Salted Desert

Desolation amidst abundance:
the United States,
permanently warped by white
supremacy, mad with virulent
greed and perverse religion,
addicted to violence, proud
of ignorance. The salted
desert of its soul grows vast.



hans ostrom 2017

Bartok and Stars

"The ways of life are infinite and mysterious."  --Georgio Scerbanenco, Traitors to All, translated by Howard Curtis


In spite of my playing, the piano
produced a simple minuet by Bartok,
which made me think of walking
cautiously across a frozen pond.

An empty coffee cup was sitting
on the bookshelf.  Cool ceramic.
Out there, and "up," night,
are stars, which we think of

as a permanent installation,
not a chaotic map of explosions
or freckles on an infinite face.
I dream recurrently about new

stars, close and bright,
flowing past in a sky-parade
as I look up from a meadow
in mountains and watch,

thrilled and terrified. I almost
forget to breathe. Someone I can't see
says, "Words are stars. I've
told you that before."


hans ostrom 2017

"Well Water," by Randall Jarrell

The Sound-Track Goes with the Screen

They moved me to a different office
again. Nothing personal, although
they must admit I've been an unyielding
piece of grit (I said grit) in the academic
machine. Sometimes a crow

comes to the ledge outside the small
wood-framed window, three brick
stories up. Crows always know
where I am. This one looks like
a private investigator.

The office doesn't have a door.
I put up a three-panel screen
instead.  Film noir. It suggests
I can tell fortunes during office hours.
The other people up here aren't

in my department; rather, I'm
not in theirs.  What is my department?
In this tepid exile, I seem to thrive.
I prepare for class, read, write poems,
eat bananas, look online for art,

music, Oakland Raiders updates,
and arcane information. Lately
I've been listening to the wind's
long moans in the duct system.
The sound track goes with the screen.



hans ostrom 2017

every year another live show

black branch, red
leaves. brown leaves,
green branch. white
branch, gold leaves.
red/brown/gold/orange/
mottled leaves; brown branch.

and an array of variations,
deciduous improvisations.

and dancing down the street,
with ice-shoes on her feet,
comes the woman who
calls herself Winter.



hans ostrom 2017

"Fir," by Henry Dumas

"Omens," by R.S. Thomas

"The Rain," by Robert Creeley

Fulguriators

The Etruscans employed fulguriators--
interpreters of lightning strikes.
Jagged, sizzling bolts wrought phrases,
injected warnings, illumined portents,
and brought the heat.  And may I say,
what a great job: Critic of Lightning.
It fuses meteorology, magic, entertainment,
theology, and serious scholarship.

There had to have been fulguriator
conferences, with newsletters (on
baked tablets) with articles like
"Towards a Theory of Lighting
Semantics," "The Neglected Importance
of Thunder," and "'Don't Sit Under
a Tree': Common Mistakes in
Fulguriation." My own

insights into lightning have been
wanting, focused on risk of wildfire,
fear of electrocution, and thoughts
of B-Horror movies. I know
I can do better, like the Etruscans.



hans ostrom 2017

"Sadie and Maud," by Gwendolyn Brooks

Ubiquitous Opacity

In digitized society, we know
people we don't know, and we
don't know people we do know.

Things are made to seem
as if they're happening.

We're distracted from perceiving
much of what is happening.

In high definition we encounter
ubiquitous opacity.



hans ostrom 2017

"Kneeling," by R.S. Thomas

Borges Before Sleep

A problem or not with reading
Borges in bed before sleep
is that Before Sleep can
go on for decades. If you read
"The Immortal," for instance, you'll
be driven by coach across centuries
into a countryside, where  you'll
enter a baroque mansion that becomes a
labyrinthine museum of statues,
and you'll settle finally in a library
designed by Escher. You will ascend,
descend, and circulate. Plots
will spill out of your mind like tiny
spiders just hatched. The plots
grow and make webs, and you
have to go to work tomorrow,
whenever that might be.



hans ostrom 2017

Stewart Lee - Damned Immigrants

You Whispered

You whispered my name.
My name enjoyed it.

