International Share a Secret Day

Hey, It's International Share a

Secret Day, or I've been lied to,
anyway it's a day when spies

and politicians go mad &
confessors go glad, pleased
to let at least one heavy hidden

tale fly light and free and bright
like a butterfly. Many secrets
there are out there today!

They swarm like hornets,
they roll like waves of desert
dust, and some stink like

putrefied garbage. I've kept
some secrets so long, they've
dried up like dates in a pharaoh's

tomb & there's nothing to tell,
so I make something up. I lie.
I whisper fiction-secrets

like squeaking crickets
on this gabby, shabby date called
International Share a Secret Day.

hans ostrom 2023

It Will Be Our Secret

Tell me a secret. One
that belongs to someone else.
Change the name to prevent
feelings of betrayal--or glee.

Indeed, alter the secret.
Create, embellish. Make
it as rare as you want.
Too weird: What does that

that even mean? Go ahead,
tell me the awful inside
knowledge you've invented.
It will be our little secret.


hans ostrom 2018

Top Secret

(image of Spy vs. Spy, from Mad Magazine)





Top Secret


How does a secret reach the top?
Also--the top of what? I think
of secrets that never reach the peak.
They remain in huts on a slope,
run out of provisions, succumb
to despair and gravity, and stumble
toward a village of common knowledge
where they are nobody special.

What percentage of secrets deemed
Top should a government share
with everyone? Answer: always
a greater percentage than the
government claims. Incidentally,
who manufactures the stamps
that spell TOP SECRET? Is
this information secret?

I might have made a semi-
excellent spy because I tend
to forget secrets people tell me.
The safest place to keep a secret
is one you can't find again. If
someone needs the secret,
the situation may seem awkward.

I know there are good reasons
to keep secrets, but not as many
as the bad reasons. Information
isn't power. Power is Power. It
keeps secrets chiefly because
It can. Because It will. Sometimes

when I stood next to an alpine
creek, fast water would arrange
itself just so, so it became like
a liquid lens with no distortion.
The complex beauty of the creek's
multicolored, gravelly basis, with
bits of debris and a trout's dark
back, struck apprehension clearly.
Transparency's a transfusion.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom