The Collector

The Collector

If you’re his wife, you’ve quit

asking why it all piles up out there

in the yard for everyone to see

from the highway.  Hubcaps from ghostly coupes.

Beer signs in neon cursive.  Coke machines,

cars, cars, cars.  You keep the house

and the backyard according to your principles.

You hate the mechanism in men

that drives them to love machinery.

If you’re his dog, you

urinate on tires encircling weeds.

You sniff varieties of rust,

chase squirrels until they disappear,

until you ram your hot wet nose

into angle iron; it all

makes the yard difficult.

Now, supposing you’re the younger son,

you don’t hate him yet.

Your friends think he’s a wealthy man,

a pirate maybe; they beg

their parents to let them come over,

Crawl through doorless cars, turn

cranks, patent imaginary uses

for useless contraptions.  You know

what it’s all for.  It’s there

to look at, to touch; it’s part

of a big landscape that whirls by

every day outside of School.

You’re the collector.  You can’t

help yourself. You’ll fix one thing

and trade it away for three things

you can’t fix.  The dog pisses on it all,

knocks over cans going after squirrels,

laps up rust-water.  You can’t

keep The neighbor-kids away. 

The younger boy, he follows you around

all day asking What’s this for?  What’s

this for?  You can’t understand why

your wife can’t understand why iron

and motors and axles are necessary,                                       

why strewn is the best way to keep

it all in order.

You stare right back at people

who drive by and scowl at your yard.

You know they’re driving junk.

Their houses are filled with junk that works.

You’ll get hold of it soon enough.

Hans Ostrom, from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006

Balzac's Ghost and the Crucial Detail

She brought the wrong clothes to Paris,

which wasn’t as warm as imagination.

She borrowed a sweater and a coat

from me; also shoes, and the heavy socks

that made them fit.  My sweater, especially,

seemed to enjoy having her wear it

in cafes, brasseries, and markets. I

explained all this to Balzac’s ghost

at the writer’s home on Rue Raynouard.

Even though I wasn’t speaking French,

Balzac understood immediately. I went

on to observe that almost everyone

almost everywhere works hard and life

slips by so quickly and then all of a sudden

you’re a ghost listening to a tourist.

Yes, yes, said Balzac’s ghost, but

tell me, what color is the sweater she

borrowed from you? Green, I said.

That, he said, is today’s crucial detail.

Hans Ostrom

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006

Puget Sound, Winter

Attend the winter light along the Sound.

Recall the rivers and the runs of fish?

The Earth agrees to fail; the year’s come down.

Most days the sun, per se, cannot be found

Except in willow leaves, low clouds, and mist

Attending Winter light along the Sound.

Maybe the salmon will again astound

Us with erotic, suicidal quests

Though Earth agrees to fail and years come down.

The young that work drink hard in this hard town.

Nation slaughters nation, no peace can last,

And Earth agrees to fail as years come down.

Shall we allow all fish to run aground

And Earth to die several unnatural deaths?

Attend the Winter light along the Sound.

The Earth agrees to fail. The year’s come down.

--Hans Ostrom/2015

White Curse

"As for now, it must be said that the elevation of the belief in being white
was not achieved through wine tastings and ice-cream socials but rather through
the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land." --Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Between the World
and Me," The Atlantic, July 4, 2015



Of course a given white person
can be right in the head
about America's white-supremacist
essence, which is fed by rivers from Hell.

Collectively though we white folks
always have an alibi, an out,
a turning away or an overlooking.
And until we lose all the excuses

and make things right for
good, America will stay
hexed by whiteness. And what looks
more like the spawn of a

curse than one of our worst--
this depraved President of the U.S.?


hans ostrom 2017

Detective in Uppsala

Somebody hired me to find out
what happens to light in Sweden.
Uppsala, specifically.  Hey, my
far-far was Swedish, I wanted to say
as I started the job. There was no
fooling the Swedes.  Every move I
made was American.  Even when I
was quiet, I was loud; and on time,
late. What I found out.

was light fills snow in Uppsala along about
January.  It will have you dreaming
in Bergman scenes.  In summer, it
leaves town for the lakes. It takes
the place of paint: some buildings
are an uncanny yellow, others eye-blue,
others as pale as the belly of a fish
in the Fyris River. I saw light

playing on birch bark, in gold hair,
black hair, brown hair. I have
a recording of light congratulating
raindrops.  The light in this
one apartment almost had me
sobbing, it was so beautiful.
(Private Eyes aren't supposed to cry.)
I praised light in crystal. I
tasted it in pastry.  That's
what I found out. That's my report.


* far far = grandfather
hans ostrom 2017

University Beneath a Flight Plan

One of us speaks of photosynthesis, another
of White Supremacist terror in the U.S.,
another of Hamlet, Act III. Some students
listen.  Others talk.  Others dream.

Airplanes overhead interrupt with
sustained blasts of noise.  Bombers.
Transports. Fighters.  The sound of
jet engines is not a discussion.

Obedient brick buildings shudder.
Our words dissolve.  We keep trying
to teach and learn for a few seconds
and then give up.  Wait.

The pilots note the campus, a point
of reference.  They yawn. The
navigators are bored.  And
the bombardiers pretend.



hans ostrom 1984/2017

Twisted Words

You're twisting my words. Thank you--
it feels good. You spirally wrought
ragamuffin into finfumagar: well done.
It had contortion coming.

And look what you did to
chirioscuro.  It is unrecognizable.
Obviously, you are not new
to wrenching words.

If you don't mind, I'd
like to keep mademoiselle
as is, for as is it's perfect:
a sound sculpture.


hans ostrom 2017

Expedition

Scrupulously planned
and with international sanction,
an expedition discovers itself
dying on ice.

