You Are Not My Phone

You are not my phone, she said. I
like you, yes. I love my phone. I
like you better when you're filtered
through my phone because then
you become a pleasurable meme.

She said, I live with, in, and through
my phone. Okay, he said, then, well,
maybe I'll text you sometime . . .
She replied, You mean never, not
sometime. You don't understand me
because you're not really into your
phone. Not all the way. You lack
commitment. Although he was standing

right in front of her, he texted her. She
looked at her phone, which told her
he'd written I agree--bye! She continued
to let her fingers peck at her phone
like chicken beaks. And did not look
up to see him going away.

hans ostrom 2019

The Thin Thick of It

Well here we are in the moment's
techno-trend, alone in groups with our phones,
semi-ignoring the quasi-friends
sitting next to us. With our thumbs,
we hammer at glass like chickens
trained to play beak-bingo.

We swim in a river of gerunds--
posting, texting, liking, blocking,
attacking, retweeting, de-friending,
muting, sharing . . . We belong

to fractured unaccredited schools of fish,
unspooling into fractal clouds
of selfies. Masses mediated
mediate masses, sniffing fumes
of toxic gasses. It's all very real
and revolutionary, as well as false plus
reactionary. It's headed toward the only
destination left to us on the map: More.


hans ostrom 2018

What They Took Out and Kept In

They took the tele out of phone
and the roll out of rock, replacing
it with alt, which they also added
to Control + Delete so a PC or
a Mac could get back on its feet.

They done took the paper out
of news and ripped the promise
out of compromise. Yep, they kept
race in political races because
of their bad White habits.

They kept the greed in agreed.
I wish they'd take the they
out of they and replace it
with we, but I just don't see
that happening real soon.


hans ostrom 2016

The Trinity in Your Hands

Believers, bow your heads.
Worship your phone. It is all things.
Its icons bind you
to the holy trinity
of Telecommunications, Infotainment,
and Consumption.

Accept the liturgy of apps,
the dogma of fake urgency.

Believers, tap your loving phone
with humble thumbs and fingers.
Stream and text. Forward and purchase.
Your phone will go with you
where you go, amen.


hans ostrom 2015

"Now That Phones Are With Them," by Hans Ostrom

 ("Is this a good time to call?" --Old Saying)


Now that phones are with them,
everywhere and always,
it is always
and never a good time to call. Life,
a series of interruptions,
has become a shattered series

of interrupted, re-continued,
dis-directed ruptures. Like
a batty princess to a frog,
people speak loudly at something
in their palms.  Confused
courtiers look on.

One hand's fingers
tap like spiders' legs
on plasti-glass surfaces.
Apps become vats
into which to pour
attention. Heads bent,

faces slack, eyes distracted:
people's minds leave their
bodies to go to that other space,
that cloud which is forever
and presently calling.


--hans ostrom 2014

Phone as Phone

Telephone.
Tele-phone.
Telephonetics.

"Telephone!" we used to shout
"Phone--for you!"
"Somebody get that phone!"

And today someone
said to me, "Are you
saying that you use
your phone as a phone?"

And I confessed, yes,
"I don't use any of the
apps."



Hans Ostrom, 2013