You turned breath
into syllables,

and they rented my ear.
I wouldn't say I'm a fool,

per se (others may). I
would say I'm a specialized

fool working exclusively
for you, and that whisper

of yours has a certain
command of the situation.



hans ostrom 2017

Spare

Spare furnishings. Bare
beams. Spare

has an extra meaning
meaning extra.

How can a spare rib
be a spare

rib when it isn't extra
on any single envoi

of a ribbed species?
Oh, spare me. Spare

me the lecture. Spare
me please, please I

beg you. 8+ billion
of us & no spare Earth.



hans ostrom 2017

Rational Dreamer

"By one estimate, . . . people dream through half their waking hours."
--The Atlantic, October 2017

The mind is smarter than us. It knows
living's a strain, at best. So it wants
to dream, flushing the toxins of perception
from receptors of reality.  It orders
body to sleep.  Even when

body's awake, half the time mind
goes down an alley or into a clearing,
gossips with the past, or drifts
to the edge of the crowd.

Mind is a professional and will
concentrate if necessary. But
the world is dangerous, and many
people in power are insane
and depraved, so mind likes
to keep its distance. It is perhaps
most rational when it's dreaming.


hans ostrom 2017

"Of Robert Frost," by Gwendolyn Brooks

"Absent Lover," translated by A.C. Jordan

"Chess Teachings," by Hans Ostrom

"Thought," by Henry Dumas

"Improvisations: Light and Snow 2," by Conrad Aiken

"Cover Me Over," by Richard Eberhart

Awful Bog

That the U.S. president's speech
has declined into bits of blather,
a handful of flaccid bigoted prods,
and droplets of rancid smarm
sharply summarizes the state
of the nation's health. He is where
he should not be because our sense
and sensibilities continue sunk
in an awful bog.


hans ostrom 2017

"no help for that," by Charles Bukowski

Italian Coffee Pot

Caffeine priest in a silver
cassock. Octagonal alchemist.
Silver bird gargling dark steam.

It is in the pantheon of small,
essential pots that lead us
kindly into our daily labors.

It is the beloved mayor of the
stove. It is a three-part harmony
of form and function.



hans ostrom 2017

About Last Week

The old days--last week: hard not
to yearn for them, their billions
of images and messages from robots
that made them so special.

And that's not to mention
all the official depravities
pursued worldwide. And it's a
piquant era in America.

The noxious gas that fills
the nation's balloon president
leaked out and anointed the hate-
filled land. The White people

in power who can stand
between his madness and
catastrophic destruction did
not, do not.  What a time it was!


hans ostrom 2017

"August 1968," by W.H. Auden

"A Permanent Way," by W.H. Auden

"pull a string, a puppet moves," by Charles Bukowski

Centri-Fugue

Mind's centrifuge spins in self-defense.
Attempts to spare the core from engulfment
by noise   shocks   sales   extortions  hate;
and drowning by social media. Centrifuge

plays a centrifugue, its own idio-
synchronized music, which insulates,
and which also helps mind evade ego,
culture's target.  A not-you seems

to glide in the fugue. Glowing
multi-colored rain falls. "Starwater,"
it's called by locals, although
there is no locality.  The fogged

not-you folds itself into an unbounded
flow of other disengaged personas.
Soon sadly your non-self hears a noise,
recognizes it as name, and everything's

recalled, ego re-established.  The
spinning and its spun music cease.
Your tense sense of the world resumes.
Out of digital Hades comes the flood again.



hans ostrom 2017

"Dreams," by Amy Lowell

"The Winter Pear," by William Allingham

Creature Brains

Creature brains feature
lanes nature grooved
as species moved into
spaces over time with
their accidental
                adaptations.




Hans Ostrom 2017

Phantom Blues

I have the phantom blues.
I'm too tired to be blue.
This is what phantoms do.
They only almost have the blues.

Maybe I'll get some rest
so I can get  depressed.
Yes, that's it. I need to
feel better to feel worse.

Maybe I am a phantom.
I hadn't thought of that.
Just an old weary ghost
with an invisible hat.



Hans Ostrom 2017

Let the Maul Fall

In Fall always
use a splitting maul or an ax,
never a hatchet,
to split cut wood into kindling.