The group walks now
only to look for places
where it can walk. Each
adventurer's blood flows
down through unfeeling toes
toward an alleged sea.

In unrelenting wind and white-out
roaring from imaginary North,
air and ice become one. So do
sky and landscape, person
and expedition.

Speech becomes something
dreamed remotely--like fingers
or the word, survival. All
vocabulary accumulates
into a glacial prayer too
immense to bring out of the heart.



hans ostrom 2017

The Old Highway in Context

Well, I'll tell you, before the freeway
was there, there was the Old Highway.
Before that the old path was there, when
they used wagons. Before that,

Muhammad received Allah's words
and said, yes he said, and before
that, Adam and Eve were still around,
and before that, an asteroid

with water on it hit the Earth,
and before that the Earth and Moon
were the same ball.  Hell, I must've
drive that Old Highway a million times.


hans ostrom 2017

April: Suspect the River

It's not all poppies and blossoms. Death
knows the way to April, too. Colts die.
Arctic becomes wanton one last time.
A spouse leaves a spouse forever,
children go to war, and war goes to children.

No one will guarantee you won't die
in this naive month that smiles
between melancholy March and ruddy
May. Yes, you may do something insane,
such as long for bitter, brief, honest

December days. Or find birds bothersome,
hysterical. Sunlight isn't always easy.
The bright duty of flowers may wear on you.
I advise caution. Look at hills carefully.
Order more seeds than necessary, cash

on delivery.  And suspect the rising river.


hans ostrom 1987/2017

Hanging Out with William Blake

It's possible to explain William Blake's writing.
I'm guilty of it myself.  I danced
with Tiriel in an article.  In  a refereed journal,
baby! I also convened with Blakeans
in Santa Cruz: ecstatic dancers, emergent
recluses, titans from research
universities,  Hippie refugees, Santa
Cruzeans, iconographers, and just
plain folks. Nothing against

Blakeans, but it seems more productive
to partake of Blake's texts
as if they formed a surreal festival.
Enjoy the music (I stole this idea
from A.E. Housman.) Put on a
costume yourself. Move into, with,
and against the crowd. In

the parlance of the Beats
(which they ripped off from
African Americans), Blake
is to be dug/not dug. Interpretation
and belief remain secondary.
Call the first if you think you
need it.  Avoid the second.


hans ostrom 2017

Lord of the Clouds

I am the Lord of the Clouds.
The low clouds.  Fog, really.
I am the Lord of the Fog!
Well, maybe more like  a minor swamp god.
However, I have aspirations
to rise from being a sentry for stagnant water.


hans ostrom 2017

Unfinished Reading

Books you don't finish reading
are like mountains you don't
finish climbing or comparisons
like this that don't seem quite right.

They are like acquaintances who
don't become friends. (This seems
better.) You have been told or
think you see what's up ahead,
but a weariness sets in. Let

the book be great for others,
you think.  Just leave me out of it. 
I've resigned from the reading of
The Fairie Queen, Clarissa, The
Castle of Crossed Destinies, 
The Charterhouse at Parma, 
countless portly mystery novels.
I pretended to finish Paradise
Lost but, as with the film,
The Titanic, I had guessed the ending.

I forced myself to climb Mann's
Magic Mountain. It took
decades, and it wasn't worth it.

When Sam Johnson (who
said of Paradise Lost, "No one
wished it longer") got tired
of a book, he threw it across
the room. Bolder than I,
he didn't resign from reading.
He fired the book.


hans ostrom 2017

Transformation: Military; or, As You Were

The Colonel said to the Corporal,
"As you were." The corporal
obeyed and turned back into
a mountain goat from Western
North America. In his mind,

the colonel saw the youthful
goat gamboling down and up
jagged bluffs.  "I shall miss him,"
said the colonel to himself--
"such a nimble fellow, and
that odd laugh!"



hans ostrom 2017

Prism Time

Having been convicted
by light, I was sentenced
to prism. A three-year
stretch in spectral stir,
just trying to survive
in fractured colors
and rainbowed lock-up.
It made me a cold,
hard, hallucinatory man.
Prism changes you.



hans ostrom 2017

Our Task

Working in heat
mean enough
to make grass snarl
and boulders ring,
I sometimes
imagined I could not
go on. Ridiculous:

I was as far from
the tortuous labor
slaves endured
for centuries as
I was from Neptune.

Their agony is
immured, is of
the bricks forming
the foundation
of this White Supremacist
monolith now adorned
at the top by
a bloated, cadaverous
cad, multiply evil.

Our task is
to wear down
White Supremacy
and wash away
the dust and grit
the project leaves,
please.



hans ostrom 2017

Kiruna: New Year's Eve

(December 1980)

At noon there was a murky soup of light,
which darkness drank.

Iron miners cruise in large
awkward old American cars
on Kiruna's frozen streets.
The custom is for each drunk
passenger to pay a driver
to be not drunk.

Samis sell bone-handled knives
and jewelry the color of
salmon eggs.

At the New Year's party, my Swedish
cousin and I watch shadows and smudges
of the original King Kong play
on a Finnish TV station. My cousin
is blonder than Fay Wray.

Fireworks outside seem stupid because
we didn't have to wait for darkness.
At 11:00 p.m. my cousin reports
that she always cries at the stroke
of the New Year. I'm prepared,
like a Swede, when tears travel
from her eyes like small droplets
of Sami pewter.  I'm impressed

when one tear lands in her
glass of Norwegian champagne.



1981/2017 Hans Ostrom

Return to Uncleton

Return to Uncleton

His uncle had named the town Uncleton,

served as mayor for fifty years.

Except to tidy up the dog’s grave,

he goes back only for the annual

Rust Festival. He owns snapshots

of the Rust Queens and their Oxidized Courts

from the last twenty years. The lake looks

different from before and smells.

