A Real Mess

pink: wound, blossom, blouse, nipple, meat, cat-tongue

blue: jeans, eyes, ink, tattoo, smoke, bruise

brown: dirt, shoe, shit, hair, nipple, chair
red: blood, light, rose, lipstick, sign, ember

yellow: beach, hair, flame, rose, peach, corn
green: eyes, scarf, valley, mold, tree, broccoli

white: phantom-race, chalk, panties, smoke, paper, cream
black: eyeshade, ink, shoe shadow, hair, cavern

hurl it all, hurl it all I say at a canvas &
make a real mess: the world

hans ostrom 2022

Image Apocalypse

Images, images, I'm so sick
of images. We're in an Image
Apocalypse, an exponential
blizzard experience behind
eyes open, eyes closed. No
way to stop it (no one seems
to want to). It's like--

no, I won't say what it to me
is like. I'm going to keep that
image to myself. It's called
image restraint, people. Give
it a try. Take one less selfie,
one less otherlie. Mute
and mask a meme or three.


hans ostrom

2020

"Images Coalesce," by Hans Ostrom

I have come to believe
(note somber rhetoric)
that when the images
don't coalesce (there
is a chrome fender in
manzanita, a desire in me
to seem clever, billions
of objects and animals,
blue fabric, scalded flesh,
nothing, hydro-electric
dams, nothing, no connection,
and "surrealism" is no excuse,
shut up) we need to
let them be art.

The images coalesce
because to see patterns
has been drilled into us.
Capitalize. The images
coalesce because
our brains evolved,
along with much of what's
on the surface, and our
brains change what's here,
manufacturing patterns.
(Incidentally, who am I?
No, I mean really, who
am I?) The brain is
at home, that is.


hans ostrom 2014