david joseph ostrowski

writer / activist / artist / educator

[davidjosephostrowski]

#9: All That I’ve Known to Be of Love

Gossamer sweat of babies In gurgling gosling summer, They could soak me in their Wet hot breaths, those ridiculous angels, and For the greatness of an unknown god, I would Not care.  I would not dare care.  I have known Myself a mother as you made me, kept me,  Reaped me, paid me, paved my way in untold goldenrod, Driven hooves through me, Lucifer; and lucking out, I am Unafraid.  Who knew this feeling would pass me by with Warm embrace---ha ha ha!  I am candy.  I am the imagination received  From old film grain pictures.  I am the sorry told to the undressed In a heave of glory.  That is the finality of my breaking chest beneath Your working body Atop my Working body, With me, Broken underneath. And it is a god that I am in need. An insurmountable mountain that I could know you, And I do. Where are said unforgiven days, gallivanting like summer collegiates, Terraforming in the bath houses of some Norway or “What-have-you- Done?-Where-have-you-gone?-You’ve-got-me-so-worried!”  I lower Into the pit so sworn-into-honor Abaddon can find me, that chaste devil. I down the potato, dig up the root.  I dance jigs for moonbound sailors, say, “Hello!” and I’m screaming.  Look up at the sky, I see nothing.  No planet. No loneliness.  Alone.  Gone are stars with no clouds to cover up their missings. Miserly things!  Cheat!  Steal!  Rave and rage!  “Be gone O crowing of the universe!  O trembling foot of my maker! You must certainly by now be Afraid of me!” Collapsing,  Still in me, You cough a cherub chirp. We are of a similar tattering. I turn to warn the posters And the ampersands And the guard hounds And the doormen, They’re all waking up for early hours (A clock in time). “You’ll get yours. It is coming to you; Friend.”

[davidjosephostrowski]

#8: Jupiter, Bad June

Altar salt tossed, Our bodies get tossed In flickering TV light. How humanist of us, To bask like a gash of what is and what always once was; How quite very columnist, How shrewd this flick of the wrist, How timid this pined tempest--- I let out gasps of refrain. I shrivel uncomfortably On the chair by the door. I’ve become the doorman dog, Even as I sip hot tea through a dumb straw in my stratosphere. I chirp like a cherub and cry like the cherubim.  I’m groaning from Deeper than the whole of my groin.  The world is my omnibus. I’m the devil come hovering through plane and plain, unplanned. I can’t get still.  I can’t settle down.  The reverberations of tin pop Jupiter halt the kindness in anything.  Tenderhearted we shoulder The door.  I puke on your shoes.  The sky is no more.

[davidjosephostrowski]

#7: Offering Himself on the Fire for Food

Leaves pouring down filling the fake baths of geese Where the fountains spray green foam like suburban pastorals We don’t remember how to sing.  The sky turns wild And the ceiling fans buzz.  Autumn warms up and croons from its Postured shyness with fumigation and lowered expectations.  In The windows of all units, secrets are bent like wet cigarettes while Shoes are slipped off and socks are left on.  Hurriedness is a cashed-in Culprit and the wine is making crop circles on the white formica. I forget all their names and do as you say, No matter how thirsty I am.  Sleep comes easy, And runs away from me like a cat I’ve had for years, But still just call Cat.  Your eyes are a furnace.  Your mouth Is the personality of the nonexistent Moonman.  You die with me Sometimes, but own me as a landlady.  You’re old that way; you have The cleaning and the Habits ground deep Into your skin while Your follicles fall And your tonality shifts through desert tippings, As if it’s proof of God that you’re getting older, And proof of mathematics that I’m changing color, Losing my body, scarred turpentine in boundless ribbons Through the shook night. Loose like leaves, my limbs Start to fall, and I swear they’re Cluttering up all the Gutters and divots  Of the yard.

[davidjosephostrowski]

#6: From Chaos Choreographed

Split Sick, My quivering apple gets Nabbed, sliced, turned brown In a sauce of darling spruce And all else that comes and becomes. I am a drink when the die is cast, And I am a running for the goals, Or of the knife, or so it’s said. In a couple hands worth of sand, The moon is washed spotless and The Saab pulls up, scaring squirrels. “We’re lucky to presume we matter, Let alone to be made of matter,”  And then you remove me  Like chips from a bag  Giving open my body And sharing the soil. And I am a running panty hoe, Or joke too long, or so it’s said. You plant me like potatoes In your mother’s beds. You get up And go To work again.

[davidjosephostrowski]

#5: You Show Me Yours, Show You Mine

Shrill noise in a radio On a window sill, pot Smoke billowing like A flag getting caught In a midwestern wind Unwinding. Guardians not guarding me. TVs, they notice me, turning On as I whisk round the room. Effervescent hot geniuses--- Loads of them---gandering lifelessly, A grunt and a cocaine sniff stare. Briefs on heads like bandanas, and Ice cream split, I’m filled with bananas. Still on the patio, the paint peels back Revealing a message of old world wood, Like boat house lakefront psalm siding. I stare it down, pick at it, ghosted with text messages. Slumbering on the concrete is a doorman dog, and caffeine Gets cooler in this landlady’s hand.  She’s got me a caucasian Way of talking.  Silver whisps of hair stemming from shitty neck, Guessing killed plumes of me.  I am in want of you and cannot say Who the fount will be a lastingly gaunt replacement of, but your name Is first In my mind. I catch you Can opened With jealousy As a cold moon angel. Listing my returned movies, I’ve got my librarian shrugging, Emotionally careless if they’re late.