His trousers slip off his buttocks,

and teenagers laugh, their goddamned

music thumping out of cars. He’s inherited

just a pinch of his uncle’s rage

but no property. The sun off the lake

makes him scowl. Where exactly is

the dog’s grave? He remembers how,

just a pup, the little bastard nipped him.

Uncleton, O Uncleton, I hate the way you

draw me back like english on a cue ball.

Copyright 2007/2017

The Semicolon in Modern Thought

The Semicolon in Modern Thought

Scholars disagree; they are disagreeable.

According to Jeb Nolocimis, Distinguished

Three-Legged Chair in Social Podiatry at

Bandsaw University, a hallucinating German

printer presided over the marriage of Period

and Comma in his shop, located in

Mainz-am-Rhein, circa 1498. However,

Dr. Lola Doirep of the Toots Institute

rejects Nolocimis's account as "surreal

historicism." She argues periodically

that the semicolon should be interpreted

semiotically first as inhabiting a liminal

zone vexed by indecision (stop or continue?)

and second as the right and left eyes

of an iconic emoticon, which more deeply

represents "winking post-modernity"

and "the rise of Cyber-cute." Meanwhile,

Argentinian-American poet Rexi Vivaldo,

in his long poem, "Stubby's Quest,"

alludes to the semicolon as "a sad

period's single tear, frozen in time

and space--a lament

for the mortality of clauses . . . ;"

Copyright 2008/2017 Hans Ostrom

And the Feelings Thus Conjured

She's dipping her hands in the paint
that neuron networks manufacture.
She's rising from sleep and adorning
the darkness with bright looping
smears her fingertips eject.

The fog shows up, a loose collection
of gray blobs held inside a pale
amorphous balloon. There is a sound
of grinding, a sound of grinding,
a grinding, a sound. She says to no one,

"Sing with me: 'I am stuck on 
the balcony of REM sleep . . .!'"
We don't have to call it anything, you
know. We can just experience it
and the feelings thus conjured,

and live an entire lifetime
there in a mind-sponsored moment.


hans ostrom 2017

The Bees Are Baking

Bees inside my head wear gold aprons
because they're baking tiny tan cookies.
Of course they buzz.  It's how they talk.
They're speaking of their relationship
to time, of how they've been bees
again and again through the ages.

I ask them a question.  Horrified,
they vanish, leaving only the pollen
of their buzzing.  Oh, well.  Their
little bee kitchen smells warm.
I put all of their cookies, which taste
of you-guessed-it, on my tongue at
once because I'm suddenly quite hungry.


hans ostrom 2017

The Ladder People

Inside birch cones
live ladder people.

They build tiny
fires and carry

hand-made ladders
to cliffs, perching

there for nights
and days, singing

to each other,
letting blue moths

alight on their hands.
These people of

the birch cones
decorate their ladders

and themselves with
paint and bits of string.

Comes a light rain.
The ladder people descend.

Comes a stiff breeze,
and birch limbs toss.

Comes regret, comes
to us, and with it

arrives a deep wish to
hear the ladder people sing.



hans ostrom 2017

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

Intriguing Employment Opportunities

Lead Evaporator.
Geological Psychologist ["Rock Therapist"]
Undercover Vegan
Atheist Pastry Chef
Theoretical Maid
Workplace Boor (Trainee)
Senior Skeptic
Managing Drifter
Erotic Data Analyst.


hans ostrom 2017

Appointments in the Flatlands

In the '56 Chevrolet sedan, steel and wheels,
we barreled down and up and down three
canyons' worth of Sierra peaks. A mother,
an aunt, 2-3 kids, no seat belts, logging trucks
and steep killer drops to make it interesting.

Eight pistons pushed us through the forest.
Ma and Aunt sang folk songs in two-part
harmony, Clementine drowning and Tom
Dooley killing. I was the youngest in the car
and brooded on ghastly lyrics instead of

lightening up with the lilt. And I couldn't
sing worth a shit. If you looked close
out the window, you saw smears and blurs,
if far, you saw the forest staying still.
Breton would have envied the provincial

surrealism.  Berryman, D.D.S., soon
loomed, mustachioed. His tooth drill
was slow and sullen.  What did I know,
what did we know? Only that life
unfolds and boulders are everywhere.


hans ostrom 2017

Plain as Day

"As plain as day," they say.
That's not very plain.
Revelations of sun's light
bewilder much more than
those of the moon's, which
is plainly a universal blue kiss.




hans ostrom 2-17

Salamander Row

I'm going down to Salamander Row,
where the quick, cool creek plays jazz
of its running for ferns and moss.

I'm going down to Salamander Row
to lose my sense of loss.
Beneath overhanging branches,

the salamanders live moistly
as meditative creatures. They
aren't teachers, but I learn

from their calm there, and the
shaded ambiance of Salamander
Row creates a balm there.



hans ostrom 2017

Like a Bank Camera

She advised him: "Think
of yourself as a bank camera
and just observe." He said,
"So I'm looking for potential
robbers?" She said, "Don't
be silly--you are just looking,
observing in a detached way.
A bank camera has no emotion."
"God damn it," he said,
"I know a camera has no emotion!"
She looked at him,
but not as a bank camera would.



hans ostrom 2017

Nude Not Descending a Staircase

The nude descending a staircase
never moves--forget reaching the landing.
She stays trapped in that manic
wheatsheaf of lines and angles,
poor thing. I guess Duschamp
felt freer painting it up that way.

