Sunflowers Are Sad, Experts Claim

Propaganda notwithstanding, sunflowers
are morose. Their puritanical, resolute
stalks lift them up to be sacrificed
to the gods, which employ birds, flies,
and bees as visiting priests. The central

cycloptic seed-cushion--color of tobacco
juice--weighs too much, like depression.
Too, please note the celebrated solar petals

wrinkle like Edwardian handkerchiefs
left in a jungle. Oh, Sunflower, foster
child of Old Bill Blake, 1960s advertising,
and baseball players: I bow my head
to you and yours.  You grow, I garden,
and it's all work, isn't it?


hans ostrom 2017

Commercials

Commercials: adjectives packaged
as nouns, petty crimes committed
against ears and eyes, sometimes
full-on felony assaults paid for
by deepest vaults.

The White Supremacist cable
not-news shows raise volume
high, highest for commercials,
concussing brains to soften them up
for propaganda. Don't buy. Don't buy.


hans ostrom 2016

"No Greatest Country"

Nobody lives in "the greatest country in the world,"
which is a phrase, not a nation.
Nobody and Plato's hologram.

Wouldn't a good nation cherish its skeptics,
partly because politicians and other
propagandists don't?

No one's more patriotic than a dictator:
fallacious reasoning, sure, but
nonetheless worthy of a cautionary pause.

Often I listen to a voice in me
that recoils from appeals to patriotism
because they feel like extortion.


hans ostrom 2014