You're Seeing Things

the idiom's "you're seeing things,"

meaning things that aren't there,

things that are not. maybe

a swish of wish fulfillment,

filaments of tropical optical

illusions, fusions of shapes

in the mind behind the eyes.

hope and fear make us tell

ourselves sensory lies. 

in truth (a country hard 

to find), whatever whats

are out there blink in 

and out of form. shiftiness

seems to be the quantum

norm. that's what they say,

the theys that write articles

about particles. we're all seeing--

sensing--things that are/are not

there. every gray boulder's

a bag of flickering electrons.

each crowd of people's an ad

hoc conference of arrivals

and gones. as reality's always

elsewhere, we agree temprorarily

to pretend present forms

can be trusted--can of soup,

freeway loop, chicken coop. 

roosters of routine doodle-do

us awake, and we wake from

one dawning dream into 

another. and another . . . .

hans ostrom 2021

Chicken-Killing Algorithm

1. Hear a father say, "The chickens aren't producing."
2. Surmise.
3. Look not forward to killing chickens.
4. Enter the chicken house.
5. Take a hen out of the chicken house.
6. Repeat 5.
7. Watch a father with a hatchet decapitate a chicken.
8. Watch headless chickens stride boldly, spurting blood from open necks.
9. Recoil mentally.
10. Dip chicken carcasses in hot water.
11. Inhale overwhelming wet-feather smell.
12. Pick feathers out of carcasses.
13. Become discouraged and bored.
11. Look at trees and sky.
12. Hear a father's curse-filled exhortations.
13. Surmise.
14. Continue picking feathers from carcasses until all carcasses are bald.
15. Think in terms of escape.
16. Look forward to escape.
17. Escape.


hans ostrom 2015

"Pecking Disorder," by Hans Ostrom

The smallest chicken listened
again to the rooster, spikes
on his ankles, red gristle
below the throat. Again

the rooster seemed to be
throating things like
I'm a dictator, I'm boss,
a movie star am I, a
celebrity, a CEO, a pastor
of a mega-church, a
full professor, a senior
partner, a Wall Street
broker, a stand-up joker!

The rooster's crew then
came over to pick at
the smallest chicken,
who took it, and who

after they finished,
amused itself by picking
at the chicken-wire,

until, one night, a
hole appeared and a coyote
entered.  In the morning,
the smallest and only
remaining chicken
picked its steps through
what bones were left
and feathers and blood,
gristle and spikes and
beaks. It walked through

the hole, proclaiming nothing,
and was picked up by
the soft hands of a god
from that place the smallest
chicken had always thought
to be a bigger chicken-house. 

hans ostrom copyright 2014