251. Secret Autobiography

The purpose of being here is to experience being here. An attribute of being here is to speculate about other purposes, some of which we may select as valid, but these are not consistently resilient. "Well, I am here," said the troubled man to himself. He looked around and saw things and people. A red design on a white bowl. A woman with long black hair. "This is here, and I'm in it," he said, with the follow-up thought that the sentences we speak to ourselves compose a secret autobiography, oblique but meticulously accurate.



hans ostrom 2016

250. The Art of Losing at Chess

I'm partial to the droll yet revolutionary third (and last?) book published by the mysterious Mervlov: Losing at Chest (first edition, hardcover, red binding). Listen to me: many ways of losing he describes are bold, others intricate, not a few comical, and at least two, absurd. There is, argued Mervlov, an art to losing when and how one chooses, and losing thusly provides a sustained excitement far more satisfying than that experienced when winning.

Of course, with this book Mervlov enraged the chess community, and he disappeared--last seen in a corner of a bar, trapped by a figure garbed in Catholic vestments and an exquisitely dressed, alluring Turkish woman, whose gaze is described in accounts I've read as "poised and menacing."

Never heard from or seen again, was Mervlov, a genius to many of us who've grown accomplished at losing the grand game.



hans ostrom 2016

249. Dirk Deliwogg

I am Dirk Deliwogg, consulting poet, visionary, crafter of opinions, digger of holes, raconteur, and something of a legend.

I kind of hate stories even though I tell them when the work calls for it. That's about all the work calls for. People want to tell things and I listen.  They want to hear things in return. Ritual sayings like "the weather's been really weird lately." They want short comforting or alarming tales. And so on.

Relaxing at home (I'm a slow drifter, an artful squatter) with a glass of red--not wine, just the color red--I like it when a woman who is there (or not there) speaks in word-collages, such as "teek notoriety web-savvy certain cream-based personal responsibility agenda mais oui lime allergy connubial etch scar vivid zephyr, actually." I reply, "Indeed. Well put!!

Anyway, I am really nobody living in nothing, which, although nothing, is saturated with texts, symbols, and momentary tyrants. Great to meet you!


hans ostrom 2016

248. Talking With Borges

I don't know where consciousness goes when someone dies. I can't assume that it goes anywhere or that it does anything but cease. I can believe it goes somewhere, but believing is different from knowing and assuming. All three though faulty are crucial to humans.

The single exception to all of this in my mind is Jorge Luis Borges. I know where his consciousness went: the Worldwide Web.  Borges invented the Web (web). Borges didn't invent it. Here we think of Schrödinger's infernal cat.

I know this (about Borges) because he is here talking to me--in Spanish, through a translator. (Recall that a writer of fantastical narratives must be deeply practical--hence the translator, even though my Spanish is adequate.)

Borges is dressed in suit (black) and tie. He holds his head up--not high; only a bit of lift, of loft. The overall effect suggests a statement: "I am not blind, no; it's just that I see everything now, as the web would see, if it had a central personality."

"The web is a library," the translator says. She's extraordinarily good looking, and her body in a silk dress (red)  stirs desire, if we are to be obvious. "A library," she continues, Borges looking up, delighted, as he listens to her take her turn. (We are in a courtyard of Baroness Ramona Ali Larsson's summer estate in Sweden.) "A library--nothing more, as if anything could be more than a library! The rooms are innumerable and each one different. The corridors divide and multiply like cells. The librarians are legion; the patrons, ubiquitous--like vapor."

The translator, Lucinda W., stops. Borges waits. He speaks. Lucinda W. smiles. I glance at her breasts, which beseech me to beg. I restrain my strong weakness for the sight of women's breasts. "You are lacivous," Lucinda W. says, adding, "and these words are from me. (Borges laughs.) This is from Borges."  She translates: "As grand as this library is--the grandest!--it is nonetheless so small that it can be contained in a short, obscure narrative--typewritten on an Olivetti, one senses, and lying on a desk in a remote cabin. The library, in turn, absorbs such a narrative, and all narratives.  The small becomes large (consider the universe), and large becomes small (consider a stellar black hole."

