At Motel Depression

At Motel Depression, you're just not interested.
You recall what being interested is like,
but it's a proper tall hotel in another part of town.

Best not to strain against the circumstances.
See the salt-and-pepper screen of the broken
TV. Guess the age of the smelly drapes.

Toss your clothes on the embattled chair.
The painting is a kind of punishment.
No moaning, no wailing, please:

the walls are thin. Keep the sheets
between you and the blankets. There's
a good chance you'll check out tomorrow.


hans ostrom 2018

Considering Ear Wax

She found it necessary, apparently,
to turn away from scenes of "her"
nation's malevolent stupidity
and to consider ear wax,
which absorbs airborne particular
debris and expels it.  How,
she wondered, do the ears
know when to drive the soil-heavy
wax out of the twin tubular garages?
And could the process be applied
to the removal of a depraved president?


hans ostrom 2017

"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

"Place in the Space"

He needed something to take him away
From the place in the space called
His head. Not escape; no, a shift
Into a perspective that stuff didn’t
Stick to too much. Such as scenes
Of injustice (the same kinds
Of the people that were treated
As not-people are treated as not-
People today; if you, he thought,
Read, see, and listen, you will
Know this and so not deny it
I can't deny it, it sticks),
Yes, stick to too much,
Does the stuff, such as
By-now distilled toxic memories
Of personal shame and failure, failure
And shame and stupidities
And permanent confusions
But also excessively incisive
Insights (such as this whole
Fucking operation is a scam
and I must pretend it isn't).
Listlessness full of dread,
Dreadful despair result
From the sticking-to of stuff,
So now yes he need something to
Take him away from the place
In the space called who he is.


hans ostrom 2015

"The Caged Skylark," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

"The Difference Between Despair and Fear," by Hans Ostrom

"Escape," by Georgia Douglas Johnson

"In the Desert," by Stephen Crane

"The Witch," by W.B. Yeats

Steady As She Goes

Yes, it was in
that decade when
the first animated
cartoon-character
was elected to
Congress. Financiers
bought the Air Force--
all part of privatization.

Regarding privacy,
citizens played online
surveillance-games
and mugged for
the cameras they
knew about. Personal

letters were criminalized
for being inefficient
and vaguely subversive.
Through it all,

careers flourished.
The number of opinions
held remained steady.



hans ostrom 2013

It Is Election Season

It is Election Season in the U.S.A.
The Right knows exactly what it hates
but not what it supports. What passes
for the Left knows exactly what
it supports but not what it opposes.
The sheer weight of cash
breaks the back of democracy's
bridge: boom--into the river.

In the meantime, no fundamentals
will change.  You could say it was
lost in the Constitution. Or later,
when railroads took over.  Or
even later, when no one listened
to Eisenhower's farewell address.
You select your starting point,
your ending, your epistemic closure.

It is lost. Those who would challenge
the fundamentals were exposed
as noble but impotent: Occupy.
Those who should be occupied
pretend to be our close personal
friends: the media. Those

who work too much for not
enough will always
and forever get The Shaft.
It is Election Season in
the U.S.A. White men
are hanging chairs from
suburban trees, a most
safe evocation of lynching,
indeed, sir. Indeed sir.


Hans Ostrom, 2012