As you split and sweat, don't forget
to find the smell of sap in air.
Find a rhythm to body plus wood
plus chop; and air.
Let the maul fall,
no need to swing it. It's splitting
not chopping, after all.

Would anybody find you
if you walked back into
woods to apologize to trees?
Thoughts like this come from air
as your mind moves away
from the fall of the maul's
heavy head and blade.
Hitting a knot calls your mind back.

Find yourself done with splitting
wood, two boxes of kindling,
let's say. Wood stoves are disappearing,
they must. Culture always
chops away old days, splits
custom, finds other ways to warm itself,
finds other work to get that done.



Hans Ostrom 2017

"To a Lady Playing the Harp," by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Att Älska" by Gunnar Ekelöf

"On Inhabiting and Orange," by Josephine Miles

Jambing Jam Jive

Jam of the berries, plums,
and sums of water, sweetness,
concoction. Jamb of a door,

a line, or a vine propelling
itself gradually toward
a window sill: vegetative

will. Jamb of the saying
when English meets French,
leaving you singing

the time-and-place blues
on a bench. Jam of aggression,
reckless and crude, forcing

parts to fit into
what's falsely trued.


hans ostrom 2017

The Vast Hall

Another group has rented
the vast hall here. We must leave.

We didn't know this day would come.
We knew a day would.

Yes, of course I'm confused
and afraid, as if I'd been hollowed

out and panic had been poured in.
I'm also greedy for more time

in this grand space. That's so small
of me.  A door will open,

and a door will close. The simplicity
of it is appalling.



hans ostrom2017

"Everything Passes and Vanishes," by William Allingham

"Hölderlin's Old Age," by Stephen Spender

"The Mystery Poem," by Sara Teasdale

"The Mystery Poem," by Sara Teasdale

"For a Poet," by Countee Cullen

"Dusk in Autumn," by Sara Teasdale

Becausing

because we say because
   we try to know why,
to isolate a correlate,
   shun ones we see
to be against our picture
   frame of the world,
the notion of the world
   itself a frame,
an abstracted concrete
   rain-blur in the brain,
neurologically produced.

                        loosed,
we speculate, and early we
   decide before
we know because we need
   to say because.


hans ostrom

Smug Shadow

When I was young, I didn't take
my shadow for granted much.
I looked for and at it. My preference
was that version roughly
proportional to my body. I felt

ludicrous when I saw the one
where my torso disappeared
and my legs grew to meet
my neck.  I hardly ever look
at my shadow now.  It just

never seemed to develop
into a major innovative
displacement of light. And
honestly, I'm tired of carrying
it around.  At the same time:

no shadow, no me.  It is
a kind of proof. Believe me,
my shadow's quite aware
that it's indispensable to my being.
It's a smug, insubstantial thing.



hans ostrom 2017

The Specials - Racist Friend

"The Owls," by Charles Baudelaire

Anti-social non-media

holds promise. It might look like
sitting alone, phoneless and thinking,
which at least allows you
to imagine a country that has unfriended
racism, faved equity, pinned
knowledge, twanked twaddle
into truth, and stopped following.

As the media are mainly
a village of the damned celebrities,
it may be wise sometimes
to reduce the status of the spectacle
to that of an evening gnat that
passes by your eyes and ears-
a momentary minor whine.



hans ostrom 2017

"Laughter," by Stephen Spender

Monachopsis

You feel you've had
to try to fit
yourself into groups
and systems
like a hand-made part
in mass-produced machinery.

You know other people
must feel this too,
except there seems to be
less friction for
most of them, more
gliding function.

You play at envying
them to pretend
to chastise yourself.

You always think
you can be better
at joining. Yeah,
you think that.

Indeed you've archived
the many instances
of your desire to fit in,
and using "indeed" in
sentences is one of them.

You assemble conscise
internal reports
that tell of irascibility
and insufficiently
feigned adherence
to the contours of authority.

That is, times when
you were a pain in the ass,
when you wouldn't
knuckle under but
could have easily.
Should have? You
ask that now!

Down there in
dark, dank storage,
you feel judged
even by the rude
shelves and weary
boxes of your making.

Don't panic. Go upstairs
where the others are.
Mind your manners
and your mannerisms.

