Underwater History

for Don Parkerson

They're there, our oceanic blunders.
Monitor and Merrimack. Spanish galleons.
And our depravities: slave ships.

Submarines like the Thrusher
could not cope with fathoms.

Weed and coral enhance remaining
shapes. A crucifix grows ocean hair.
A doubloon swells into a rock,
and a captain's iced skull lectures to
a school of fish. Diving down,

the historian cannot afford to haul
a text. Theories don't hold oxygen. He
monitors (and merrimacks) his every
breath like a meditating monk.

What comes clear in obscure depths
is the sluggishness of history,
the persistence with which events
get devoured: how a ship only gradually
slips off the reef to ultimate depths;
how accoutrements of empire
dissolve like common soda.

Floating there, the burden of breath
on his back in steel tanks, the historian
sees small sharks swim through
portholes of a destroyer.  The broadsides
of history went unheard here. Ocean,
imbued with oblivion's appetite,
accepted all defeated ships,
all wars and atrocities, settled or not.


hans ostrom 2017

We've Always Had Good Answers

We've always had good answers. We know
what's best to do. We've been at war
always so have forgotten many answers.
Permanent war permanently distracts.
Plus when we use religion only
as a V.I.P. badge
and a fulcrum to extert force,
we get godlike, and you know
how that goes. Buying, also

the buying, shopping, shopping.
Quite a thing-culture, they were
may be said of us in retrospect or
now. Good answers are just lying
around all over the place like
jewels no one thinks are valuable
anymore. We just have to forget
what we know and start picking them up.
That's all? Pretty much.

hans ostrom 2015

Don't Look Now, But--

Don't look now but
Kevin Spacey is a bad actor and
Tom Hanks' accent in Forrest Gump
embarrassed. Clint Eastwood
is a cracker, and Jack
Nicholson is just another
Hollywood pig, the opposite
of counter-culture. Don't look now
but all the celebrity authors
are full of shit, completely
full of shit. Don't look now
but the U.S. Senate is a porch
on a Southern plantation
200 years ago. Don't look now but Obama
is to the right of Eisenhower and
it's too fucking late to counter-act
global warming. Don't look now but
the ACLU is impotent but correct.
Don't look now but the U.S.A.
would rather be white-supremacist
and wrong than fair and right.
Don't look now but most
of the Founding Fathers
owned slaves. Hear that:
owned slaves, who were
humans. Don't look now
but white supremacy guides
most American policies.
Don't look now but while
the gun-fetishists suck
their barrels until the barrels
shoot bullets, oh, oh,
the gub-ment
takes away the real shit,
such as money, such as rights.
Don't look now but "we"
add 10 million people per
year--which is like a Los
Angeles, which is too much
for the planet to bear.
Consider how much water
10 million people drink
and how much shit 10 million people
shit. Don't look now but
the U.S.A bombs whomever
the fuck they want--thanks
to your tax dollerz.
Don't look now but cynical realism
looks like idealism,
and your pessimism
can't keep up.
Don't look now. Don't look.



hans ostrom 2013

My Country 'Tis

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My Country 'Tis


My country 'tis of thee, perpetual
detainee, of thee I sing. Land of
monopoly, most
massive military, of thee I sing.

Slavery for centuries, you've
still not made it right. You dim
reconciliation's light--and
you won't sing.


Developing every mountainside,
let your ears ring. Land with
more prisoners than it ever used
to have, land always
off to war, perpetual fights
abroad, of thee who sings?

Not a republic now, more
guns than privacy,
more hate than equity, melt
freedom's ring. My country

'Tis not "mine."  Don't think
it ever was. I'm as powerless
as dryer-fuzz. "My" country
belongs to the powerful, oh yes,
and I can't sing. This country

'tis of thee, perpetual detainee,
"combatant enemy," of thee
who sings? There is a They
and We, surveilled ubuity,
you'd better talk--or else:
Yes, sing, sing, sing.

From every mountainside,
let indus-military glide--
pollutants: smear them wide--
of thee. Of thee. What can
I do about thee, "my" distant
country? Not much, not much,
I fear. I cannot sing.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom