Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts

Monday, April 6, 2026

"Yes, You're a Hero"

 

Yes, You're a Hero

by Hans Ostrom
set to music and vocals via suno. ai [I know: sacrilege] and posted on soundcloud and youtube-- langstonify channel © 

(folksong lyric)

Sometimes just getting out of bed
and going to your job makes you a hero.
There's so much awful out there.
Your hope might be reaching zero.

You might be a trucker or a nurse.
You might be a baker. You get up first.
Could be you're a builder or a plumber or a drummer
in a local band. A woman or a man

who drives a bus. All of you help us.
You get us through. That's what you do.
The country is made of millions of pieces.
Lots of trades and skills and hearts.

Lots of parts with beating hearts.
You might be a prof teaching classes about cells.
Maybe a farmer or a picker on that farm
or a responder racing to a place of harm.

You could be a welder or an elder.
Babysitting kids, you get us through.
That's what you do. The country is made
of millions of pieces. Lots of trades and skills

and arts. Lots of parts with beating hearts.
You might be a cleaner or one who brings the news.
Maybe you're a doctor or a scientist looking for the clues.
You could work as a mechanic or a fry cook there in the back.

You might be a teacher or fix a creature.
Whatever your job, whatever your calling,
you're part of a hole that keeps the entire
thing from falling. from ripping all apart.
You could be a checker or drive a recorder.

Maybe cut hair, sell hardware, or build a chair.
Perhaps a server or an observer or a preserver of knowledge.
Can't list every task, post or position, from recycling to mortician.
Whatever you do, you get us through. That takes lots

of learning and years. Blood and sweat and tears.
Skills and hearts and brains and heart. The ones at the top
should get their heads right and do what's best for you.
Because you get us through. That's what you do. So, thank you.
Yeah. Thank you.

Hans Ostrom 2026

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Treat It

Forty
thousand people
in the U.S. get shot
per year. Guns, guns, guns.
Symptomatic, I think, of an awful
disease. Oh, treat
it, please.


Hans Ostrom 2023

Thursday, June 25, 2020

"America," by Robert Creeley


Recording/video of short poem by Robert Creeley. From Selected Poems by Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved Originally published in Pieces (1969).


Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5JXmxeUBkU

Sunday, September 2, 2018

Train Station, Milano

Because you're exhausted,
not to mention privileged,
you rest in Milano's main station
and let it be a buffering space
between you and America's
grotesqueries. You wonder if
anyone uses the word grotesqueries
anymore. Prob'ly not. You can't deny
the passport in your pocket.

You prefer the station cafe,
which pigeons frequent. They
thrust their monocled eyes
into the mix, use crumbs
as dice, and gamble away
their past with glee. Their
conversations distill many
throated percolations. Same
goes for the people.

Words from many human
languages try the air. Your
wish not to hear American
English is granted. People
in the station are happy
to see each other, their
laughter isn't cruel, and
no one's belligerent. It
seems miraculous.



hans ostrom 2018