Cooling Crow

This city's hot and smoky: fires
in British Columbia, climate change.
My acquaintances the crows are
suffering. I daily provide them
food, water, and a target for their ire
(me).  Today though they're really hurting.

On a wire, one of them looks
straight up at sky and opens
his mouth.  The bifurcated beak
looks like an enormous black
clothespin. This is the posture
of crow prayer.  God will listen.

God made crow. (Don't tell crow!)
This is the posture of a performed
aria in a silent crow opera. This
is crow cooling off. ( You knew
it would be dramatic.) This is rare
crow, too hot to caw complaints.


hans ostrom 2017

Triviality and Guilt

I celebrate your new coiffure
and worry about the hungry and the poor
at the same time. What
good does either trivial focus or guilt
do to affect big problems? I state
the question in a homely way.

I congratulate your hips
and fret over how White Americans
will never "get it"
(until they get it).
What good? Fuckin' white people.

I remark on a grey cat's
behavior and think of
our water on fire
our air carcinogenic
our land
either flooded
or
baked
our politicians
embalmed
with corporate money,
ah, what good?

I rest my teeth
on the image of a chrome fender
and I wonder
how many bombs "we"
have dropped, on what,
on whom, and why
(why not!)
since, say,
1941. What. Good?




hans ostrom 2013

The Planet's Disease

Industrial humanity's become
a bad disease the planet suffers from.



Hans Ostrom, 2013

Sudden Infinity

not sure.
do know history's owned.
driver's ed.

the allies. you remember them.
cut the heads off.
indescribable scene.
sources say myth.
sources say fear.
sources. say.
sources. "the thing is,
he had to have known."

percentages on the back end, said
my friend in Hollywood, which
does not give
does not give
does not give
a
shit.
in other news, we, collectively,
have raised the average
temperature.
what to do?
 did you say, "what to do?"
well then to that i say,
yes, let us ask and let us try
to
answer


hans ostrom 2013