In Feral Times

In feral times, brains tear

into propaganda in rabid

frenzy. Brains fill with rage,

which displaces sense

and empathy. Minds want

to hunt mythic stock prey--

who turn out to be people

just like them. Afterwards. 

In feral times, mirages

cloud minds, blind them 

to facts and finding ways. 

Mobs over-run common 

ground because cults

are total. The wicked

trick the deranged to gain

so little--like pickled

ideology or weary greed.

In feral times, reasoners

don't know what to do.

They wonder if they 

should seek a better place

to live. They tend to stay

to fulfill duties. Once

the Grand Wreckers rise 

to unbound power,

a cycle ensues. It

may end in a shabby

bunker but too late. 

The reasoners know

because they've read

and know what to read. 

hans ostrom 2022

Derelict

This place seems to be
falling apart, coming undone.
It's held together by buttons
and brackets, bolts
and rivets, screws, beliefs,
and clamps.  It's shored up
with shibboleths and superstitions.

Cracks, gaps, and rot
proliferate, plastered and painted
over with toxic residues
remaining from rabid denial
of fact, from swollen ignorance.
We get pounded from all sides
by images and sounds
of people talking and shouting
shit that makes no sense. The
general disintegration is monitored
and marketed carefully,
continuously. Now is the bright

summer of stupid authoritarians.
We who have no power or
influence fixate on fixes
that will never happen,
because they may require
evidence, discernment, and change.


hans ostrom 2019

Jim Crow Never Left

In America White Supremacy's
the deepest state of all. Jim Crow
never left. He became Chief Justice.
He became President and Senate,
infiltrated police departments
and border patrols. His spores

live in millions, who demand
(and get) a nation in which only
they are people. Jim Crow always
demands and gets. His sulphorous
spirit rides in white sheets through
people's stupidity-soaked rage.

Only people who think they're white
can get rid of White Supremacy,
and they never do. They can't live
without it. It forms the core
of their religions, schools,
and neighborhoods. So

Jim Crow never left,
stays obese by feasting
on America's depraved soul.
He's driving the segregated
train back toward 1920
and off a cliff.


hans ostrom 2018

Gangster President

vile gangster president
(cult of hatred) makes war
on law and knowledge


hans ostrom 2018

Thumpers

Hail Grace, full of Merry, how
does your garden grow? And another
thing: why are people
who are full of hate and empty
of sense in charge of things?
Is it just tradition?

Blessed art art, at least
it's a vector in which to stuff
the rage of futility, the roar
of despair. Jesus, Christians

have made up a bunch of crap
about you, turning you into
a white supremacist policer of sex
& gender and a lobbyist for guns and greed.
They preach the "gospel of wealth."
No, really. Thugs, they really
thump the love out of the Bible.


hans ostrom 2018

Blood Estuaries

Blood estuaries, the slaughter arts,
and radioactive crania of psychotic
power-addicts all have me a bit on
ledge. Industrial Whiteness

sells bigot spigots, 90 days
same as cash. Keep the hatred
flowing is their slogan. A
certain segment of the public

weaponizes Jesus and beats up
people who know facts.
Dictators proliferate worldwide
like syphilis chancres.

Ignorance is tidal.
Civilization's suicidal.


hans ostrom 2018

The American Climate

It's easy to think you'll just go
to the sea (e.g.) and ignore the wreckage
wrought by these White Supremacist
huns of the American oligarchy
and its minions who are hypnotized
by vicious religion and depraved hate.

It's easy to give up, as surrender
seems like the most logical next
move, not just the most sensible
emotion. Ritually you'll talk yourself
into caring again, keeping up
childishly with current events,
polishing your opinions,
and doing something small and local.
You'll round up your usual responses.

You know though that what's happening
is hard weather from the only climate
America's ever known. For it's a
fatally flawed culture in which the
powerful flawed exact fatalities
from their customary targets,
and unrelenting on and on it goes.



hans ostrom 2017

This Fall, White Supremacy Blooms

The forests are ablaze, the sun is red,
and a light snow of ash falls. White
Supremacy blooms again, giving off
its acrid odor, its menacing stench.

More than a few White college
students fully feel the old power
their forebears wielded like a scythe.
In front of Black professors (where

there are any), they yawn, stretch,
roll eyes, pick matter from their hair,
their eyes, their ears.  They savor
the insolence of re-authorization.

They get drunk and yell, "I am
the One Per Cent!" and offer
other triumphalist biscuits
to the air, which they own.

Not that they ever
were going to change, but
now any pressure to know or care,
to arise from racist sloth,

has dissipated like the particles
from scorched trees.
An old White bloated Hitler
knockoff at the American helm

massages the radioactive core
of the country and his Party,
Dixiecrats in drag. So White
students are as free as ever

to treat learning as a running
joke, to swagger, to luxuriate
in the shade of official hatred
behind the citadel walls. Its their

choice. It's always been their choice.


hans ostrom 2017

Bible and Rifle

I saw a man
wrestling his Bible.
I saw a man
clutching his rifle.

It was one man.
One and the same.
And all confused
by hate and shame.


hans ostrom 2016

They Will

They will photograph themselves holding guns.
They will incorporate the national flag
into their wardrobe.
They will proclaim their faith aggressively.
They will act in contradiction to their faith.
They will not read history.
They will not read literature.
They will not consult data.
They will reject conclusions from science.
They will demand to be considered special
and may link themselves to God.

They will not understand.
They will not try to understand.
They will be tyrants in their families.
They will perceive no contradictions.
They will recoil from wit and irony.
They will mimic gestures of status.
They will threaten.
They will be particularly susceptible
to fascist appeals.
They will transmit ignorance gleefully.
They will not know how to ask good questions.
They will remain enraged by complexity
and change.
They will not change.


hans ostrom 2015

"This Man Has a Good Job"

Bar codes, mumbling toads, and driving and
driving and trying to beat last quarter's
sales-numbers, trying to pound those numbers
into the ground of the territory: this man

sweats, and thinks, and drinks brown
sugar-water infused with caffeine and
feels the adrenaline rush of listening
to Rush's voice and feeling Rush is right
on everything, he agrees with me, I agree
with him, totally! In his car, this man
is truly alone, like Rush in his
broadcast-bunker. He doesn't care,

this man, because his way of thinking
is we're alone even when we're with
clients, family, and other kinds
of seemingly people. "I like
what I do for a living," he tells people.
"What I hate is paying taxes, of any
kind, and I want the Government
to take its finger out of my ass."

On the interstate highway, however,
his mind is taxed, and it tells him,
"Bullshit. Say to yourself the truth,
at least. You find something that
pays, you do it, you keep doing it,
you like being away from her and them,
and one day the pump goes,
and you go, she and they get
the insurance, and someone else
takes the territory." Meantime,

he switches the noise from Rush
to sports talk radio.



hans ostrom 2015

The GOP

What used to be Eisenhower's Party
is now a toxic,
radioactive brew
of John Birch, Joseph McCarthy,
Orville Faubus, Jessie Helms,
the enfeebled Ronald Reagan,
Birth of a Nation,
the Bush Crime family,
Ayn Rand (speed freak),
and the KKK. Lord?
Help us.


hans ostrom 2013