Friday, February 19, 2021

Baseball and Relativity

Einstein hated games,

perhaps because the universe

plays for keeps. A curveball


curves and dives only on 

Earth, which functions by

its own attractive rules.


That moment after a hometown

hero (last week a goat, love

is relative) strokes a fastball,


rejecting its trajectory, bottom

of the ninth, lasts for a gasping

forever. An entire childhood


passes, then rises into an adult

roar, crashes into stadium space,

assisted by moons of adrenalin.


Everyone, including physicists,

shuffles out, treading on wrappers,

kernels, and ticket stubs,


heavily held to life again,

to the heroism of just getting

by, glued to illusory Now. 


hans ostrom 2021

The Domestication of Cats

Cats domesticated themselves--how
could it have been otherwise?--ten
thousand years ago. Farming brought

grain, which brought rodents, which
enticed cats out of the forest. Impeccable
feline logic connected such exquisite

dining with the large lumbering 
two-legged beasts who made such noise,
lived in crowds but were lonely,

and couldn't resist two moon-eyes
glowing at them. That cold stare
above a permanent frown and below

radar ears, the subterranean surf
of purring, day-long languor, 
explosive honed rage: all of it

belongs to a calculation that padded
out of timber and brush, sniffed, leered,
hired us, and moved in. 


hans ostrom 2021

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

No One Home

Light lives here, comfortable anywhere,

Especially in darkness. Appliances quibble:

A refrigerator toils

Constantly for cold, a furloughed

Oven chortles with its pilot light,

A furnace mimics a howling wind.


Astoundingly, all clocks here agree.

You aren’t about, except in DNA 

Traces, scents in a bed, a crumbed

Dish in a sink. Now emerges a cat,


Walking on hushed paws, Interrogating

Silence for slightest

Noise, sniffing for food at floor level, 

Owning the place with power far beyond

Your sad legalities. When your key


Teases the lock, the place gets a little

Sad, as in you’ll stomp with your

Beastly size, baggage, and 

Unconscious belligerence. 


Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Hope Is the Original Revolution

 

While I’m waiting for the Revolution,

I’m going to wash clothes,

Turn soil in a vegetable garden,

Cook meals, read books, and sleep.


While I'm  waiting for the Revolution,

I’ll clean the toilet, take out

The garbage, cook meals, read books,

Eat,  and sleep.


While we’re waiting for the Revolution,

We’ll go to work to earn our pay,

Listen to what people say, and wonder

Whether, when the Revolution comes,


It will make things better, worse, or

The same. I’m not here to buy or sell

Or blame. I’m just saying revolutions rarely

Turn out well because power plus weapons


Make for hell. The revolution isn’t up to

Me. I could tell myself otherwise,

And tell other self-deluding lies. 

I get enough of that already. I know


Some people who need clothes and food.

I take them some, so very little, nearly nothing,

Once a week. I’m weak, I’m small, I’m one

Among us all. While I’m waiting, also


Dreading, the Revolution, I’ll do what I’ve

Done ever since idealism got away from

Me. Tasks in front of me. I wish I could do

More, but wishing doesn’t get


The dishes done. I hope you still have

Your idealism. There’s nothing like it.

It opens big spaces in the mind

And in the future. It’s a kind of


Revolution in itself. Even as you

Work and read and sleep and fall

In love, it fires up your spirit

And opens up your hope. Your hope. 

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Date Palms in San Diego

 [slightly revised]


Calm palms in San Diego look like crooked
columns composed of brown-gray stones stacked
slowly over years by Franciscan monks. When
the columns reach a height uncertain, bladed
fronds formally erupt. Golden dates
materialize, suspend themselves like surreal
swarms of gemstones. A brown-grey bird

stretches upside-down to pick a piece
of date-flesh with its beak. Pacific breezes
nudge softly like seduction. The tapered
columns bend, nod, never topple. Flexibility
of vegetation, patience of stone: palm.


hans ostrom 2021

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Apertures


Life imposes on us.
Memory superimposes,
layering life’s imprints.

Into an aperture
between life and memory
moves the photographer,

who listens to light,
convenes shadows,
constructs position.