I consider a stellar black hole.  Borges leaves. Lucinda W. removes her dress, and a thousand angels perched on a wire strung between two nothings sing Hallelujah. 

247. The Duty

Her foot moved on the carpet, a swift brushing step. The big toe's nail gleamed, deep burgundy polish. I stared at the toenail as she spoke: "My first hike was near Ashville, North Carolina. They led us he lup a mountain, and we stopped, looked around. We walked back the same way, and I thought, 'Okay--that's it?'" I raised my eyes. She stood naked above, well most her body did. She held a glass of red wine. She smiled wisely after observing me admiring her pudendum, which is a strange word, by the way. Her eyes told me that knew precisely how many men in history had gazed upward like that at naked women. Modern cultural criticism has some things to say about "the male gaze," as you no doubt know. Except that sort of thing didn't seem to fit with what I was doing, not that I wish to evade responsibility. And no, it wasn't some sort of BDSM thing, which isn't my thing, but more power to them, or to half of them, I guess. No, as I stared up at her and admired the light on her body and her physical and psychic composure, and feeling her warmth in the warmth of the room, and seeming to melt into her abdomen, or whatever, the thing is it happens all at once, these sorts of moments; well, anyway, it seemed a necessary and sufficient activity, staring up at her, like an acolytes's duty. Soon I would be promoted above acolyte and join the admirable woman in embrace as an equal but of course not really, not really equal: it is what some men a born knowing about women--that women are more, and individual women are more in their individuated ways.

246. Interviews

I interviewed a word, and all it did was keep saying its name over. And over. I interviewed a rock. Its atomic particles rioted, but I couldn't hear a thing. I interviewed a crow on a line above me. It caw-muttered cautiously and gave me a moody side-eye. I interviewed the color red, which remained silent but kept pumping red into itself and the cones of my eyes. I started to interview my past but couldn't go through with it. Everything got cold suddenly, and the doom that's always present became visible. Nor could I speak.

245. In Rome, Winter

Staring at red tiles, you occupy a center of noise naming activity thick around you. It leaves, the noise, and there you are at a periphery again. Cold wet air converts breath to steam, as it should be, as it has been on Earth as it is in Heaven. You're no one at all! And also with your spirit.

244. Beet Poet

Yes, I'm a beet poet. I don't look East, I don't look West. I look down at the ground and see a garden's wisdom and consider what be growing underneath the soil. Ate a lot of pickled beets growing up. I liked the way they stained the cottage cheese. I liked the circular slices. . . The flavor of beets want to bite the taste-buds, a wee nip. Unpretentious, beets proclaim peasant values and store red-purpose ink to use on underground radical pamphlets. Listen, beet poets know you have to be patient with beets, coax them into working as food, engage in collective bargaining. First, a removal of the frivolous tops, bourgeois status-markers. Next, a nice par-boiling. Let them cool at their pace. Then a gentle peeling. Finally roasting, maybe with a little olive oil and sea-salt. The taste is earthy, surprisingly complex. Your stomach will write a note to you saying "Thanks for the honest food.". . . Borscht is fun to make and more fun to serve, bright soup! The taste is not for the delicate-minded. The taste is fine for vodka-sipping old aunts who do not suffer fools at all. Do remember the dollop of sour cream. Do remember never to invade Russia, especially in Winter. . . As you slurp your borscht or crunch your roasted beets, read some paragraphs from a Russian novel or listen to something passionate by Tchaikovsky. Don't be afraid to tear off a hunk of dark Swedish rye bread and dunk it. We beet poets do not howl. We grumble. We listen to opinions and roll our eyes. We think of root vegetables, my friend, and you should, too. hans ostrom

243. High Morning Learn

It is a high morning learn: the sun in a pure sky; an angel moves across a meadow. She stops here. Our wonder flares. Then we receive our high morning learn. Her dark face is purged of worry. She has lived beyond our evil. She take us to an aromatic red-cedar grove to teach us things that last beyond our petty passions. She is the angel of the high morning learn. div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">

242. Old Hardbacks

Many of the old hardbacks on my parents' bookshelves were bound or covered in red cloth. They were inexpensive, from publishers like Lippincott and Doubleday, names that carried magical cache with when I was ten. Some were westerns--by Zane Grey, Max Brand, and Ernest Haycox. Others were about anything. I found out books could be about anything. That was excellent to know. I was interested in the words more than in the stories the words freighted. We try to make stories more different from each other than they are. It's good for business and for writers' and readers' ego. But, you know, those books, they were made of paper, cardboard, glue, ink, and cloth. I liked the books for themselves, the way I liked salamanders and rocks for themselves. The books were small light objects that stood up until someone took them and opened them, and then the books were obligated to go to work. Not long from now there will be secret clubs composed of people who like to hold old books.

241. Scarf in Manhattan

Three decades earlier, he'd lost a scarf in Manhattan. Now he thought of it without being reminded of it by anything. His mind reminded itself and spit out the memory like a bone mysteriously rising to the surface of the La Brea Tar Pits. He doesn't know how his mind did this. He doesn't know why it did this. Often one to ruin magic, his imagination boorishly pictures the scarf rotted in a landfill after a last stop maybe with a homeless man or woman. Wool. Red.

hans ostrom 2018

240. Ava and Miriam

When the red shoes went missing, the blue chair stayed still. A yellow bird cheeped in a cage by the sill. What does life mean beyond the song? Miriam is white, and Ava is brown, and they wear the same color gown. They mourn the loss of the red shoes, they move the blue chair, and--ah!--the red shoes, there all along. What does life mean beyond the song? * * * * hans ostrom 2015

239. Maxx Lomar, Private Writer

I've always bought my notebooks one at a time. That's just the way I work. I'm a private writer. If something needs to be said, I'll say it, in writing. I'll use the one notebook I have going, the kind with lines on the page, with a vertical red capillary running down the left side to set the margin. I like to work alone. That's why I never joined the force. I have an imaginary secretary in the imaginary outer office, where I see my name, MAX LOMAR, stenciled in black on fogged glass, and underneath: PRIVATE WRITER . . . Oh, and then she came through the door, 5' 6" of trouble dressed in beauty. Yeah, she was quite a poem. She said she had some revisions that needed to be done and was I interested? I lit her cigarette for her. There it was, between her red-lipstick lips. The tip glowed as she took a drag. I looked in her violet eyes and said, "Oh, I'm interested, all right. Tell me more." Yeah, I'm Maxx Lomar, Private Writer. * * * hans ostrom 2015

238. White Ants

He'd been at his place of work many years when one day white ants swarmed into his official space and climbed all over him. They bit him, making red marks, stinging. He slapped and brushed, danced and ran. His co-workers stood stone-faced, looking at him and the white ants on him. "Will you help?" he asked them. "No," one of the colleagues said, speaking for all. "These white ants are a sign that you've never fit in here. They are a sign from the god of careers!" hans ostrom 2015

237. My Heart

My heart is like an onion tree, which doesn't exist, so bite me--hey, just kidding. My heart is like New York poets who report regularly on their ongoing struggles with genius. Oh, my heart might be saying "Brooklyn," but let me tell you, it is thinking "Harlem." My heart talks. And talks. "Shut up, will you, heart?" That is something I say to myself. My heart is like the CIA and the KGB. It tortures, patriotically. My heart is like an analgesic dream. It costs too much. My heart is like an ancient people who had it all going on. It is wiped out. My heart, my heart. Nobody cares what it is like. People care about their own hearts, as they should. Nobody cares what my heart is or that it is mine. My blah is like a blah and so is your blah