Chat and listen. Note
the desire to be somewhere
else but do not
act on it. The gathering
will dissolve soon
enough/not soon enough:
what's the difference?

The difference is you.



hans ostrom 2017

Party of One

A frost has settled on her smile.
Her words are crisp and cold.
You suspect she never dances,
and that's what you've been told.

You do not want to know her,
although her ways intrigue you.
Your you would not fit hers.
Her disdain would make you blue.

Think of all the times you tried
to get along, accommodate.
They were you've learned a waste of time,
like talking to an iron gate.

Maybe in fact you've lowered
your level of sociability
and must sanguinely admit
alone's good company.


hans ostrom 2017

"The Truly Great," by Stephen Spender

Nymphs

Well, that's a gnarled word. Six consonants
invite tongue, teeth, larynx, lips, and roof
of mouth to a pronunciation party. Awkward!

Now, about those wood nymphs. I've invested
much time-capital in the woods, which
are always a going concern. I earned
a nymph-sighting. You'd think so, anyway.
But, no.  Just squirrels, rattlesnakes, deer . . . .

And then: nymphomaniac. That got flung
around last century. It seemed to have
expressed either male fantasies of a pulp-
fiction kind or pseudo-scientific, puritanical
indictments of women who had sex, if
they did, but that was their business,
so what the hell?  One ministry

of fishing flies goes by the nymph name,
meant to mimic gnats, mosquitoes, and other
tiny hatchers. You unhook the nymph
from the caught trout, and before you release
the fish back into flow, you think you know
what that frowning face suggests:
Is this sport-fishing really necessary?

That's the problem with mythology. Sooner
or later, it disappoints everybody, among others.


hans ostrom 2017

"Love's Philosophy," by Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Maid Quiet," by William Butler Yeats

The Ballad of Mr. Who

A certain Mr. Who ordered
his where whated--why,
he wouldn't say.

He hired reliable whaters
trained in necessary hows,
which earned them pay.

When all the hows were done,
sad Mr. Who wished he'd kept
the whaters at bay.

Indeed he missed his otherwhere,
which his impatience had reduced
to dust of clay.

Old Who brooded about what-now.
He grew consumed with whys that led
his mind astray.

It will straggle back sometime,
somehow. Meanwhile now, Mr. Who,
he tries to pray.


hans ostrom 2017

A Quality of Cold in September

Cold no longer subtle,
as the shifts started in September
as we finished framing a house.
Hurry, get the roof on.

Cold now in September
as I clear the garden beds,
knocking loose a few last
golden potatoes and carrots
with sunburned indigo shoulders.

It's an insistent chill.  An overture
to a Winter suite. An advance-team
working for an immanent season
that bides its clime in gravitational
patterns.  A shirt under

a flannel work-shirt--then and now--
soaks up sweat & cold startles
the skin when wind rouses itself.
This is a ritual annoyance
that flavors wistful weariness
when I pick up a rake or a shovel.


hans ostrom 2017

"Autumn Twilight," Arthur Symons

"Perfume," by Arthur Symons

Concerning Me and a Concept Called You

Like you I was in space today,
moving around on what some call
Earth.  The Chinese in Mandarin
call it tu, with a diacritic mark
over the u, a parenthesis lying
on its back, looking up at the sky.

Evolution means the weather
can seem calibrated perfectly
to me (and you) and me (and you)
to the weather.  A peace treaty
signed by molecules. Can be
revoked at any time.

After work, I returned
to the circumstance by which
regardless of how much humans
learn, certain fundamental
mysteries will not yield,
such as what's the all about?--
this moving around on a
matter-ball that spins and tilts
and orbits and has an indigestive core
of molten stuff.



hans ostrom 

"Lovesight," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"The Brain is Wider Than the Sky," by Emily Dickinson

The Mother of All Poems

When I think about writing the mother
of all poems that is to say a big serious
poem about my mother, I think about
the poem I wrote, in Karl Shapiro's class,
about how a piano contains all notes,
all potential melodies, etc., in some kind
of ideal way. And after I read it, Shapiro
said to the class, "D.H. Lawrence wrote
a poem about a piano, but it was really
about his mother; he was in love with
her." I found the comment unhelpful,

plus suggestive of incest. Oh, well:
workshops. I also think of my mother
and her low tolerance for nonsense,
such as puppets and murderers.  She
sat on the jury that convicted serial
killer Larry Lord Motherwell (ahem),
which was the name he, Frank
Eugene Caventer, gave himself,
a nom de meurtrier.

