Underwater History

for Don Parkerson

They're there, our oceanic blunders.
Monitor and Merrimack. Spanish galleons.
And our depravities: slave ships.

Submarines like the Thrusher
could not cope with fathoms.

Weed and coral enhance remaining
shapes. A crucifix grows ocean hair.
A doubloon swells into a rock,
and a captain's iced skull lectures to
a school of fish. Diving down,

the historian cannot afford to haul
a text. Theories don't hold oxygen. He
monitors (and merrimacks) his every
breath like a meditating monk.

What comes clear in obscure depths
is the sluggishness of history,
the persistence with which events
get devoured: how a ship only gradually
slips off the reef to ultimate depths;
how accoutrements of empire
dissolve like common soda.

Floating there, the burden of breath
on his back in steel tanks, the historian
sees small sharks swim through
portholes of a destroyer.  The broadsides
of history went unheard here. Ocean,
imbued with oblivion's appetite,
accepted all defeated ships,
all wars and atrocities, settled or not.


hans ostrom 2017

The Revision

It's the end of the semester. The last essay is due
to me, professor. He, student, misses the final class
and struggles to my office afterwards. He stands
in the doorway, exhausted, and tells me his dream:

"Somehow you'd gotten hold of my essay
before I wanted to turn it in. You assigned
it a grade of the square-root of A. Your
only comment was Very suburban. Then I
stole back the essay before you had
recorded the grade.  I put an A in
the online grading system, next to my name,
and then I watched as the essay
revised itself, prose metamorphosis."

"I'll be darned," I say.  He gives me
the essay.  I look at it.  "Well," I say,
"you'd better put your name on it"



hans ostrom 2017

Dilapidated

The syllables of this word seem
about to come undone.  Anyway,
dilapidated is best if you don't
have to live in it.  Sauntering
around the Sierra Nevada,
I liked seeing shacks that
had stopped lying to themselves.
They spoke highly of the failed,
exhausted miners who'd lived
in them. Weirder were

the cars that people had driven
or pushed into the manzanita brush.
Rust munches them even now.
Yes, and the quiet old imbibers
sitting at the Buckhorn bar,
weary feet in weary shoes
touching brass. These old folks
sipped from a shot glass; and waited.
And today I feel dilapidated.



hans ostrom 2017

Time to Retire Whiteness

“Whiteness–the whole constellation of practices, beliefs, attitudes, emotions that are mixed up in being white–is the problem. Whiteness is degraded and depraved[…] To the degree that we accept any of the meaning that the dominant society gives to whiteness, we white people are degraded and depraved.” 
― Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege





Way, way past time. Whiteness is a ghost
invented by fake science and a priori supremacist
hubris. Famous skeptic David Hume should have been
skeptical about his racism. Wasn't.  Joseph
Blumenach invented "Caucasian" out of nothing.
It is nothing.  We're all one species, obviously.
No races, but (don't take the bait) that doesn't mean we stop
confronting racism or that we aspire to "color
blindness."  If you want to get down with your
ancestry.com ethnicities, cool.  Just set that
white shell aside, if you're wearing one.
Because it's probably  made you do and think
some crazy shit. Mainly it's about people
and cultures,  growing up, recovering from historical
madness, and doing the right things.




hans ostrom 2017

recommended: Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (2010)

James Baldwin's Wisdom

Further insight, from decades past, into why and how we ended up with an insane White Supremacist as president:

Song: Solomon Fry

Solomon Fry never asked why.
He just did what he did
and said what he said.
Solomon Fry.

Solomon Fry sometimes got high.
It deepened his thoughts
about lots and lots.
Oh, Solomon Fry.

Sadly he died,
Solomon Fry,
though he lived
to be very old. 

Goodbye, goodbye,
Solomon Fry.
He died in his sleep,
we were told.

Solomon Fry never asked why.
We asked it instead.
Why is he dead?
Oh, Why did you die,
Solomon Fry?



hans ostrom 2017
(a completely fictional character, as you might have guessed)

It's Not Like the End of the World is the End of the World or Anything

Just before he went to sleep,
the world ended.  Well, began
to end: it's quite a process, after all
(and After All). He stayed awake
that night, finally slept a couple hours
as the sun rose  The wailing and yelling
coming from other abodes woke him.
He wondered if he was expected at work--
and what was in the cupboard
that might comprise supper?
It was just as he expected: even
when the world ends,
a person must plod on.


hans ostrom 2017

Considering Ear Wax

She found it necessary, apparently,
to turn away from scenes of "her"
nation's malevolent stupidity
and to consider ear wax,
which absorbs airborne particular
debris and expels it.  How,
she wondered, do the ears
know when to drive the soil-heavy
wax out of the twin tubular garages?
And could the process be applied
to the removal of a depraved president?


hans ostrom 2017

Ferocious Form

Is it art or is it nature? Yes.
Starlings' startling flock
masses, fractalates, twists,
and surges in anti-patterns.

Each bird's both medium
and member of the troupe-
image. It is a ferocity of
form, undulating in the afternoon.



hans ostrom 2017

If You Want It To Be

The moon is as big as you want it to be.
Even hope can be sad if you want it to be.

Addiction will peel your brain away. The
needle's a gun if you want it to be.

It can be early, if you want it to be.
The book is all yours, if you want it to be.

Like an avalanche, I regret everything.
This is an apology if you want it to be.

It's all a puzzle if you want it to be,
and this is a clue.  If you want it to be.




hans ostrom 2017

The Jagged and the Smooth

Jagged edges enhance smooth achievement--
sacred stuff welded to profane, country
coagulated with city. True worldliness
cancels all its memberships.


hans ostrom 2017

Aspects of Poem Repair

I took a poem into the repair shop. Got
the syntax changed, had the metaphors
rotated, tuned up the images. They also
cleaned the syllables to smooth out
the timing. Bad news, though:

they said it has a cracked narrative.
Not cheap to fix that! So do I pay
for a new one, go with an after-market
narrative, or just get rid of the damned poem?

I mean, the cost of labor alone . . . .
Still, it's been a dependable poem
up to now.  And you know, it sounds
weird, but you get attached to a poem.



hans ostrom 2017

Penelope Calliope

Penelope Calliope, a nonethelessing
kind of girl, gave it a whirl,
a yes of a dash, a now of a splash,
and did not dwell on the fact
that her days like everyone's
will frown into the past.


hans ostrom 2017