True, Mona Lisa is locked in, too,
except she gets to relax,
and her smile's in charge,
whereas the nude not descending
a staircase is always on call
and off balance. She has to be ready
to move, yet isn't allowed
even to get dressed.


hans ostrom 2017

White Idols

Go to Church,
vote for a White Supremacist.
Go to Church,
vote for a rapist.
Go to Church,
vote for a nihilist.
Go to Church,
vote for a polyurethane
caesar. Render
your religious values
unto him. Go ahead
and get down with
your pious bad self
and pray to a White Idol.




hans ostrom 2017

Introductory Doom

It may come rather soon,
our introductory doom,
now that the White folks,
South and Midwest,
made a sociopath a President.

He, his fatuous goons, his
enablers, apologists, and
tolerators, aren't satisfied
with their perch high up
in capitalism. Nope.

They must destroy. They
must inflict, control,
degrade. They must
torture, ruin, exclude.
They must champion

stupidity. Their politics,
religion, economics, and
culture are all hollowed out,
vibrant fiber replaced
by one form of depravity

or another. They symbolize
America. They run the nihilistic
show. They oversee crimes,
neglect, and ignorance. They
craft our introductory doom.



hans ostrom 2017

How Are You Enjoying the Dictatorship?

Oh, look, America,
at what White Supremacy made you do.
Fear of change, fear of knowledge, too.
Oh, look, White men, at what
never growing up has set loose
like a plague.
Oh, look, White women
at what the White men mean
to do with your body,
citing their whacked-out version
of Scripture. Still flying
the Confederate flag, still
proud of slavery and Jim Crow?
It's a nice way to show
you don't know right from wrong.
Oh, look, America,
at what snorting celebrity
will get you. That bloated
"billionaire" racist on top
means you've hit bottom,
where the dictator's people
will stomp you,--just their
way of thanking you for
your support.



hans ostrom 2017

Another Good Surreal Night in Paris

That one night in Paris, we searched
for a Mexican restaurant and found it.
Waitresses wore tight bluejeans and
cowboy boots. Nashville music
thumped and twanged.

It was a sincerely inauthentic place.
That made us happy. It brought to mind
California, where only geology
is originally from there.

We ate les tacos and drank Dutch beer.
Looked across a dark courtyard
and spied, two floors up in a kind
of warehouse, ballet dancers,
dozens of them. They faced
the instructor, stretched and jumped
to music we could not hear.

A fire-eater appeared in the courtyard.
He licked a long match and guzzled
fuel. Tipped his head back, roared
flame into night. We saw his small
audience gasp. Full,

we sipped our beers. Saw that the dancers
were drenched in sweat. When the man
with the oboe walked in, we knew
we weren't supposed to be surprised.


hans ostrom 1981/2017

Plain States

We drive a tan Ford in Kansas.
We're the heart of the Census.

We vote the person, also the Party.
We wash our clothes when they're dirty.

We like to shop at Walmart or Penney.
We save our money.

We like TV and ice cream.
We don't dream.

Our daughter's Mary; the boy, John.
When we fought wars, we won.

Why did you stop here, stranger?
Now you'll have to stay.  Forever.



hans ostrom 2017

They Have Their There, We Have Our Here

Back there they speak of out here.
Out here we speak of going
back there. That doesn't mean we
go. Being from out here, we will
never be from back there or welcome.
Even if we go back there, here
will hold us still.  They will always
see the out in us and the here
in how we do things.  And they will
always want everyone everywhere,
including us out here, to agree
that back there is the best. Out here
we don't see things that way.



hans ostrom 2017

Partial Report from Childhood

Heights: obviously perilous.
Snow: tedious, never
as pleasurable as they would
persuade you it is. Adults:
loud and/or tired. Family:

a pecking order and a proliferation
of comparisons. School:
40% cruelty, 50% boredom,
10% pleasure. Men: in charge,
even if no one knows why.

Women: perfumed, patient,
smarter than they act.
Girls: fascinating, mercurial.
Did I mention fascinating?

Books: reliable. The future:
an absentee landlord.



hans ostrom 2017

Eve and Adam Evicted by Landlord

So after Eve and Adam got their Know on,
God evicted them, but notice please
that Eden stayed right there, the primest
piece of real estate there ever was,
and was not, for sale. It is a glorious
space, ipso and facto. It's round and flat
and low and high and wet and dry,
packed with flora, also fauna, and
maybe, yes, a sauna, oh why not?
Can I tell you where it is and why?
Oh, I wish. Or do I? Better not to know,
perhaps, Wasn't that the lesson of
eviction? Let's  ask dove and crow.



hans ostrom 2017

Ghost Pavilion

I have been admitted to
the Ghost Pavilion,
which rises from a
plateau beyond fatalism.

There one is invited
to view reproductions
of the groups and squads
and masses of faces

one has passed by,
through, or among
in life. Students at
the Ghost Pavilion

accept that reality
exists but also learn
that anybody's perceptions
of it are little more than

a cache of roughly
recorded glimpses.



hans ostrom 2017

What a Lovely Afternoon

(acknowledging Calvin and Hobbs, and Henry C.)

What a lovely afternoon,
in spite of the fascist President
of Amerixon and his cabinet
full of rapacious rats. What
a lovely afternoon, shining
down on poverty and pain
and insufficient rain. What

are we going to do about this
fix in which science is treated
as a cartoon and hateful lore
displaces logic?  Not sure

we can do anything much
(but what a lovely afternoon)
except watch a culture try
to commit suicide and take
so many innocent people with it.



hans ostrom 2017

In Old Palm Springs

In old Palm Springs, north, just beyond
the charming attempts at glamour,
trunks of big palm trees look like
elephants' legs: parched, dermatologically
checked, and weary.  The Earth
is each palm's shoe, and all the trees
are taking a walk through space.


hans ostrom 2017

Old Fables

I prefer the older animal books for children--
the ones in which creatures act, dress,
and talk like humans but aren't cute.