Ma wanted to make sure Motherwell
got the gas chamber, and she never forgave
the one juror who prevented that.
Anyway, I really don't feel like writing
an ambitious poem about my mother.
It seems like too much work for too
little gain, and I don't know--
Freud, Shapiro, and millions of
other people have kind of ruined
the subject for me.  My mother liked
to drink Hamm's beer out of the can.


hans ostrom 2017

Crop-Burning, Kansas

Dusk, and we're moving on I-35
through Kansas.  West of us, green
land dissolves into dissolving
available light. Sky flares

at the horizon. East of us,
flames razor yellow patterns
on black, burning undulating
land. In the car talking,

we weave a makeshift fabric
of family lore, wounds and
resentments, hilarities. One
of us glances ahead through

the windshield: rear lights
of cars burn hot and red
like lit cigarette tips.
Green land fades altogether.

Red sky goes pink, goes gray.

Night will arrive before Wichita
does. We're not anywhere very long.




hans ostrom 2017

It's 1954 and Emmett Kelly remembers

the Hartford, Connecticut, circus fire,
1944: the big tent went up,

and people panicked like animals,
but the big cats got strangely calm.

The famous clown rushed from
the small dressing-tent in makeup,

managed more authority than a cop
because a clown's not supposed

to speak, so when he spoke,
the wild eyed customers listened.

They let him save their lives
with a frown.  Back in his tent,

he said to Willie in the mirror,
"No show tonight. No show

in Clown Alley."  Other clowns
entered, hysterical, said who'd lived,

who hadn't. (168 hadn't.)
"You were wonderful," they told Emmett,

who had removed half of Willie's face.
As Kelly he shrugged. "I did what I could."

Now in 1954, Madison Square Garden,
Emmett's put on half of Willie's face.

He feels weary.  He tells an interviewer,
"Clowning is nothing you can study for."



hans ostrom 2017

Transformation: Dementia

He remembers language
but not his memory. He speaks
of what he sees. He scratches
his knees. A straggling memory
wanders by, covered with soot
from a burnt whole life.

To this memory he says hello.
Does not recall why he said
hello. Does not recall that
he said hello. He doesn't
remember scratching his knees.
He speaks. He sees. He listens
to speaking he speaks. It does
not interest him. This does:
An aroma. Of . . .?

He falls asleep in front of
what he sees. Outside of his sleep,
we speak of what we remember
of his memory using some of
the language he used to recall.


hans ostrom 2017

"Into the Strenuous Briefness," by e.e. cummings

"A Long Time Ago: a Dialogue," by Hans Ostrom

"Keen, Fitful Gusts," by John Keats

Crow Travel

Just sitting outside in search of
fresh air, not looking for them:
a couple hundred crows
flying southeast across a chalk sky.

Were they coming from the famous
crow compound and annual banquet
on Whidbey Island?  Hell, I
didn't know.  Crows don't

fly in formation, not like those
fascist geese. In fact, they looked
like they'd been in a weed cafe
in Amsterdam or something--

just kind of flap-sauntering.
They flew in two groups.
Between the intervals, a solitary
crow flew from the same

direction, landed on a tree,
and got loud, as if to say,
"I didn't want to go with y'all
anyway!" Borderline personality.

I don't think it was migration.
More like they were off to
an academic crow conference
or a big wedding. Crows

just look like they have a better
handle on this reality thing.
They're not all out of control
and self-destructive like us.



hans ostrom 2017

"Deep in the Quiet Wood," by James Weldon Johnson

Velton's Testimony

Judge (said Velton), I submit
that yellow Lombardy poplar
leaves staggering down the breeze
from the trees recall butterflies:
that peculiar aerodynamic
jaggedry.  May it please the court,
such impressionistic reports
on natural scenes are worthless
and thus desirable in any age
of frenzied valuation, addictive
greed, and amphetamined commerce.



hans ostrom 2017

Velton Stopped Cheering

Velton stopped cheering
at football games and football
matches when he realized
that no one could hear him
above the noise.



hans ostrom 2017

"Life," by James Weldon Johnson

This Fall, White Supremacy Blooms

The forests are ablaze, the sun is red,
and a light snow of ash falls. White
Supremacy blooms again, giving off
its acrid odor, its menacing stench.