236. Strawberry Thoughts

Apple trees have strawberry thoughts. Thunder is dissatisfied. When he opened the closet, the clothes got quiet all of a sudden. They had been making jokes about him. Seeing lightning made her think of maps and arthritis. Hope covers dread like a watery, thin lotion. Street surfaces are a genre of art. Fog, in some instances . . . When the water-line broke, the fountain in the public square went dry, and we were sad to see how plain the fountain looked when it wasn't wearing water. "This poet was an undrafted free agent coming out of college, Al." "That's right, Bob, and look at her now." hans ostrom 2015

235. Dear My Friend Jerry

Dear my friend Jerry, I fear, I fear I'm nothing now tho writing you (tho writing thou, a joke 4 you), for I read in red headlines at market how celebrickies (celebrities) with more to/two/too live 4 than I (for example) are found dead adjacent to vodka and pills or with heroin needle in arm or ass, yet here, hear I, here me live on in my smallness like our (the hour come round at last) mutual friend Gregor Mendel, x-cept in my case, I should say, today they at my work-job fired me 4 nothing x-cept that they could. Jerry my dear friend I know you know I was, I should say am, good at my work-job, small thought it was. Yes, 4 twenty-5 years I came to work they said sit down I said no I know you're firing me, and I don't want to sit after you say "Sit!" Jerry, they said, let me tell you they said, Hand over your keys and two men from Security walked me away. I said What about my personal items? They said they will send them. 25 years no reason, warning, cause. Just b-cause. No, my friend Jerry, not heartless but a heart filled with poison. A hearty, hardy firing, 'twas. A biz-noose dying a machine-death, place of my former work-job, dear Jerry, and me no money now x-cept the sum of the some I have saved. I saved it but will it save me? Not, I think not, given what we know about the facts. Thank you, dear Jerry, for reading, for having read, and for having red wine. Jerry, let us have coffee. Stand by. Your friend, Al, which is short for . . . . [[[hans ostrom 2014]]]

234. Let Me Build You a Patio

Let me build you a patio, as we call it in our patois. A lump of dirt will do to start. After I have leveled with you, I will arrange stone and mortar.  I will perspire, grunt, and imagine.

Shards of blue and red ceramic plates and cups, green glazed pieces of pottery, the occasional brick. These I shall include. I am no patio purist, slavish about slate.

It's a jazz patio. Up for that? Riffs and notes. It will drain in the right direction, don't worry.

Yes, it will be lumpy and curious, stout and eager.

My patios never speak. They listen.

People will envy the fact that the patio is solely yours, inimitable,  and not at all like that other patio and that other one and all the sameness-patios. I assert this.

The patio will be as useful as other patios. It will be maddeningly whimsical. It will be this, and it will be that, and most of all, it will be done, on Earth and not in heaven.

This is the patio-package I present to you.


2014 hans ostrom

233. The Game in the Village

In the village, the game has been played for generations. The stated purpose of the game is to discover the rules of the game.

Each generation, all players, and all moves within the game support this purpose. As rules are discovered or invented and thence incorporated officially into the game, players adhere to the rules as they play. But none of the rules or the play may inhibit the discovery or creation of new rules.

Basic particulars of the game include the following: As few as two as and many as seventeen players may play the game. Each player gets a small stick, a red wrist-band, a geometric token, ten words, and twenty two-digit numbers.

Play begins when one player grasps his or her tongue and tries to say one of the ten words. Play continues.

Eventually one player wins--but when, and how, and why? Such larger questions, if one may call them that, live at the heart of the game in the village.


hans ostrom 2014

232. When Your Lover Is Sad

When your lover is sad,
offer her or him
a glass of fresh water.
Invite the lover
to take a bath
while you cook something
welcome. Play
some music the lover
likes. Make sure
there are fresh linens
on the bed for when
the lover wants to sleep
or re-explore the contours
of passion. --Oh, and every
lover of every gender
likes flowers. Common
sweet-pea blossoms
will work. Or almost
any wildflower. Or of course
just one red, fragrant rose.
And wash the lover's clothes.


Hans Ostrom 2014