In the illustrations, they still look
like creatures, seem embarrassed
by the costumes given them--

a frog in coat and vest, a fox
wearing a scarf.  But in those books
they throw themselves into the difficult

roles. I saw that in the stories, and
that's what interested me--the animals'
existential struggle with entertainment.



hans ostrom 2017

Cross-Examination Song

I have no further questions
for this witness.

He really doesn't seem
to know his business.

He said he saw the man
but changed his tale again.

Prevarication displays
symptoms like a sickness.



hans ostrom 2017

Fixated, Exasperated

I've been trying to write
about other things,
but I'm fixated on
White Supremacy, what
a deadly, depraved sink-hole
it is, how it elected a racist
rapist President, and how
White folks let it persist,
nourish it, become
zombies in its death-cult army.


hans ostrom 2017

Be Careful What

"Be careful what you wish for; you may get it."

--Old Saying, variously attributed

Be careful what you fish for. It
may catch you. Be careful who
you swish for (for whom), for
you may get swashed or even
buckled. Be careful what you
kiss for, for kissing is a kind of wish.

Be careful what you dish, no not
because you later may have to take
it, but because dishing carefully
is as we know the right thing to do.

"Be careful what you hiss for":
a feline admonition.



hans ostrom 2017

Busker in the Rain

I am a folksinger
sitting in the rain,
playing my guitar,
very much in pain.

Nobody's listening,
nobody cares.
Someone took the table,
leaving broken chairs.

I am a failing busker.
And I love it so.
I am myself, and that's
about all I know.

Nobody's listening,
they all turn away.
They look like hollow barns
that hold no hay.


hans ostrom 

Aspen Shadow Wisdom

Wisdom is a witty
shadow created by
sunlight and an aspen,
which, after Earth
became and changed
over the billions of
years, grew there then.



hans ostrom 2016

We Had a Good Morning

We had it good there for a while,
saying tuna implies blue
and shirt suggests sadness.
For most of the morning, mist
and tree remained a single entity.

The pickled, packaged voices
of information streaming through devices?
We re-deployed them as sound collages.
By late afternoon, windows re-
solidified, and reporting sports

scores seemed to be a rational
activity.  Life became plain
and tepid once more. Dogged
and sullen we set out our clothes
for the work-week ahead.


hans ostrom 2016

No-Sense Songs

We need more songs
that make no sense.
We need more grassland
and way less fence.

Fevers and fenders,
go to the dome.
Let's buy some lettuce
and polish the chrome.

We songs need more
that sense no make.
Please ask the river
to help make a lake.

No hookish formulae,
just No, yes No!
Senselessly, senselessly
trudge through the snow.



hans ostrom 2016

Stolen Thread

Ariadne ran out of thread. Now we're stuck.
Her simple woven line had belittled the labyrinth
for us, rendering it tedious at worst.  That

was up until today.  Or is it night? A frivolous,
costly puzzle can still prove deadly, we're
thinking. We're thinking of the leaders who

imprisoned us here. They're perfectly,
compulsively evil. Ariadne tried
to help us with her sensible approach.

We're starting to think someone stole
the thread, for Ariadne always
carries plenty.  The dark walls are damp.


hans ostrom 2016

Meetings

There is a man running
a meeting, and he asks
a question of the group
and then answers it himself
first.  At some length.

Everybody knows where
this bulldozer's going, and it's
going as slowly as a slug:
to the town of Consensus:
Population, 1.

If the meetings went
more quickly; if
the manipulation were
more artful; if the palming
of the pea were less clumsy,

the group might be less
bored, although it would
be just as demoralized.

These sluggish eddies
of power characterize
the middle class, one learns.



hans ostrom 2016

False Autobiography

I was born with an ax in my hand.

I had lunch with Hailie Selassie.

I know how to make alfalfa soup.

For a year after my 17^th birthday, I cried blue tears when I cried.

In high school, I lettered in varsity ballet.

I have climbed the highest mountain in Paraguay.

I was once hired by Iceland to spy on Greenland.

*Although I am White, it is still obvious to me that White Supremacy

continues to devastate America like a demonic plague.

*this part is true

hans ostrom 2016

Why Did a White Supremacist Sexual Assaulter Get Elected President?

He and Pence won more electoral votes.  Reason one.

Other reasons I have listened to: The White working class was angry about its economic position, post-recovery.  This seems to be a favorite of both the gleeful Trumpers and the Bernie-Left.  I’ll accept it for a moment.  But then, of course, the obvious question is “Why did they channel the anger into support for a White nationalist, self-admitted serial sexual assaulter?”  Answer: something else about Trump besides his economic stance (which is at best nonsensical and at worst anti-working class) appealed to these voters.  You don’t have to be a political scientist to know this.  It was probably the White nationalism, although it could have been the sexual assaults.  Or both. Also, please note that if Black people express frustration or outrage, the most prevalent White responses are, “I’m tired of hearing about race.  My relatives were Irish [or whatever] and had a tough time. Why are they so angry? What about Black on Black violence? Blah, blah, blahgitty blah.”  (What about White on White White Supremacy?)  When White men  get angry, we are conditioned to genuflect. ” They were angry, so they voted for Trump.”  (Please nod in agreement; it’s the rules.)  Sorry, Bernie or Bill O’Reilly enthusiasts.  Your logic doesn’t pass.

Other reasons  I have rolled my eyes at: Hillary Clinton is corrupt.  Hillary Clinton kept her own server which had [actually, did not have]  classified material on it.  She is a nasty woman. She’s been in or near government a long time. She’s married to Bill Clinton.  Okay, whatever.  So thus it follows that a White nationalist serial sexual assaulter is preferable in this binary voters’ choice?  It makes no sense.  A child could see through the “reasoning.”

