American Product

The nihilionnaire American
president swells like a boil
full of white-supremacist pus.
His central capacity
is rage, which no amount
of hatred and greed
can dilute. He is an American
product, promoted and sold
and deadly.


hans ostrom 2018

These Awful Times

leaves make light
bright green. hate makes US
power White. these awful times



hans ostrom 2018

An Under-rated State of Being

Beside a creek, we discussed creeks.
At a table we talked of American
depravities--acidic combinations
of sex-policing, racist hate, and greed.

In a bookstore, we spoke of sex.
In many places, we used language
to evade. Hiding, we sometimes
told the truth. We asked questions

in anger, illness, lust, inebriation,
shock, exhaustion, and fear. We
fiercely expressed certainties
that, seen later, were all wrong.

At our best, we had nothing to say and
said nothing: an under-rated state of being.



hans ostrom 2018

I Am a Native of Earth

You tell me I seem as if
I'm not from Earth. You
tell me I am an alien
and wish to see my documents.
(I have so many documents--
please specify.)

Sadly for you, certain
verified claims of physics
and biology confirm
my native status.

Yes, that's right, you
may infer that we are all,
that they who lived and
shall live are all, Earth Natives.

Our segregations, degradations,
and depravities seem
to spring from a different premise,
one I can see you share--
you with that supreme look
of deranged identity in your eyes.



hans ostrom 2017

A Valediction Forbidding White Supremacy

God damn it, would you just stop?
If you really were inherently superior,
you wouldn't cling to Whiteness like a
street drunk hugging a bottle
of fortified wine.  It's a bit of a tell:
trumpet your Whiteness, admit
you're weak. Here's the thing:

nobody's White. It's just an invention,
like the Hindenburg blimp. Google
Johann Friedrich  Blumenach. Your
fantasy kills people.  Living off hate, as
you do, will kill you, too. It will
weld your arteries shut, not to
mention your mind. Get your DNA
tested. The results will show you're
from Earth like every human who's
ever lived. What a shocker.  Grow up.



hans ostrom 2017

What a Lovely Afternoon

(acknowledging Calvin and Hobbs, and Henry C.)

What a lovely afternoon,
in spite of the fascist President
of Amerixon and his cabinet
full of rapacious rats. What
a lovely afternoon, shining
down on poverty and pain
and insufficient rain. What

are we going to do about this
fix in which science is treated
as a cartoon and hateful lore
displaces logic?  Not sure

we can do anything much
(but what a lovely afternoon)
except watch a culture try
to commit suicide and take
so many innocent people with it.



hans ostrom 2017

Epidemiology of Hate

*
*
*
*

Epidemiology of Hate

If only we could vaccinate
against hate.
It's the constant plague. It leaves
each era a wreck,
and from each new wreck
more hate mutates.

Consider the hate you hear
every day in common discourse,
in how our "leaders" talk to each
other about people they imagine
to be us. Language
becomes black bile. Vile
strategems go viral.

No mass-cure for hate exists.
Individuals must treat themselves,
must get to know how to learn.
Must go inside themselves, scrub
the mind, and think. Must
choose to get better; or
at least not worse.

To witness the pleasure of hate
play on faces and turn person-herds
rabid is to glimpse evil's vectors
and hosts. People, witness what
hate does to you, to them. Change.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom