Dread

It's August in California's

Sierra Nevada mountains.
Green and gold and wildlife
reign. Bluest skies. You're
11 years old. You think of
September and school
and cold ball bearings
gather in your guts: dread.

It's July, same place.
You're sixteen, working
at your uncle's gravel
plant. He's often enraged
at life. He scares you.
Every workday morning,
carrying a gray lunch pail,
you walk slowly, as if
condemned, from your home,
up a dirt road
to the rock crusher.

It's more than five
decades later & you're
lying on a bed
in an operating room
lit up like a stage.
You stare at an
unspeaking semi-circle
of technicians
and nurses, waiting.

No one's given you
the drugs yet. The
surgeon won't enter
until you're under the sea.
Suddenly the sun-bright
lamps trigger a panic
attack, and you feel like
leaping up to flee. You
tell yourself, "Suck it
up," as a man you met
once is about to drill
a hole in your skull,
and go with tools
into your brain, your you.

hans ostrom 2024

Beware: The Billionaire is Angry

The billionaire's enraged. Angry

with women, with labor unions, with

"woke" people (but not mad enough

to say what he means by that word).

Lava-livid with academics,

except the ones whose research

undergirds his products. He's ticked

off with a former wife and a "disloyal"

child. He's not, though, especially upset

with neo-Nazis. Meanwhile,

the fellow who bags the groceries

people buy and retrieves carts

from the parking lot in cold rain,

cheerfully greets me. We exchange

polite words and laugh. He reminds

me not to forget that he's placed

items at the bottom of the cart.

"Yesterday, two people forgot theirs,"

he cautions. He seems to like

his minimum-wage job and life

well enough not to project rage.

The angry billionaire will "earn"

14 million dollars today. My mind,

as it doesn't forget to load the under-cart

items in the back of my car, goes

to Steve, the man who bagged

the tomatoes and rice and

so on. . . .  His red-bearded

face, full of good will. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Garbage Mountain

 A man drives a long yellow tractor

across a mountain of garbage,

kneading the sickly sweet heap

all day. White gulls fall upon the feast

in shifts. What things have shown

themselves from the churning dream

& surprised the driver over the years

of riding the groaning diesel dinosaur?

Since we throw everything away,

anything could be inside

the writhing, slippery loaf

that cooks in sun heat and cools

in rain. Anything.

Ancient Overlap

two crows on a line

watched a man work--

he dug, shoveled, raked.

disinterested as scientists,

the birds sat still, sometimes

taking  mental notes

to add to vast crow knowledge

of their neighbors. sometimes

they lifted a wing and beaked

mites off feathers. now

the man took a break, drank

water, ate a sandwich, tossed

bits of bread on the ground.

the birds dropped softly,

feathered shadows. they 

grabbed a quick lunch, took

their field notes back to the lab

made of sticks. humans,

crows. an ancient overlap

of societies. a relationship. 

hans ostrom 2021

Concrete Details

Concrete is abstract:
planes of gray, freeways,
slabs that call forth concepts:
overpasses, underpasses,
onramps, exits, and exchanges.

Wet and soft become
dry and hard. I used to love,
and weary of, mixing it
in a spinning drum. A bucket
of water, twelve shovels-full
of aggregate, three of Portland
cement (and some calcium


chloride in Winter). Then swaggering/
staggering with a barrow full
of wet and heavy--undisciplined
slop headed up a solitary
plank for the forms.


hans ostrom 2020

Winter Work

I got used to working most Decembers.
Shoveling snow. Washing pots.
Pounding nails as a carpenter's laborer
between semesters. Once we framed a house,
in sparkling sub-zero weather, High Sierra.
It was oddly exhilarating, though after one shift
I slept so deeply before supper, I
woke up stupefied thinking it was morning.

Then came decades of reading
final essays written by exhausted
college students. Ritual academic
labor, not hard work but grinding still.

This year I'll stumble around
in garden beds, grabbing dead
soggy stalks and seizing final
weeds. Not labor but gesture
of toil, enough to pump cold,
rinsed air into old lungs
and get me feeling sympathetic
to all the people who have
to work shit jobs in the cold
just to get by.


hans ostrom 2018

The Rack of Seasons

What a rack of seasons
that was. In January
I fell backward into snow
and was almost buried. Noise
left the world. Someone
pulled me up and tossed
me into Summer, where I
heard a rattlesnake,
broke boulders with
a sledgehammer for minimal
wage, and drank cheap wine,

which tipped me over onto
Spring, where I caught a cold,
grew anxious, and hoarded
books, which opened up
into October, where I stacked
the last haul of firewood--
dry oak from dead trees.
Acorns pebbled the ground
and the North Wind
began to say No.



hans ostrom 2018

Pick and Shovel

Dig with a shovel, dig with a pen:
Heaney's formulation. This

morning I dug a shallow trench,
recalled my Old Man, Alec,
who taught me how to use a pick
and shovel right. The crucial
nuances. (I've never seen

a Hollywood movie in which
the digging and digger weren't
unintentionally ludicrous. Usually it
starts with the genre of shovel itself.)

Alec had dug everything from
blasted quartz gold ore to river
gravel mixing concrete, from
sewer-lines to stone-wall footings.
Also graves. Often he used a long steel bar
to make a boulder twice his
weight dance aside. In another

life, without a war, he would have
been a mining engineer or geologist.
He appreciated High Sierra rock
and soil. He never got frustrated
with them. Instead he stayed steady,
befriended leverage, let the tools
work. Piles of rock, piles
of dirt.  Soon the task melted.

Labor isn't poetry, but it has
a rhythm, rides repetition,
requires alert attention. By

the time finished the trench
today, old jeans and a paint-stained
shirt had siphoned pools of sweat,
and I as satisfied again with
the father I had had.


hans ostrom 2018

Christ Based Cleaning

A sign on the side
of a white van
said, CHRIST BASED
CLEANING.  Excellent.

Gets a person hoping
for miracles mixed
with mopping and sweeping
and for a higher

minimum wage; for
speaking the truth
to local imperial thugs--
maybe after work?

This is just me, but
I wouldn't want evil
spirits cast into pets
that then sprint demonically

off a cliff. No. Throw
those bad seeds out
with the trash. Recycle
them for bloated politicians

to use ineptly. Oh,
Christ, more than a
billion times, y'all must
have thought, "What will

they think of next?"


hans ostrom 2017

A Blues Collage

brown earth, muddy river
slashing sun, hard hands
long train, long train, long train

hard laughter, heavy fatigue
broken tools, bad food
long train, long train, long train

sweet tea, hot coffee
cold beer, good jukebox
cool rain, cool rain, cool rain


hans ostrom 2017

Our Task

Working in heat
mean enough
to make grass snarl
and boulders ring,
I sometimes
imagined I could not
go on. Ridiculous:

I was as far from
the tortuous labor
slaves endured
for centuries as
I was from Neptune.

Their agony is
immured, is of
the bricks forming
the foundation
of this White Supremacist
monolith now adorned
at the top by
a bloated, cadaverous
cad, multiply evil.

Our task is
to wear down
White Supremacy
and wash away
the dust and grit
the project leaves,
please.



hans ostrom 2017

Intriguing Employment Opportunities

Lead Evaporator.
Geological Psychologist ["Rock Therapist"]
Undercover Vegan
Atheist Pastry Chef
Theoretical Maid
Workplace Boor (Trainee)
Senior Skeptic
Managing Drifter
Erotic Data Analyst.


hans ostrom 2017

Under the Horizon

Thinking today of how like all workers
the Old Man got body-tired of and bored
with labor about the same time, like me
today chopping at a vegetable garden's
frozen mud in January.  Your mind

lets your body make your mind
think, "This shit is getting old."
You feel like you think the sun
looks when it seems to drop
below the top of shadowed hills:
ready for bed. Of course there's more
work waiting under the horizon.


hans ostrom 2016

Pluto, Yes

I wonder what day it is
on Pluto. Maybe
the Plutonians have named
a blues song after the day
of the week (or corresponding
unit) that's notoriously grim,
even for a disrespected orb
barely on speaking therms
with the sun. And

everybody knows that the
Plutonian work-day is forever,
longest in the solar system,
plus no labor unions. Cold.