More than a few White college
students fully feel the old power
their forebears wielded like a scythe.
In front of Black professors (where

there are any), they yawn, stretch,
roll eyes, pick matter from their hair,
their eyes, their ears.  They savor
the insolence of re-authorization.

They get drunk and yell, "I am
the One Per Cent!" and offer
other triumphalist biscuits
to the air, which they own.

Not that they ever
were going to change, but
now any pressure to know or care,
to arise from racist sloth,

has dissipated like the particles
from scorched trees.
An old White bloated Hitler
knockoff at the American helm

massages the radioactive core
of the country and his Party,
Dixiecrats in drag. So White
students are as free as ever

to treat learning as a running
joke, to swagger, to luxuriate
in the shade of official hatred
behind the citadel walls. Its their

choice. It's always been their choice.


hans ostrom 2017

"George Crabbe," by Edwin Arlington Robinson.

"A Divine Image," by William Blake

"Gertrude Stein," by Mina Loy

"The Selfsame Song," by Thomas Hardy

"Summer Silence," by e.e. cummings

"Practice Safe Poetry," by Hans Ostrom

Ceremonial Headdress

I wore a ceremonial headdress
of my own design
to the party. No one else
wore one--and, truly,

I wasn't sure how many
of them were worthy of such
a noble item of clothing.
Anyway, let's just say

their definition of
"casual attire" differs
substantially from mine.
Good day to you.



hans ostrom 2017

"As Imperceptibly as Grief," by Emily Dickinson

Kildeer

("The flight of the Kildeer is strong and rapid, and is at times protracted to a great distance. It skims quite low over the ground, or plays at a great height in the air, particularly during the love season, when you may see these birds performing all sorts of evolutions on wing."  audobon.org)

Kildeers, about the size of flickers,
screamed across the pasture, summers.
Their shrieks were very fine, accomplished,
their low, straight routes efficient.

Thank God I didn't try to make them
symbolize or teach: what a bore,
a lugubrious Wordsworthian chore. 
No. Just the kildeers, fast fliers,

loud criers, going fast from copse
of oaks to stand of pines. 


hans ostrom 2017

"Life," by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Transformation: Tourist," by Hans Ostrom

Sonnet 97, by William Shakespeare

"Dialectic," by Hans Ostrom

"Zen Golf," by Hans Ostrom

"Baseball Figures"

"Balloonist's Log, Final Entry," by Hans Ostrom

America, Here's the Package

Here's the package: the hair looks
like a collapsed straw pompadour,
the skin like faded naugahyde. The
vocabulary goes zero to sixty and
stops, the attention span the same
in seconds. He can't even fake
empathy.  Is delighted to be ignorant
of history, science, economics, politics,
music, art, psychology, law, philosophy.

The White Supremacist road begins
and ends in an abyss of willful ignorance.

It's as if he played Monopoly instead
of learning even the most basic of
human things. He's witless, petty,
dull, and unctuous  Couldn't plan a sneeze
after inhaling pepper. Shouldn't
even be president of his local
hate group.  Consider how many
White folks still think he's all
right, and that will tell you where we are.


hans ostrom 2017

Phone Nightspot

Weird night: went to this small
dark bistro, got inside--no one there
but a bartender texting on her phone.

The tables were empty except
for mobile phones, some propped,
some lying flat, two or three or

four per table.  One table had just
one phone--sad. I put my phone
on that table so the two could

get to know each other. Went
to the bar, ordered a bourbon,
and said to the woman,

"Start a tab, please, and I'm
buying a round for them all."
Her look soured. The phones

started to buzz, ring, sing,
jangle, and melodize. I said,
"Cheers," and lifted my glass.



hans ostrom 2017

"The Puppet Player, " by Angelina Weld Grimké

"Neighbors," by Anne Spencer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAFGO1J49N8

"August," by Lizette Woodworth Reese