Showing posts with label colors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colors. Show all posts

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Primary Colors

In golden light yellow
hay made me sneeze,
wheeze.

I don't see many women
nor even men nor trans
wearing red lipstick anymore.

The 1950s kissed
with thick crimson lipstick, kicked
like a mean horse full
of bad yellow hay gas.

When an alpine lake,
I say brothers and sisters,
if an alpine lake
turns truly blue,
you must pause in awe
your fishing or kayaking,
your known rowing.

As the fog began to thin,
the sun looked like a flat,
cool yellow disc.

Bombs, bullets, missiles,
rockets, shrapnel, make
bloody death, dead bloody
children, babies, their mothers,
fathers, lying in blood
because Power does not
want in its red fury, its
ruinous hatred, to share.

Hans Ostrom 2023

Thursday, December 15, 2022

A Real Mess

pink: wound, blossom, blouse, nipple, meat, cat-tongue
blue: jeans, eyes, ink, tattoo, smoke, bruise

brown: dirt, shoe, shit, hair, nipple, chair
red: blood, light, rose, lipstick, sign, ember

yellow: beach, hair, flame, rose, peach, corn
green: eyes, scarf, valley, mold, tree, broccoli

white: phantom-race, chalk, panties, smoke, paper, cream
black: eyeshade, ink, shoe shadow, hair, cavern

hurl it all, hurl it all I say at a canvas &
make a real mess: the world


hans ostrom 2022

Thursday, December 1, 2022

A Real Mess

pink: wound, blossom, blouse, nipple, meat, cat-tongue
blue: jeans, eyes, ink, tattoo, smoke, bruise

brown: dirt, shoe, shit, hair, nipple, chair
red: blood, light, rose, lipstick, sign, ember

yellow: beach, hair, flame, rose, peach, corn
green: eyes, scarf, valley, mold, tree, broccoli

white: phantom-race, chalk, panties, smoke, paper, cream
black: eyeshade, ink, shoe shadow, hair, cavern

hurl it all, hurl it all I say at a canvas &
make a real mess: the world


hans ostrom 2022

Saturday, November 26, 2022

Keep It Simple

 "Be quick, but don't hurry." --John Wooden

At the clotted airport cafe, a holiday swarm:
the woman orchestrating sandwiches,
unrushed but quick, wears a hajib--

a scarf that finishes by falling
to the middle of her back. Forest green.
A light-gray top and elegant black

trousers accompany. Llke me,
she's part of this society, I'm equal
to her, except if I worked at

the sandwich station in this
bee-hive moment, I'd be fired,
a mercy. Something

about forest green, light gray,
and black: austere, soothing.
Evergreens, mist rising from a river.

hans ostrom 2022

Monday, November 6, 2017

every year another live show

black branch, red
leaves. brown leaves,
green branch. white
branch, gold leaves.
red/brown/gold/orange/
mottled leaves; brown branch.

and an array of variations,
deciduous improvisations.

and dancing down the street,
with ice-shoes on her feet,
comes the woman who
calls herself Winter.



hans ostrom 2017

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

"Palette"

A blue owl, red sunflowers, and yellow horses:
such a scene may lift the spirit,
whatever the spirit is, whatever color.

A green road, a purple copse, and a black
bell tower: in such a context,
the spirit may become somber--

as brown becomes serious in a field of gray.


hans ostrom 2015

note: one of Christina Rossetti's children's verses refers to a blue owl and red sunflowers.