Panic Attack

It makes your brain

feel like a sausage stuffed
with worry. It makes
your chest feel like a zoo
where on their own
all the cages opened
and here come the animals.
It spurs your heartbeat
like a drunken cowboy.
The world becomes a galaxy,
as you become smaller
than a poppy seed.

hans ostrom 2023

Alejandra Mantiñan y Aoniken Quiroga - Berlin - 2022 - Exhibicion 4

Pale Parody

 The Old Earth spins

as it rolls
around the even older
Sun,
whose light Moon
bounces
onto Earth in a genial,
pale parody.

hans ostrom 2023

"All Of Us Are In Some Sort Of Theater We Create For Ourselves" - Werner...

Grandfather Anthem

I went to a picnic

and played my role:
grandpa. I held the youngest,
9 months old, and sang
a few bars of a song I
made up just for him.
He pushed the side
of my face: everybody's

a critic. I kicked a soccer
ball with the four-year-old,
who calls me "Papi"
and pummels me with the
word Why? in our
conversations. Sometimes
I answer, "I'm not sure,"
which could serve as the
opening line of
a Grandfather Anthem.

hans ostrom 2023

Late Bloomer

The symmetrical mound

of purple chrysanthemums has bloomed.
Such a restrained flower--
signaling Fall like a lovely
but modest actuarial checking
her calendar. And the bees,

the bees, greedy for nectar,
hover--then attach themselves
to purple and got to work,
with their whole bodies,
to extract, as if they sensed
an urgency in the air.

hans ostrom 2023

"To A Mouse" by Robert Burns (read by Sir William "Billy" Connolly)

Nose to the Glass

Oh, the stories you tell yourself

about yourself. Constantly.
Certain scenes keep coming around
like mail delivery. You recall bad
behavior. It begs at once for
regrets and excuses, which,
combined like soda and vinegar,
merely fizz. You invent arcs

in your life, heroic ups and downs.
You list alleged achievements.
You indict, forgive, forget, fudge,
and, exhausted, give in to fatalism.

You keep this silly sense of Self
afloat like a raft on a slow river.
No, it's more like Self's just a
habit, like a mannequin in a
window you walk by compulsively
or stare at, nose to the glass.

hans ostrom

Andre Breton - Definition of Surrealism

"Fresh Cheese and Cream," by Robert Herrick

Duke Ellington and Stéphane Grappelli 1973

It May Be Called Here-And-Now

I'm always here--

in this body,
mortgaged to
this place called
Earth. My mind

pretends to
travel on its own
(what a dreamer),
riding off into
its lands of past,
its realms of fantasy,
its rages of ambition
and gripped greed.

It must of course
always return
(until the End, when
it will just go to Stop).

When it's wise,
Mind settles, it
and body in a still
embrace, a loose
duet
amidst the mystery
and flow of Now.

hans ostrom 2023

Bach: Goldberg Variations

Icicles leap off eaves,

land and dance
in geometric patterns.

Fractals fly in squadrons,
dropping musical notes
on plowed furrows.

Now toy soldiers march
across a bright stage &
a ballerina flutters

round them like a butterfly.
Oh, piano! You really will
do anything

the fingers, hands,
heart, head, ears,
and art ask of you.

hans ostrom 2023