"You Will Hear Thunder," by Anna Akhmatova

Dr. Fog

Doctor Fog, what might you

prescribe in your inscrutable scrawl
for this gray pall
through which we crawl?

You will say it's all
in our heads. We'll say
But isn't everything?
You'll take the trouble

to scribble, then send us
away. One night, one day,
we'll hear an awful bawl
from a beast atop a wall

and finally we shall fall
down upon the hide of the city
and we shall know enough
not to expect much pity.

Dr. Fog, you know all this,
now don't you? For you have
slithered daily through moist pall--
physician, ah, magician to us all.

hans ostrom 2022

Awful Pain

The kind of pain
where they have to cut
you open to stop it.

The kind that's chronically
acute. That throbs as if
a sluggish drill bit turns
down in there.

Such pain takes you out
of your life. You sit
in a cold room with your pain,
which may wear a light shawl
of morphine. You two

get to know each other better.
The narrative of your life
dries up, falls apart. You
ask the pain if there's
anything left to life now,

and Pain says, "No, not really." 

hans ostrom 2022

Betweens

 waves between waves

  beats between beats
clicks between
  clicks, quicks between
slows, knows between guesses,
  yeses twixt no's,
stops between flows,
  goes birthed of pauses,
clauses out of phrases out of
  words between words,
gaps between galaxies, leaps
  between particles, articles
of faith in the face of a wraith
  hanging in the night between days.

hans ostrom

I Want to Hope It's Not Too Late

 Some "white" Americans understand

and try to share their understanding
and act upon it: they live their lives
as if all human beings are... human
beings, as if there is no essentially
superior "race," as if the fact that
we're all one species is.... a fact.

But too many millions
now insist, still insist, on White Supremacy
as a way of life and government.
As the basis of their identity.

Every time the country looks
like it might escape the quicksand,
millions drag it back at the behest
of one of two major American parties,
and parts of the media, and billionaires.
This gets people killed. It gets deranged
people, even a president, elected,
and spurs people to violence.

It is America's permanent disease.
It eviscerates its core. White Supremacy
is founded on air, on the irrational belief
that phantom "whites" are essentially
better and more entitled than groups
they choose to hate. 2022 is very,
very late. As with climate change,
and nuclear weapons, I want to hope
it's not too late.

hans ostrom 2022

The Gamblers

Gamblers who play

and lose with other people's money:
These dictators, science-deniers, war-
mongers, riot-inciters, race-baiters, and women-
haters: They don't care
because they don't have to. To
them, depravity's a frolic and a sport.

hans ostrom 2022

Actually, No

As time (as we think of it)
rolls and spins along,
the maybes morph into nevers:

Maybe I'll visit Albania
or Paraguay one day: No,
never. Maybe I'll see one
of my first-ever loves again,
just one more time--
yes, perhaps her--the one who
lives in Long Beach. No, never,
for she just died.

hans ostrom 2022

Bodies in the Sauna

Her body, his body,

nude in a sauna,
and she slick with sweat
sits on his lap facing him,
and he slick with sweat
holds her close. Deep

Swedish winter wraps
around the building of flats.
This is good," she says. This
is very, very good. He likes
the softly scratchy feel of her
pubic hair & the miracle
of hardening nipples. It is
good, he says--and stops
himself from saying a rare
jewel of a night because
she would mock him for
adding  a flourish.

The cold air that strikes them
as they leave the sauna and cross
the hallway naked to their flat
feels like freshly invented air.
Inside they guzzle water, shower,
get in bed, and make love. Later,

as she snores, he sinks like an anchor
into sleep. but he thinks he needs
to button up the night with words.
To himself he says, Good, very
good & then his brain disappears.

hans ostrom 2022

The Cunnilingus Poem

 1887 L. C. SMITHERS tr. Forberg's Man.Class. Erotology v. 122 A man who is in the habit of putting out his tongue for the obscene act of cunnilinging.  1897 H. Ellis Stud. Psychol. Sex. I. iv. 98 The extreme gratification is cunnilingus,..sometimes called sapphism.

--Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, online

The gratification can be extreme. That’s true.

As I look at this poem, I’m feeling good

about it, but we both know that

the poem’s language—yes, that’s right,

its tongue—oughtn’t to degrade, devalue,

pornographize, evade, or abuse its subject.

That’s been done. The poem has opened,

chooses telling Showing happens, too.

The poem does not advise discretion.

It decides to locate itself respectfully where

it believes it’s been invited. It chooses to be human

and hopes you’ll understand. Now it proceeds

beyond the play of preliminaries.

Her apartment was in a cheap, two-story

stucco heap—palatial compared to my place.

We lay on her bed in a close, hot room: Spring.

California’s Central Valley, deep between

Coast Range and Sierra Nevada, had already ovened up.

She kept her window open. She lay back.

The pillow-cases were bright red. She relaxed.

She opened her legs. I went down on her eagerly―

I might say earnestly. Great erotic generosity inspired me,

or so I chose to believe about myself.

Wait. There’s no rush. We have time to instruct anatomy,

biology, and pornography to go away, to leave us alone.

Believe it or not, this poem

          likes its privacy.

Hot, stuffy, small, and cheap, the room
transformed itself. She and I—well,

we took our time. There was no rush. Our time.