Another: “Both candidates were unappealing, so I a) didn’t vote b) voted for Johnson c)voted for Stein, or d) wrote in my cat’s name.  Terrific.  Both candidates were equally unappealing, so I decided to help elect a White nationalist serial sexual assaulter who is homophobic and xenophobic (etc.)  Note also that Trump deployed the “international [Jewish] banking conspiracy, too.  Remember who else used that?

The candidates were equally unappealing?  Sorry,  not credible.

When Trump announced his candidacy, I repeatedly told friends and acquaintances that they (White people) would elect him.  Yes, some non-Whites voted for him, but let’s get real: No Whites, no President Trump.  Anyway, I repeated my prediction for this reason and this reason alone: I wanted to hear an argument to persuade me otherwise.  Wanted desperately to hear one. Wanted to think the majority of Whites in this country had evolved, at least modestly.  I never heard an answer to my question that satisfied me, given what the USA is and always has been.  So I expected him to win, and when Florida started going for Trump, I concluded, “She’s toast.” (Sorry for the crass phrasing.)  Never have I hated being right than I did on election night.  My accuracy disgusted me.  I turned off the TV, vomited, and slept hardly at all.

A few observations to cut through the bullshit:

1. After 2012, “Nearly half of counties [in the South and Midwest]that previously approved voting changes with the federal government have cut voting places [before the 2016 election].”  The number is 868.  The reasons are two-fold: 1) The Roberts Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, a White Supremacist decision. 2) White Supremacist, pseudo-Jim Crow governors, legislators, and/or secretaries of state said, “Thanks, Roberts Court!” and went about suppressing the vote in ethnic areas.  Several states passed Voter ID laws to further suppress the Black (for example) vote.  The GOP = White Supremacy = hatred for the Black president = Trump. This is called getting down to brass tacks, in my late mother’s lingo.  Did these White Supremacist actions get Trump elected?  I do not know.  It doesn’t matter.  We may know the GOP by its actions and its incapacity to denounce Trump.   We may know Trump by what he has said and done and bragged about. (The quotation is from  Ari Berman, THE NATION.)  See also Emma Roller’s “Willie Horton’s Heirs,” New York Times, Willie Horton’s Heirs and “No, David Brooks, Trump is the GOP and You Own Him,” by James Leo, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/4/1495734/-No-David-Brooks-Trump-is-the-GOP-and-you-own-him
2. I hope you have cash in your wallet or purse.  If you do, take out a one dollar bill, a two dollar bill, and/or a ten dollar bill.  All bear likenesses of former slave-owners.  Washington inherited almost a dozen slaves when he was 11.  (Meditate on that for a moment.) By the time he died, he owned over 300.  Thus he presided over a concentration camp for decades.  Same for Jefferson: inherited slaves as a boy, ended up owning over 600, and presided over a concentration camp for decades.  He also had children with a slave woman. (No power differential there!) When biographer Fawn Brodie pointed this out decades ago, she was ritually attacked by White liberal historians (several of them on my campus).  Later, the DNA tests proved her right. (As if we needed the DNA test.)  Hamilton, beloved Federalist, White liberal hero:

“As the letter excerpted above reveals, Hamilton’s relationship with slavery is far from unblemished. It contains a bit of family business involving two of Hamilton’s sister-in-laws, Margarita Schuyler Van Rensselaer and Angelica Schuyler Church, and their desire to reacquire a slave named Ben who was, at the time, under lease to another political acquaintance. It is one of many such examples in Hamilton’s papers in which he acted as a financial agent for the sale, lease, or acquisition of slaves for his immediate family.” – See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/153639#sthash.KxD7migF.dpuf. From “Alexander Hamilton’s Exaggerated Abolitionism,” by
by Phillip Magness, Jun 27, 2015 11:06 am. History News Network

Now imagine a visitor from outer space who is given the currency, informed about the these slave-holding men, and then told that White Supremacist, serial sexual assaulter Trump has been elected president.  The visitor’s detached response: “Oh, okay. That makes sense. The country honors such men. Got it.”

3. Folks, it’s a White Supremacist nation.  A majority of college educated Whites in the South and Midwest voted for Trump.  College-educated. So much for the vaunted liberal-elite universities.  I have observed nothing to dissuade me from assuming that sizeable percentages of the student body, staff, and faculty at my liberal arts college either voted for Trump.  The schaudenfreude on campus on Wednesday was as thick as fog.

As a candidate for a job in African American Studies at my campus recently opined, “The law says you can, but you can’t.”  The post-Civil War amendments gave Blacks the rights of citizens and the right to vote, etc. (Except they didn’t.) Then came the lynching and other horrors after 1877.  Then came Jim Crow. Then came the mid-1960s civil rights legislation, much of it ignored in the South and often in the North (restrictive housing covenants, for example.  Note that Trump and Dad refused housing to Blacks).  Fast forward to “Stand Your Ground” and open carry.   A Black woman in the South stood her ground when she was about to be beaten up again by her husband.  She killed him with a gun because she (legitimately) feared for her life.  She was convicted and sent to prison.  She eventually got out, but that’s beside the point. The law says you can, but you can’t. Black men or women openly carrying guns?  Likely to be shot dead by a white man or woman and/or a police person.  Fast forward to events that spurred the Black Lives Matter movement.  People who say “All lives matter” are either gleefully indifferent to Black misery or are unable to absorb rudimentary linguistic subtlety in the English language.

I heard a Trumper at a rally, in response to something ugly Trump said about Clinton, yell, “String her up!”  People cheered.  Trump heard the comment and obviously thought it was appropriate.   Lynching-talk topped off by lethal misogyny.