[davidjosephostrowski]

#4: The Things We Do for Love

Occasionally I let the ground concur, And where the holes in the world swallow me up, I force waves like baby flesh pillowing water in a Little blow-up pool making grass brown In a sunlit suburban backyard. My showy hands speak when I talk.  My knees pudge in and  My feet point out.  My eyebrows Are caterpillar coarse and my Teeth look yellowest right after Brushing.  You would always State the unnecessary, often With a pointing finger, coming Softly like a war in a dish towel. Your belly is satin, Your eyes are battalions, Your legs are dulcimer strings.

[davidjosephostrowski]

#3: Tell Me I'm Not Love

Paternal night light Casting its pattern. There are winged things Sliding around on the Yellowed snow-white Walls.  I have a sort of Epiphany---Let’s go Clubbing. I shave in Mirrors of strangers,  Fogging up brazed Glass. Smog-faced And gainless, Smoking new Cigarettes on Staggers home From work, I’m wearied  With my hunched Parking lot spine. My shoes are holey, But I can’t walk on water; My voice booms like God, But I need you to eat my fruit. Hopscotching home on all works of fiction, Buttered and toasted on that reality that I Just can’t wait For that next couch. I say Ahh, like you’re My popsicle stick Doctor, come to Heal me inwardly, But honestly I’m Just being patient In gargled anticipation For food.

[davidjosephostrowski]

#2: Forgive Me in Feeling It Out for Myself

No order of command in coming to the table, But a slaughtering bender on your pieces Shattered as they’re coming back to my pain mark (Open wound you carved, Originally as entry point, But then, (and in no way Gingerly) reopened, for (Of course (and make no Mistake about it)) your Escape), and mine takes Fault actually, because it Tethers you and pulls you Back, like gravity by mass. I’ll make no guess regarding Your mythology. I’ll sail a Big testicular brass yacht And contain myself barely, Like a bubbling broth beaker (One for science). I’m a Golden boy, is what you Were telling me. Maybe What’s wrong between us Is the multitude of my Own perpetual faults. I Am not love like you are Love. I am not light like You are a light. I am not Grace like you are grace. I am a writer and I manage Part of an independent Book store in Rookwood Pavilion.

[davidjosephostrowski]

#1: Jupiter is the Loneliest Planet

Is that the fire for your mouth? The wiry gong of Jupiter Howling its transgressions, Burying its vulnerability In overbearing confessional--- O wicked wait for goodness; O infrastructure of madness; O jeopardized tyranny of justice--- Grant us debt with sleeping And wake us mindless from our orbits, Our moon-eyed capsulating junkie drives. We are heaving and hiccupped, Cupping spidered hands, Dressed in recent mothers' dresses, Tented, Burning In that tirade Of Sickness.

[davidjosephostrowski]

Question and a Memory

do you think hip hop is dead and do you think white people have a say so

animorphs on the tv late night with parental euchre and autistic daughter onesie with footies attached tearing down the stairs

[davidjosephostrowski]

You Townie

i thought of you as dead but never as physical reproduction at best  gone before the coming of the ones who have a say in it

[davidjosephostrowski]

Elephant Femur

i never question if i can but rest in the knowledge that when i get there someone is sure to stop me

[davidjosephostrowski]

Swinging Door Histories

saddled down babies contrite contributions norms of these amazing histories cryogenic morphing exemplar watched your hidden temple on the tube snowy static waves and warping that is all and that is all donated to the congressional yes that valor in the kitchen where we talked till night turned day and slid like a flood puddle in across the encrusted vinyl through the little crack that space inhabiting in all the low narrow inbetweenness of it what there is if anything the realm from door’s bottom to floor

[davidjosephostrowski]

Mazel Tov

scared to make a call of my maze leg like line like i didn’t have to know what happened next the boxed in text it has to flex pilfered shilling thrown like limp letter-writing hand didn’t break the way snaps seemed to tell it would didn’t force surrogate the matron hand not like blue but just like black that swallowing ocean with a mouth still open blooded gums and tonsils slipping slorping sidling out

[davidjosephostrowski]

Tired and Like a Half Shell

like i didn’t know that you were grown in health care commodity systems and i didn’t know you were scale green and nightly warning us behaviorally like catching green colds in night dews looking through windows with multi-colored sneers on your double faces the duplex windows the cascade of passing headlight shadows over the moth caresses of the falling apart porch now you’re a maltese  if there ever was one a sky blank if there was ever any dark you are memory lanes tired and memoryless going on and on i can’t hear you over my forgetting to talk about you yet

[davidjosephostrowski]

Congratulations Are in Order

when i decide that bed is what time it is miniature bodies turn violently the saints inside their turbine clocks / and that’s the film of vertebrae / invertebrate / a lookalike lack of vertebrae / i mean the bone / no one pays for this / no one comes forward / my boss vows to turn me into a capitalist before i leave from this place / my colleagues know she has her work cut out for her / the wind blows in through the window / i suppose that’s why they call it a window because of the sound it makes when the glass is shattered in /

[davidjosephostrowski]

Axis Praxis

i don’t know what to say ion threat I don’t know what to say ion threat I don’t know what to say ion threat of the ghost of all that you can do to protect yourself from your truth, and i don’t know what to say ion threat of the first i met you, and i don’t know what to say ion threat of the people who were angry at the same time we talked about it in public schools, and i don’t know what to say ion threat of the long term urban agriculturalist and the consequences of your own humanity and then go back, and i don’t know what to say ion threat of the people who have sex differently, and i don’t know what to say ion threat of the free world or the black fist, and then we get ice cream 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