In the dark room,
life and memory wait
while hallucination bathes,

inscribes itself on a
pane of white-space,
coalescing like epiphany

and now rising from the
translating pool, prepared
to confess to eyes.



hans ostrom, circa 1990/2021

Friday, January 29, 2021

Ideology Makes Me Tired

sometimes political
ideologies suggest to me
train stations for which
someone forgot to build
tracks. they look

impressive, well
designed, with angles
and edges. fun
to wander around in.

but they seem to lead
only to themselves.

do I need an ideology
to tell me society
needs to get somewhere?
get to a place
where it doesn't just 
pretend to care
but cares well for
people who need food
shelter water work sleep?

sometimes political
ideologies seem intent
on fulfilling their theories,
regardless of practical failure
or turns to violent authority
pledged madly to
shibboleths of theory. 

in place of debating,
I'm going to help make
someone not hungry today.
I think I'll add in some
nice clean clothes.
that's it that's all.


hans ostrom 2021

Gull Amongst the Crows

 the gull's a white viceroy

in pink rubbery footwear,

strolling stiffly

amongst a dozen crows

outfitted in workaday black.


they respect the gull's

size but not its authority.

an improvised contest

for useful slimy stinking

morsels sauteed 

in city refuse juice ensues.


the crows of course caw-cuss,

bounce on wire-feet,

wield their gleaming beaks.


gull says nothing,

gobbles great pieces

of anything likely 

to nourish. and finally


rolls out a rising shriek,

a fantastic prophetic scream,

an explosive ode to life. 


hans ostrom 2021

Yes We Saw the Sea Again

upon further refraction
that piece of golden
sea we saw smeared
itself with a pink sheen.

language, our tour
guide, narrated
the event with syllables
marinated in purples,
blues, yellows, grays.

as such, the sighting,
a constant birthing
of scene, seemed all
the more profound for
having nothing to do
with our seeing. still,
sacredly we saw the sea.


hans ostrom 2021

Nobody Beats Tacoma

 (reposting one from a while back)


Here's how it works: Beginning as North 27th Street,
North 21st Street just gets its confidence up
when North I Street slugs it and takes over,
only to be vaporized by South Yakima Avenue,
which morphs into something called Thomson.
The streets of Tacoma are so mean they're
mean to each other. Nobody beats Tacoma. Nobody.

Seattle has forever misread the meaning of Point
Defiance. It's not a park or a peninsula,
or a place to play dress-up on your bike.
It is a destined middle finger pointed
vaguely north. Put a penny
on the railroad track down by the port,
and you might well summon Guy Fawkes,
Richard Brautigan, a Chinese laborer,
or a skeptical Puyallup woman, pre-contact.
Whoever it is will take your penny
and invest it in a cloud-cone
hovering above Rainier like the saucers
Kenneth Arnold saw, 24 June,
1947. About the time

you think you have Tacoma solved,
you find yourself on a suspension-bridge,
with a dog, and the bridge starts
writhing like a boa constrictor. Then
it flaps and twists, snapping itself
free from blueprints, taking a dive
like a punch-drunk stevedore
trying to earn a buck at a smoker
in 1931. The dog lives. If you remind

the tattooed woman at the drive-in
that you ordered everything on your
burger, she will tell you, without
animus, "That is everything."
Nobody beats Tacoma. You have
to understand: Tacoma is more
than a grit city that keeps its
bourgeoisie on a leash like a pit bull.
Tacoma is a sense of humor.

Once you get that, it may take decades,
you'll understand everything. I
mean, really, after embedding
yourself in a group of eccentrics
at the Parkway, the Acme, or
the Goldfish Redux taverns, you'll see
the folly in naming streets
and other ambitions. You'll realize
you are Nobody, the only person
ever to beat Tacoma. Good night.




© a month ago    cities • aliens   

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

"Clarksdale," by Billy B.

Video: Song about Clarksdale, Mississippi, and the blues. Music composed by Billy B, song performed by Billy B. Lyrics by Hans Ostrom. Video by Dan Callnon.


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

Monday, January 25, 2021

Toad Ode

toads I know
like dry heat,
look like pebbled
fists of meat.

they spit
and stink like
grizzled men on a
sizzling street.

they're not friendly
like frogs.
avoid bogs.
don't sing. thing

is, every memo
a toad sends
recommends leaving
toads alone. so

i've done so.
oh, I might say
hello as I go
on my way.

that's most,
that's all. toads
I know, they kind
of hop-crawl.


hans ostrom 2021

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Truck Driver's Aubade

 Listen: sunrise stirs bugs

in dry grass. The long

whine of a steel guitar

curves into a thin blue highway.


This peace is easy to take, I'll tell you.

We kiss, kick off covers

light as dead butterflies,

and grab each other, laughing.


Your radio drops out a three-chord,

two-minute-fifty song,

too much like other songs,

just like those tin napkin


and sugar dispensers

that look alike always alike

on sticky plastic countertops 

at all them truck strops, 


where I’ll rest elbows,

the thick roar of sixteen

tires still in my ears. Darling,

if I chat up a waitress 


while she's filling my 

Thermos with coffee,

know it's only out of

habit and good manners. 


You know my heart growls

like a diesel for you when

dawn spills across the hood

of the Peterbilt, and I think


ahead to gearing down on

the grade sloping into

your place here where 

the creek sings out back. 


circa 1987/2021