Her room. The heat. I took her own sweet time

and gave some of it back to her.

It was sex. Obviously. We
devoured a ripe, wet, hot interval of
life. That’s all and not a little bit.  When

she orgasmed (what a mash of syllables),

she seemed to have nothing to do with the

pseudo-scientific infinitive, to orgasm. She screamed.

That happens to be right. Screamed. Yelled

and shouted, too. It was louder for being privately public.

“Ecstasy”?  I don’t know: That word makes me nervous.

It belongs to romance novels and a drug.

There’s no rush to use it. Anyway, her sounds

were so loud they startled me, and I lost my place.

I smiled while I was turning to cunniling 

into a conjugated, tense present. There was no rush

.

I found my place again, went back to work. 

Play. It was sex, not poetry.

So far so good? I raised my head

from loving work. It is,
can be, good work,—
cunnilingus. It shouldn’t be labor
but can be more than play. . . . I
raised my head to listen to her and to
watch the rest of her body and her face

and take in the holy scene of the room. Is
holy too much? Absolutely, so let’s leave
it, posted on the stucco heap
like a notice from a landlord. I offered
her a pillow with which to muffle the aria,
if she so chose. She chose not so.

Well played! I heard people giggling outside

in California, on the black asphalt of

an apartment-complex’s baked parking lot,

no rush of breeze out there. I smiled, and I

went down again into what had become

for her a rich source of satisfaction, a fabled

California mine, a vein of golden pleasure, a rush.

I’d become a famously employed miner,

producing lavish treasure with simple tools,

tongue and mouth and lips. I exhibited care

and the will to give my head. Such a primitive,

post-modern afternoon it was, whatever

that means. It wasn’t history,

but it was the best we two could do.

She was the only person she’d ever be.
She wanted to be satisfied on a

rickety bed in a blazing, stucco apartment.

I knew her, and I showed up. I

gave her what she invited me to give.

It was basic and civilized, polite,

profane, sacred, and plain. It tasted

and smelled the way it ought to. She became

immortally satisfied for an interval

of afternoon. I swear I still heard

people laughing at sex-sounds coming,

so to shout, from her open window.

I worked at loving, making a delivery,

freighting freedom and joy to the realm

of her body. That’s an overstatement.

I know the names of body-parts,

and so do you. This isn’t about that,

but please see references to tongue, lips,

mouth, legs, and head above. The window,

her legs, my mouth, our lives were open.

You can’t rush these things, but it
ended. I was a sweating, naked man

with a sense of charity, accomplishment,

and gratitude. And it was fun.

She was a contented naked woman,

so I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t

want anything.

 

There’s never been a rush to remember,

and it’s customary to keep such things

private unless your profession is

pornography or politics.  Oh, well,

this is a poem, and poems get interested

in this kind of thing. You know how it is.

Writing this, I feel good about it.

I smile and pay homage to her ecstasy,

which was different from that word.

She filled herself up. She

shouted, my mouth pressed to her

self-possessed body, which thrilled.

I thrilled at fearsome pleasure. There’s

 

no rush, but one must act. Communion

occurs so variously, mysteriously,

sometimes with stucco and asphalt

nearby, and the rent due. I remember

rubbing my face on her thighs and then

on red cotton sheets to get some wet and sweat

off, not all. I licked my lips. I remember

peace, the peace of wordless afterwards. No rush,

no rush at all. If this poem offends or bores you,

you know why, and I hope you didn’t read

this far, but if you did, it’s over now. Be well.

hans ostrom 2006/2022

 

●

Convicted Art

Sometimes I think museums

imprison art, jamming convicted
paintings into overcrowded galleries.

Each framed work seems
to want to live alone, lounging
in the care of just one person--

pardoned. Dull-eyed, we visitors
stagger and stand with guide-books,
stare at hanged landscapes

and superb but silly portraits.
We stumble from one walled off
period to another, under the sleepy

eyes of guards. For the crime
of having been made famous,
turned-in to authorities by collectors,

the art clings to walls, stays
still like spiders. Exhausted,
we get released into whatever

city we're visiting. Maybe we breathe
deeply and think of the fresh art
taking shape right there, right then.

hans ostrom 2022

October

It was my father's favorite month,
tourists having evaporated. Time to
hunt a bit, when dark oak trees
detonated clouds of orange
in the evergreen Sierra mass.

October at the college,
ritual ivy going gold
to keep illusions alive &
the syllabus I sweated over
in August seeming to cruise--
as long as I, like a mechanic,
tinkered, replaced parts,
oiled students' rusting interest
with adjustments, listened
for the tell-tale whine.

October: darkness demands
more time. No bargaining allowed.
I fall in love again with sunlight,
hoping she will have me back
again, late in Spring.

hans ostrom 2022

A Shepherd In War Time

 A shepherd sees drones cruise

over the pasture and blast his village
to bits. Bloody bits, he knows. He
falls to his knees, collapses.

The panicked sheep have scattered.
The dog cowers--but now approaches
the shepherd. Who holds tight
to the dog. They are both shaking.

The shepherd begins to walk
toward his village. The closer
he gets, the more wailing he hears.
His mind fades in and out.

His legs will barely carry him.
He trusts the dog will gather the sheep
and protect them.

hans ostrom 2022

© 4 days ago    war • shepherd • atrocity • 

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