrom 2016

Transformation: Dentist

When I visit a dentist, I become a coyote.
My yips turn into howls. The moon sits
just above me, shining into a cave called
Mouth, and here comes the huntress,
my nemesis, with her quills and knives.
Her masked face blocks the moonlight.



hans ostrom 2016

Chew Your Words

Risible syllables, oracular spectacles,
and vivid vineyard spectra: the mouth
is mouthing words like lozenges today.

The tongue's a dancing master that
undulates the floor, making phonemes
and morphemes stagger in chaography,

salubriously salivaed. Enjoy your words
today, my friends who are strangers,
inveterate re-arrangers.  Roll them

around, chew 'em up, wad them in a cheek,
let them drool out then suck them back.
Open your mouth and take a peek:

nothing there but air, ivory, red-pink
cave-walls, and that writhing slug
of a mischievous tongue:

connoisseur, conductor, meaning-
                                           making muscle.


hans ostrom 2016

Fantastic New App Lets People Talk to Each Other

There's this new app, fantastic,
that allows your phone to converse
with another person's phone.
Or several phones may chat
in a mingling group. Of course,
the phones have a lot to talk about--
a bad night's sleep-mode, soreness
from data-storage, the stress
of being shifted to another plan.

Anyway, while the phones talk,
you and another person or you
and several people may do whatever
you want together, including talk.  It'll be
great because your phones won't
be there. So for instance you
can focus your eyes on the other
person, and your fingers
and thumbs won't have to dance
frenetically like a weaving spider's legs.
I'm telling you it's an amazing app.


hans ostrom 2016

The Scourge of Poem-Abandonment

Last night, the City’s Literature Squad picked up

hundreds of poems that had been abandoned on the streets.

The poems are being held in a detention center

pending a hearing about necessary revisions

and poem ownership.  When they are identified,

creators who cruelly dumped their poems

face controversial new fines imposed by the City.

Speaking on condition of anonymity (as well as

obscurity), one creator said, “What am supposed

to do–let some loser poem of mine hang

around the place forever?”

hans ostrom 2016

Vampire Blues

Don't want to be a vampire anymore.
Don't want to be a vampire no more.
I'm sick to death of vampirin'--
That's for sure. 

My teeth are dull,
My skin is pale.
I sleep all day
Like I'm in jail.

The coffin stinks,
And blood tastes bad.
The vampire films
Just make me sad.

Don't want to be a vampire anymore.
Don't want to be a vampire no more.
I'd like to be just human--
That's for sure. 

I wear black capes
And fear sunlight.
I want to surf
And dress in white.

When you're a beast,
It's hard to date.
Yes, I can change.
It's not too late.

Don't want to be no vampire anymore.
No, don't want to vampire anymore.
I want to have some fun
And lose the gore. 


copyright 2016 hans ostrom 

Concerning Fools

It's hard work being a fool. Ask
Shakespeare.  Oops, he's dead.
It's a calling, being a fool.
At the wrong times, you

have to be sincere, insincere,
right, wrong, inept, graceful,
knowing, naive, too young,
too old , , , Just too, okay?

You have to be willing
to spend a lifetime mismatched
to places, events, people,
clothes, customs, and situations.

That said, the world depends
upon fools: progress, false pride,
comedy, serendipity, art, and science
all rely on fools.  Oh,

what bullshit.  What a dumbass
thing to say. What kind of
fool do I take you for?  See
what I mean? Too too.


hans ostrom 2016

The Risings

Daniel's rising
up above the street.
The hot, crowded street,
hard and lethal.
Daniel's rising.

Rosario's rising
up above the huts
made of iron sheets,
cardboard, wood.
Rosario's rising.

Is it spirit?
Is it matter?
Is it a horrible,
factual hell?

Is it love,
is it greed,
is it power?
Who can tell?

Tula's rising,
up above the traps
they've set for her,
these men, these men.
Lord, Tula's rising.

It is love,
it is greed,
it is power,
though each
in a different
proportion
unfortunately,
not enough,
too much.

As you rise,
think of the risen,
think of the rose.
Think of freedom,
all dues, all
invoices paid.


hans ostrom 2016

Honeybees and Glass

Poems are composed on glass
that only seems to be translucent
beyond which airborne honeybees
meander in a No-Time without
language. Some poems pretend
to see the honeybees.



hans ostrom 2016

Collecting Time

I keep weeks in closets,
months in a rented garage.

I've misplaced a crucial week
from June 1979.  I can't count
the number of other weeks
I've never gotten my hands on.

Somehow I ended up
with someone's else's
January 1826.  It may well
be my favorite piece.

I had a chance to bid
on a fortnight from 1902,
but three days were missing.

People ask me, they say
why do you collect different
units of time? I wish I had
a good answer. Some day

I'll do something with all
these weeks and months.
In the meantime,
I need to find more space
for all this time.


hans ostrom 2016

Always One More

There's always one more, you know. One
more problem, pain, opportunity, pleasure.
Another nail, bolt, squirt of toothpaste, surprise.
And another acceptance required.

One more blackberry or tomato to pick,
one more spud in the dirt. Another task,
chore, duty. Oh, yes, one more good
idea, atavistic evil notion, phase

of healthy cultural growth. Another
star, pickle, song. One more
word, glance of understanding, heart break.
Until there isn't. But then there is.


hans ostrom 2016

Better and Best

Better to be lucky than good. Better
to be good than middling, middling
than bad. Better to be pragmatic than
pure, sensible than righteous. Better
to have good shoes than bad, bad shoes
than none. Better to be housed than
homeless. Better to consider people
without than people with and than
only you and your own if you have.
Better to do it than to write of it,
best to do both.


hans ostrom 2016

The Question and Answer Portion of the Evening

I could go for you in a really big way,
he said to her. It wasn't subtle, and
it was not hip. Thank you for sharing
your perspective, she said to him.
It wasn't rude, and it was droll.

Shall I leave you alone, then? he
said to her. It was polite. It was not
clever. Yes, you shall, but not right
now, unless of course you want to go.
It was permission. It was restrained.

What shall we do, then, what shall
we say? he said to her. Excellent
questions, she said to him.
He was confused.  She
was bemused.


hans ostrom 2016

A Little Molecular Traveling Music

A handful of molecules moved around
the universe this one time. Long story
shrunk, they became "me."  (In
photographs the quotation marks
are invisible.) Lots of them get

replaced in the usual organismic
way, plus haircuts, etc. Soon and
very soon, all molecules that account
for "me" will be released back to
the universe at large, and what

a large it is. They'll keep on
moving, as if they'd merely
paused at a roadside diner.
A little molecular traveling
music, if you please, maestro.



hans ostrom 2016

Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?

Are you thinking what I'm
thinking? I hope not. It makes
more sense to divide the thinking
labor. I'll think about clean water
while you think about recordings
by Gil Scott Heron. You'll
think about the struggle against
racism in your community,
and I'll think about a feather.
You: rotten fruit. Me: nuclear
holocaust.  (These are just
examples, not directives.)
Of course, we're both free
(we hope) to attend think-the-
same-thoughts-party later,
although it seems those can
get a little cultish. Whatever
you do, don't think about
a red onion. Oops, oh no!


hans ostrom 2016

In a Lobby of a Cinema Complex

This complex isn't simple. Figures
strolling across a neon-glossy floor
toward theater-caves, bathrooms, or
sugar and salt: they and I
are already dead--like people
photographed by cinema in 1939.
And we've been replaced by others
who move about here just as we do,
we did. Maybe one of them

is morbid, or at least fatalistic,
and feels for a moment as if time
has already departed, leaving
behind only light on a screen
flickering imperceptibly
and kernels of corn exploded
into tiny thunderheads. Before
going into the movie, I think
this scene may be the better movie.


hans ostrom 2016

Elegy for Richard Hugo

Elegy for Richard Hugo

(1923-1982)

You said to wait ten years before

trying to write an elegy about someone

who just died. I waited more than three times

that. No doubt it's not enough.

So, something here about a lake's face

changing--ripple, riffle, wrinkle; you

said never use semicolons. (I’m kidding

a kidder.) "Be glad to fish

with you sometime," you wrote in

in the one letter to me, "but I warn you,

I'm strictly a bait fisherman.” If that

were on Twitter now, I'd favorite (a verb, sir)

it and tweet back, No worries. You

haven't missed much. Let's say

a man sits on a rock. He's connected

to a lake, call it Saw Lake, by a fishing

line. He's not really waiting for anything.

He’s drinking beer. A hit, a strike, would be fine,

a rousing thing. Just over the ridge

doesn't lie a town. That's why

nobody's heard of it. I will say

women and men who work at the factory

there return from a women's softball

game, someone won, who cares. Now

everybody will wash their hair, their bodies,

put on clean jeans, heave on the nice

boots, and go out and dance and drink

and kiss and hug and fight. The

man on the rock has seen the rusted

iron roofs of just that town. He

wonders if he should call them rooves.

The lake tugs him away from words

but not for long. "There you go," he says.

Hans Ostrom copyright 2016

Commercials

Commercials: adjectives packaged
as nouns, petty crimes committed
against ears and eyes, sometimes
full-on felony assaults paid for
by deepest vaults.

The White Supremacist cable
not-news shows raise volume
high, highest for commercials,
concussing brains to soften them up
for propaganda. Don't buy. Don't buy.


hans ostrom 2016

You Haven't Earned a Prize

When you're White, and you learn
things and as they say get your
consciousness raised enough
by the jack called the-way-things-are-
and-have-always-been, you end up
losing friends and not really wanting
to hang around many White folks
much because disgust and rage
are exhausting.

If your view gets raised a little more,
you won't feel sorry for yourself,
you'll understand, why Black folks
really don't want to hang around you,
whether it's personal or not.

It's not like you're awareness
is anything more than the minimal
thing to achieve, and it's not like
you've somehow earned the prize
of their company.  Solitude

and isolation, boo-hoo, tough shit.
Your modest discomfort doesn't
even register on the scale of pain
to which the colonies and the United States
dedicated and still dedicate themselves.
You've probably heard the saying:
Many White people fear a race war;
most Black people, like their forebears,
continue to try to survive in one.


hans ostrom 2016

Adam's Song

I'm eating dried figs,
am very depressed.
I'm totally naked but
feel like I'm dressed.

There's no one to compare
Eve to. She's nice.
Today I named some little
creatures "mice."

Sometimes my body changes
when I see Eve.
When she touches the change
I never want to leave.

I have this feeling something
bad will happen soon.
I don't know why.
I asked the moon.

The moon talks to me in ways
the sun will not.
The moon is very cool and
the color of my snot.

The moon said, "Things happen,
things change.
And God may disarrange what
God arranged."

I am Adam. This is
my own weird song.
If you're passing through
Eden, sing along.



hans ostrom 2016