4. White people from far Left to Far Right, can we please cut through the bullshit?  White people have never done right and made it stick for Black people.  Or for Latinos and Muslims, gays, lesbians, and the transgendered.  How many White people either voted for Trump or somehow knowingly enabled him to be elected?  A sizeable majority.  It’s moral depravity, and it never stops, and that’s why Trump got elected.  The rest is window-dressing.  A large majority of White people (many on my campus) would/will recoil from these statements (to say the least), go into wounded/outraged White-victim mode, and switch on the rationalization machine (and take it up to level 10).  They simply don’t have the moral character or intellectual maturity to fess up.  They are useless.

Bigot Nation Blues

I don't want to cope.
I just want to leave.
U.S. is Bigot Nation,
you'd best believe.

A rapist, racist xenophobe:
commander in chief.
Just like psycho slaveholders
(to be brief).

War-crazed haters run this
place, and there's no reprieve.
I don't want to cope.
I've run out of hope,
and I just want to leave.

I just want to leave.
Duties keep me here.
I see so many people
terrorized, in fear.
I don't want to cope.
I've run out of hope,
I wish I could get clear.



hans ostrom 2016

Answer Sampler

I've prepared several answers

for you in the unlikely event

we meet and you feel like

posing questions.  Here's a 

five-piece sampler:

"Yes, the U.S. is a racist shit

hole"; "ten minutes"; "zinnias";

"Frederick Douglass"; "maybe."

hans ostrom 2016

White Pendulum

That the political pendulum swings
in the U.S. isn't important. That
White Supremacists designed and operate
the pendulum is the thing to remember
(not that you forgot).  It's a nation
founded by slave-holders and ethnic
cleansers.  (I'm seeing a pattern here.)

This is where we live, and the old news
still lacerates.  I'd pray for us all
except it seems at best quaint--
like knowing things, relying
on evidence, and resisting depravity.



hans ostrom 2016

Concerning the Kodak Brownie Target 6-20 Box Camera

Photos used to be dear currency,
transferred generationally like
jewelry. ("That's the only photo
we have of your great Uncle Ali!")

Deflation has set in. Digital spaces
trade in counterfeit images. Nobody
cares.  Photos once deemed great
are too much seen, bore.

Selfie poses have been formulated
into sub-genres. Porn proliferates
like mold. Seriously, topsoil is
rarer than photography.

However, I do keep a modest
trace of magic in an aged Kodak
Brownie box camera, with
Art Deco decoration. This

camera is so simple it's like a sneeze.
Its click is as as quiet as
a mouse's sigh. And the Brownie
knows how to keep a secret.


hans ostrom 2016

Certain Beverages

Hot chocolate is independent, comforting, and interesting,
like a tastefully dressed and perfumed woman
sitting at a bar who knows how to hold a conversation.

A shot or more of vodka is like a broad, iced
highway when you've just been handed
the keys to a black Corvette with failed
headlights and bald tires.

A German beer from the tap
is a highly trained, reserved professional,
absolutely dependable.

If you specify the red wine as Beaujolais,
then I will want to be of assistance
to multiple French women at once,
most likely in October, in Paris, and forgive me
if, momentarily, I confuse the situation
with paradise. As to retsina,

God help me, I did love it, as one
might love an athletic, deceptively
savvy woman from a rural province.

If you would ask me about God,
I would refer you to clean alpine creek-water.


hans ostrom 2016

The Schedule of Time and Space

Did space and time arrive at the same
time? Maybe time arrived on time
and space was running late. Or

Space could have been hanging around
waiting for the concept start to start.
And both time and space reported
for duty before the Big Bang, right?

It's all rather enormous and confusing.
I suppose it doesn't matter now, now
that matter is, and is space taking time
to rearrange itself constantly. Anyway,

it can't be any accident that Einstein,
whose schedule included lots of work
with time and space, developed
a comic affect.


hans ostrom 2016

Blood Under a Thumbnail

It's the dark lake under the ice.
It's the reminder-in-residence
of pain and of an accident
that called you "Fool!"
It's the risible badge
of an apprentice carpenter,
and the mark of death
on a doomed slate
of the keratin matrix.
It's a fact that laughs at philosophy.


hans ostrom 2016

Floating Windows

Like you, I've noticed windows without buildings,
ghost panes floating above city streets.
Local officials sometimes gather to argue
about how to get them washed, and would it
be a union job? Boosters plot
a Floating Pane Festival.

Local professors challenge the physics,
opposing plain sight. Like you,
I'm thankful that these hovering frames
of glass are at least something fresh
and new, for the city is, like all cities,
a weary site of congealed geometries
covering underground rivers of liquid dung.



hans ostrom 2016

Chess Teachings

This is just to confirm that a dance
is more pleasurable than a fist fight.

Geometry likes to stretch.

If the Queen is close by,
do not deny it

Death is death. The end
of a game is not death.

Never get angry at a machine
if you know where the off switch is.
And even if you don't.

Follow a method until
the first surprise.  Then stay
calm, look at your surroundings,
and make a judgement.

If you're healthy, you're winning.

Play with the person.
Play against the person's symbols.

Always have food and water on hand,
if you can.

Remember to breathe.

Neither a flag nor a game
is more important than
a roof that doesn't leak.

Hurry less, fret less, and smile more.

Always know ahead of time
what you're going to do after
the game and why.


hans ostrom 2016

The Way of the Manatee

I gather manatees like to swim,
float, ogle, eat lettuce, fart,
be in/make a family, and sleep.

This represents a simplistic
but not altogether unworkable
approach to living life on Earth.


hans ostrom 2016

Marcella Hazan's Minestrone Recipe

It seems to be getting difficult to find minestrone soup, let alone good minestrone soup, in Italian restaurants.  Another First World problem.

Minestrone is probably a little too "country," or at least insufficiently hip, for most menus.