I say, Hey, Pluto, I'll check
with you again when it's about
noon your time, Okay, man?


hans ostrom 2015

Sugar Blues

If I cry for the sugar,
that don't mean the sugar's mine.
Say if I cry for the sugar,
doesn't mean the sugar's mine.
But if you should own the sugar,
doesn't mean the system's fine.

Did you work for the sugar?
I bet your answer's Yes and No.
Ah, did you work for your sugar?
Oh, yeah: the answer's Yes and No.
You didn't do a lick of work,
but yes you put up half the dough.

Wealth don't have a conscience.
It gets as far as maybe guilt.
Wealth don't have no conscience,
only gets as far as guilt.
Right-and-wrong will never bother
the fortress that the wealthy built.

Sugar blues, sugar blues.
Somebody else has got the sweet.
Sugar blues, sugar blues.
I'll never get enough of sweet.
I'm a lost soul on a corner,
a fallen saint out on the street.


copyright hans ostrom 2014

Hello, Everything

Hey, Hello, Everything, I said,
trying to be polite.
Hi, Everything said, I'm busy.

Hey, Everything, I said,
I've worked in a pickle factory,
I've worked in a gravel plant,

I've pounded nails and washed pots
and taught rich kids and
dug trenches and written articles--

--Who cares? said Everything.
Everybody does something and there's not
much difference between

any of it. Oh, I said. Well,
how are things with you,
Everything? I'm always

changing, and I have to go,
and you're a loser and small,
said Everything. Bye.



hans ostrom 2013

My Diary Went on Strike

My diary went on strike.
It said, "Damn, your life is dull.
I'm not letting my pages work for you
until something changes."

"So you're a union organizer now?"
I asked. My diary said, "Hey, I have
to protect my people, my pages."

I said, "Okay. I'll make it more
interesting. Even if I have to lie."

"That's fine," my diary said.

"Even if I make up shit?" I said.

"Of course," said my diary. "I'm
a labor-guy, not a tyrant."



hans ostrom 2013

Overheard at a Job-Site: Enough to Do

Look, you
little sonofabitch,
you don't
need to be making
work for me.

I got plenty
to do, including
nothing.
So don't go
getting big
ideas.  Got it?


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

the real artists

the real artists deliver
the newspapers that carry the lies.
they assemble mother-boards,
sports shoes, clothes, and purses.

the real art is the art
of re-assembling the world
every day.

the real artists go where
they're ordered to go when
they put on the uniform, whatever
uniform it is.

the real artists, they
change old people's diapers,
teach five-year-olds to read,
serve eggs to smirking
college students, empty
professors' trash cans,
sweep the floors

of art galleries, change
light-bulbs in auditoriums,
breast-feed, cook, clean,
get groceries, carry water,
look after grandchildren.

the real artists manage
crews, staff shifts, order
raw material, stack lumber,
run bureaus, process forms,
maintain websites, take
complaints, withstand
verbal abuse.

they mix cocktails, dance nude,
look for food in dumpsters,
rant from the caverns
of mental illness.

they protect children.
they haul freight.
they haul people.
they wash clothes.
they pick up bodies
lying on highways.
they wash corpses.

they mourn the dead,
help the maimed recover,
grieve with the bereaved.

the real artists know how
to add and subtract.
they walk or stand til
their legs and backs ache.
they show up on time and
kill vermin. they plant crops
and then wait, watching
the pale blue ceramic
sky of drought.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

Poem: Not Safe For Work?

Not Safe For Work?

I'll tell you what's
not safe for work,
says the waitress dead
on her feet;
the roofer in 104 degree
heat; the
truck driver, fire
fighter, soldier,
foundry worker,
heat-vent installer.

I'll tell you what's
not safe
for work, says
the warehouse-worker, the
unveiled woman, the
veiled woman, oil-
driller, welder,
seamstress, factory-
worker. What's

not safe for work is
work.


Hans Ostrom, 2012