Of Being

Birth drops us at a train station

near the lip of chaos.

We step off the Evolution Express
carrying a valise of neurons.

We are headed nowhere
and already there.

We live between our bones,
napping in hammocks of selfhood.

hans ostrom 1999/2020

Hatching

This darkness--
too small suddenly.
I hate it and hit it
with me. I shove
my head and shoulders
through, cracking
this thing that became
a cage overnight.

Comes now the shock
of whatever this is I'm
breathing, seeing, smelling.
Comes the shock now
of its form, my form, me.

Staggering on twig
legs and big feet,
I move through cool
air that burns vision.

Huge shapes walk
around & around me,
wide-eyes, loud,
they gab and gab.

Hunger makes me use
my head as a hammer
and peck. Not knowing
I am, I am.



hans ostrom 2019

Good News: You Seem to Exist

"That there is something is the first, most obvious, and best known thing conceived by our intellect and all the rest follows" --Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus 

"I think; therefore, I am"--a bit self-centered,
Rene. "It is, even if it's not what it seems

or seems different depending who or what
records the seeming"--awfully inelegant--
but better? Here's the thing:

something exists. Can I I be more specific?
Can the something? The questions answer
yes implicitly, being more specific themselves.

Here is a word: exits. Exits exist, or seem so to you
and so they do, and therefore so do you, so take one

to a fine and rational place.


hans ostrom 2018