Respectfully Absurd

Rituals of remembrance,

so weary, so salty-sweet.

Beside an open grave,

someone says words 

about a dead man whose

corpse lies in a manufactured

box nearby. The memories

of him will never be riper

than they are now. No one

will think to recall him after

a few months, it not days, if

not . . . Even at the moment

how many listeners are 

thinking of other things, 

or wondering what the point

of funeral services is? "Funeral

services" has the ring 

of American assembly lines. 

That's all right. The frail,

exhausted nobility of mournful

practices preserves their worth.

They're respectfully absurd.

hans ostrom 2019

Memo to Religions

Pretty much all religions
need to take a break from being God,
from being chosen, elected, selected,
right and righteous. Religions
are human and assuming God sends
rules and info, religions must therefor garble
the message, if not twist it into a club
used to knock around the faithful.

Religions, please spend the next 100 years
doing practical good, making up
as best you can for your stupidities,
atrocities. Get the hell out of the way
and let people breathe. Dump
the vast stores of wealth, throw
water on the preening, the pompous,
the predatory. Put that goddamned
fire out.


hans ostrom 2019

All He Could Manage To Do

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you
a man cut grass and picked up trash
and sat down then. He thought
about America's most recent
consolidation of white-supremacist
power, became queasy. Thought
of vomiting on the cut grass but
did not. A hummingbird

visited a nearby rosemary bush,
pale blue blossoms fluffed out
modestly like women's
handkerchiefs in 1911. Hummingbird
throat-chirped when it backed off
a blossom, and again when it
air-wheeled itself back for another
nectar-strike. The man made
a powerless choice. He let

sight and sound of one bird
help him breathe out of his
disgust and go more lightly
through next tasks. It was pitiful.
It was all he could manage to do.


hans ostrom 2019

Ultimate Shade

A gardener grabbed
dead day-lily stalks
and some soil with them.
And an earthworm. Earthworm.
Syllables of that word
burrow deep in the mouth. Said

gardener let the worm lie
in a gloved palm. Said
earthworm paused its wriggling
until the gloved hand had
repatriated it to a bed of soil
where vegetables meet
to gossip about each other.

Buried alive in soft dirt,
the worm resurrected its writhing
life in ultimate shade, as gardener
returned to a life in air and light
and work and worry.


hans ostrom 2019

Postcard from Anxiety

Hello! We've arrived.
Our knees have buckled,
and we're sick to our
stomachs. We're terrified
of being afraid. It's
just like home! We're
not sure how long we
will stay. We're never sure,
for certainty always lies.
We gulp our breaths.
Love to all, Us.


hans ostrom 2019

Busy Sky

Aquarius pours water into troughs
for Taurus and Aries, horned
herbivores. Scorpio surveys
one of the trays on Libra's scales,
wanting to pinch something.

The Crab tries again futilely
to cast away its cancerous nickname.
Leo looks at Pisces' koi pond
and laughs. Capricorn
meets Sagitarius for drinks,
two pals trading stories. Virgo
knows secrets and hordes them.
Gemini considers the alternatives.


hans ostrom 2019

Viduality

Sometimes I'm an individual,
other times a dividual. More and more,
I'm a digividual harried
by image after image after
image. When I hold two contrasting

views at once, at once I become
a stereovidual, who listens gladly
to the paradoxical jazz of uncertainty,
ambiguous riffs unspooling, unresolved.

This viduality of mine's
less simple than certain very
certain individuals would
have me believe. They would
have me believe in my
singularity. Not so fast, say we.


hans ostrom 2019

Mimesis

"I hates those meeces to pieces!"
                   --Mr. Jinks, cartoon cat

I thought of Aristotle and held
up a mirror to the world. Sunlight
caromed off it and blinded a driver
who almost ran over me, roared
past, shouting his catharsis. I

dropped the mirror, which broke,
delighting a woman who passed by.
Borrowing a broom, I swept up
shards of mimesis, realistic glass.
A hubristic crow overhead tilted
on a line and cawed me out. Crow
was delighted. I was instructed.


hans ostrom 2019

Answers

If you think you have the answers,
don't tell me. Tell someone
who matters. I'm out here in
the weeds, walking around
a birch grove, plucking
a blackberry or five, dancing
with vivid women in the desert
of my mind. Although I'm
obscure, people with secrets
seem to find me. I'm telling
you, if you're important, don't
bother with me. I know how
little I can do about big things.


hans ostrom 2019

Palomino Summer

I drank and drank and drank
sunshine.

                I walked down
powder-dust ruts of an uncle's
dirt road and found that palomino.

Blond horse, quick as fragrance. Blond
summer, baking brown mud. Blond
grass, insane with grasshoppers.
Brown me in the the midst,

palomino's mane brushing my arms
in the rush of gallop. In the woods
next to the ranch, rattlesnakes

coiled, field mice inside them.
Pine trees leaned toward
the pasture I rode in.


hans ostrom 2019

Feel Like

You make me feel
like I have a fancy hat
on my head. The right
size, too. You make
me feel like
I could live among frogs,
as long as you were
pondside with me.

You make me feel
like a lost key
a mermaid picked up
from the bottom
of a sea. That's me.

You make me feel
like a simile
translated into
all the languages,
then printed
on the perfume
of a very peaceful day.


hans ostrom 2019

The Stolen Bin

In news of crime
in privileged places,
somebody stole
my recycling bin.

I'm a longtime
recycler. Hey, I
joined Friends of
the Earth in 1971.

(A lot of good that
did.) I did not know
until today about the
big Black Market

in big blue bins.
Maybe the thieves
sought in scraps
some digits with

which to go all
vampire on my
bloody accounts.
Instead they will

paw as I did through
unsolicited fliers
and mass-mailings.
I said to myself,

bereft of my bin,
"Why would anyone
want to . . ."--and
stopped. Why would

anyone want to
wreck the Earth?
We're way beyond
such questions.

hans ostrom 2019

How About We . . .?

Let's go, stay, sleep,
talk, eat, read, think,
and dance. Some of
these can be combined.

It's snowing in Reno.

Let's sweep, mop,
wash, scrub, sigh.
Let's weep. So hard.
Let's tell secrets.

You first.


hans ostrom 2019