This is the best recipe for minestrone I know--Marcella Hazan's.  MH was Julia Child's go-to person for Italian recipes, if that matters.  Of course, if you're just wanting to throw together a minestrone, and especially if you have a vegetable garden of some kind, you can improvise on the recipe.  For example, I've substituted Swiss chard for the cabbage, and sometimes I throw a few leaves of kale in there. I prefer Yukon gold potatoes.

INGREDIENTS

1. • • 1 lb Zucchini
   • • 1/2 cup Olive Oil
   • • 3 Tbs Butter
   • • 1 cup Onion, sliced very thin
   • • 1 cup Carrots, diced
   • • 1 cup Celery, diced
   • • 2 cups Potatoes, peeled & diced
   • • 1/2 lb Green Beans
   • • 3 cups shredded Cabbage
   • • 1 1/2 cups canned Cannellini Beans, drained
   • • 4 cups Beef Broth
   • • 2 cups Water
   • • Parmesan Rind
   • • 2/3 cup canned Plum Tomatoes, with juice
   • • 1/3 cup Parmesan, grated

PREPARATION

1. 1. • 1 Soak the zucchini in a large bowl of water at least 20 minutes. Drain and dice fine. Soak the green beans in water, drain, trim and dice. • 2 In a large stockpot, mix the oil, butter and sliced onion. Turn the heat to medium-low and cook until onion wilts and becomes pale gold, but not darker. • 3 Add the diced carrots and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Then add the celery and cook 2 to 3 minutes. Add the potatoes and cook 2 to 3 minutes. Add the green beans and cook 2 to 3 minutes. Add the zucchini and cook 2 to 3 minutes. Add the shredded cabbage and cook for another 5 to 6 minutes. • 4 Add the broth, water, cheese rind, and tomatoes with juice. Salt very lightly. Stir thoroughly. Cover the pot, and lower the heat to simmer. • When the soup has cooked 2 1/2 hours, add the drained cannellini beans. Stir and cook another 30 minutes. Just before serving, remove the cheese rind. Swirl in the grated cheese and season with salt and pepper. Note: While one vegetable is cooking, peel and cut up another.

Words Words

Words is a good word, a knotted morpheme.

Words look a lot like cinders.  Bits of black
and gray settled on paper, floating on screens.

Sometimes words sound like water
quarreling with piers at a quay.

We ask too much of words.  They go
along with it, fooling us into fooling ourselves.

These are a few more words rising, floating.


hans ostrom 2016

Ballpark Figures

Pitcher:

He or she has just discovered the North Pole
and, behind the back, holds a snowball,
glowering down at the world.

Catcher:

The amalgam.
Body, a badger's.
Face, a prisoner's.
Legs, a knight's.
One arm, a deaf person's.
The other arm, a crab's.

Umpire:

An angry parent
yelling at the kids,
who just want to play.

Outfielders:

Three deer graze in a meadow.
A shot rings out.
They raise their heads.
They're on the move.

First Base:

A hometown kid.
Rarely leaves the house
but entertains a lot.

Dugout:

A rookery.
One bird leaves.
The others rearrange themselves.

Crowd:

Wildflowers on a terraced slope.
Blotches of paint.
A chorus of bees.

Third Base:

This one guards a thin white line.
An accountant.
Foul or fair. Profit or loss.

Second Base:

The bull charges.
The bullfighter whirls and leaps.

Shortstop: 

Holds dual citizenship.
Travels a lot.
Rents, doesn't own.
Not a joiner.

Vendor:

An evangelist.

Base Coaches:

Performance artists,
gossips, and hired applauders.

Pitching Coach:

A lachrymose intermediary.

Managers:

When they arise from the basement,
it means trouble has come.
Adults forced to wear children's clothes.

Identifications

An ant with vocal chords,
   a singing ant.
A book with feathers,
  a bird book.
A crocodile with goose-bumps,
  a cold croc.
A drill without bits,
  an ornamental drill.
An elephant with shoes,
 a shod god.
A farmer in bed,
  a tired farmer.
A ghost with a cold,
  a coughing ghost.
A hat on a bench,
  a lost hat.
An island with a flag,
  a patriotic island.
A jar with a label,
  a designated jar.
A knee in motion,
  a kinetic knee.
A lion with a tail,
  a regulation lion.
A map in a drawer,
  a safe map.
A nail in a cross,
  an allusive nail.
An octopus with a pocket watch,
  a promptopus.
A pear with a stem,
  a picked pear.
A quail on a rock,
  a standing quail.
A rock in an airplane,
  a flying rock.
A salmon with a suitcase,
  a traveling salmon.
A tree on fire,
  an illuminating tree.
An uncle with a nephew,
  a legit uncle.
A violin in a refrigerator,
  a chilled fiddle.
A woman with a woman,
  two women.
A xylophone in a library,
  a dangerous xylophone.
A yam in a market,
  an available yam.
A zoo with a dinosaur,
  a zoo you never knew.



hans ostrom 2016

Ego Insurance

Next time, I'll buy insurance
for my ego. Then if it should
be crushed in a ruinous affair
or cracked in aspirational failure,

the Insurer will present me
with compensation--
perhaps a cup of Swedish coffee,
a kind word, or a small award:

Totally Insignificant Person of the Week.


hans ostrom 2016

Note to Shelf

Note to shelf:
keep up the good books.
I like their looks,
if I do so say myself.



hans ostrom 2016

What They Took Out and Kept In

They took the tele out of phone
and the roll out of rock, replacing
it with alt, which they also added
to Control + Delete so a PC or
a Mac could get back on its feet.

They done took the paper out
of news and ripped the promise
out of compromise. Yep, they kept
race in political races because
of their bad White habits.

They kept the greed in agreed.
I wish they'd take the they
out of they and replace it
with we, but I just don't see
that happening real soon.


hans ostrom 2016