"Living Among the Strangers," by Hans Ostrom (Lyrics) and Gray Jansen (M...

A Place Called Not

These days I ask

the dead stupid questions
like "Where are you?"

They answer with
ghostly shrugs,
phantom eye-rolls,
and other kinds

of silence. Cremation
or burial or just plain
rotting: tiny bits take
the place of bodies,

the place of minds
as fabulous as palaces--
dancing, insights,
laughter, jokes, similes,
sadness, crafts, and dreams!

The dead are in a place
I'm moving toward:
a genral locale called Not.

hans ostrom 2025

And Hope for the Best

okay, I never starved

and I was white not black

in America

but I've been alarmed

ever since I learned

life ends with death.

then came pageants

of cruelty,

the always prospect

of atomic 

annihilation, and

white kids groomed

by their stupid

parents to hate black

kids--for starters;

a head-on collision

with environmental

doom, sadists

in the workplace.

okay, I've had it good--

for starters; but

still, no wonder

I'm jumpy, reclusive,

bookish, and not

just tired but

existentially weary;

I'm talking old

dog tired. no bombs,

missiles, store

massacres, floods,

fires, new plagues,

attacks on black friends

locally today, so

okay, call it good,

do something for someone,

then grab a nap

and hope for the best

and hope for the best

and hope for the best.

hans ostrom

My Location Can't Be Found

I asked my phone where I was.
I mean, I knew where I was
according to old customs
but I wanted to know my location
according to rules set out
by our minders, the satellites.

The phone said "your location
can't be found." I didn't care
where I was anymore. I cared
that things seemed to be going
all right, what with my still
breathing and all. My phone

was not connected to the line
on which I thought I was. The
Great Online. What's more
chaotic than connectivity?
Ask your phone. Its answer
will be evasive.


hans ostrom 2019

Good News: You're Out of Touch

Because now it's all connected,
because now it's all infected
with connectivity, parasiting itself,
surveilling every person, place, and thing, you

don't feel connected, nor do you
especially want to. Your data's connected
very well indeed, not you. There
goes human culture, rocketing

off, and you're staying behind
in your material here, although you fake
living virtually very well. You feel
solitary but not sad. It's a relief

to be not interested in what it's all
coming to, whatever it's coming to,
and who would know, given the fact
and farce that human culture hurtles

with indifference to consequences.
It's virtually like standing in an empty town,
which the residents abandoned. Your
data's off partying with them. Sometimes

it reports back. The town, an existential
cocoon, does this thing that no one and
no thing does anymore. It leaves you
alone. Not heavenly, but nice.


hans ostrom 2018

Inside the Cake

Tonight I feel as if
I'm inside an invisible
cake. Reality cake.

I didn't have anything
to do with baking
a cake. I don't know

who baked it, or if
it just baked itself.
I'm simply inside the

cake. Tonight that's
all right. I don't have
to know why the

cake exists or why
I am inside it or why
reality is this cakiness.



hans ostrom

So Many Surfaces

He went there for the job.
Stayed there for the duration.
Now his ambition has gone,
migrating one way.

He takes great interest
in what is there, in which
here is embedded:
the surfaces of the world

beyond the body, but also
his mind's interior terrain.
The meaning of what's there,
here, is beyond naming,

The surfaces, the terrain--
they mean what
they are, and from
a certain angle, no more.


hans ostrom 2017