"We're Very Agreeable," by Hans Ostrom

How lovely of us to help
others keep us under surveillance
with devices we have solemnly,
enthusiastically purchased. A
good citizen is an informed citizen.

Some of us stand in line and ready
to trample each other to get mitts
on the new stuff. We're eager
to help states and corporations
know where we are and what
we're up to. Lovingly we tap

our devices with finger and thumbs.
We message, instantly! We opine.
We stay in touch. We stay in range.


hans ostrom 2014

CIA Spies on U.S. Congress

I'm not sure why people are so upset about the CIA's allegedly spying on Congressional staffers. Citizens in general get spied on all the time, sans warrants. And the fact that the concentration camp at Guantanamo is still open is incalculably more egregious.

Besides, at least the CIA is spying on the enemy: Congress.

Reconnaissance Pilot

The higher power and impersonality of satellites

and drones have nearly made him obsolete; still,

eccentrically aloft, he guides his delicate aircraft

on airstreams that flutter an enemy flag

several miles below, and he banks like the gesture

that leads a ballerina's turn, but he desires no audience.

What intricate obsession has jeweled this cockpit

with a dazzling, Latinate instrumentation?

In this black, airless sky of ice crystals,

his heat-sensitive cameras caress

an agriculture of warfare below: missile silos,

grids of weaponry, infantry and air corps

stored in barracks like dormant bees.

If he prays, probably it is a tactical prayer:

not to become a blotch of light smeared into a streak

by a radar's radial sweep. For when his wings

brush enemy airspace, he becomes a heresy against Treaty,

a target fit for the righteous, howling fighter-planes

curving up in silver clusters out of dark under-space.

In Indianapolis his wife once awoke terrified

from a dream in which ground-artillery

had blasted his airplane into a shower

of alloy and plexiglass; but in his own dream,

ejecting in time, he hangs by slender cords

beneath a dome of silk like a spider traveling on the breeze.

For those precious moments, he is borne in a world

without radio or loyalties or mission. And then he tumbles

on frozen turf or is it an orchard or a cornfield?--

slowly rises to un-clip the cords,

to assume his villain's stance like a scarecrow--

soldiers with faces

all alike flocking toward him, radios squawking

a foreign static, an orange dawn entering enemy East.

Captured, he knows he should be afraid or courageous,

but instead he simply longs for the farmland

surrounding Bloomington, Indiana.

copyright Hans Ostrom 1979/2014

Steady As She Goes

Yes, it was in
that decade when
the first animated
cartoon-character
was elected to
Congress. Financiers
bought the Air Force--
all part of privatization.

Regarding privacy,
citizens played online
surveillance-games
and mugged for
the cameras they
knew about. Personal

letters were criminalized
for being inefficient
and vaguely subversive.
Through it all,

careers flourished.
The number of opinions
held remained steady.



hans ostrom 2013

Skype

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Skype

Skype flies out of language
like the blade of a Viking ax but describes the hyper-
civilized act of talking to an image of someone talking
to your image as you talk and see your image. Like
any new gadget, it makes life easier and more complex
and soon seems necessary. It lends a drop of adrenaline
to the bloodstream, then joins technology's long
gray line of applications that coils back to stone
and bronze and iron. Maybe I'll skype

someone in Sweden, descendant of a Viking rower
to whom the carved boat's bow seemed magical
as it sliced open a path on a gray sea that's
now virtually visible from globally positioned
satellites, wee aluminum moons dropped off by
rockets into the orbiting traffic of junk that
pongs and pings our digital signals, scalps
our privacy, and surveils our sociality.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Mongrel

(image includes Italian Greyhounds)


There's a pet-store a few doors down from where I usually get coffee on a retail basis. I like pet-stores for supplies, but the display of animals in the window bothers me. There were some rabbits there around Easter time, and only one of three were purchased. Do I want to know what happened to the remaining rabbits? They aren't there anymore.

What are there are two "pure-bred" (whatever) Italian greyh0unds. Extremely cute, of course: that's the point of the window-schtick.

So it was with some surprise that when I looked up "mongrel" on the OED, an example included in the earliest example was "greyhound." Pure-bred Italian mongrel? As I said, "whatever." The OED [online]....

A. n.

I. The offspring or result of cross-breeding, miscegenation, mixed marriage, etc.

1. A dog having parents of different breeds (in quot. c1460 a heraldic representation of such a dog); a dog of no definable breed resulting from various crossings. Also: the offspring of a wolf and a dog (obs. rare).

c1460 Bk. Arms in Ancestor (1903) 4 250 [Azure a fesse gold between ‘quatre mains’ of gold quartered with silver] ij mongrelys of goulys. 1486 Bk. St. Albans sig. fiiij^v, A Grehownd, a Bastard, a Mengrell, a Mastyfe.


Wow, who knew that, at one point, grehound, bastard, mongrel, and mastiff were all synonyms? Of course, humans quickly if not immediately transferred their mistaken notions of dog-breeding to insane notions about human "races."

Of course, part two: the more allegedly "accidental" breeding goes on (with dogs, let's say), the more likely the gene-pool gets stronger, yes? Genetic diversity = genetic strength, or a greater likelihood thereof? Perhaps this is my own insane notion, but I doubt it.


Mongrel

Our operatives have determined he's
probably not worth our operatives' time.
He's anti-social but polite. He has problems
with authority but a Puritan's work-ethic.
He's a well-traveled, well-read hick. And
he's extremely loyal but can't grasp
the concept, patriotism. Alas, he's

a hot-tempered pacifist and a cloistered
utilitarian. He's often observed in the company
of anarchists, contrarians, the shunned,
the shy, the maladjusted, and the eccentric.

He is not to be trusted unless he's your friend.
He's jaded and guileless, optimistic, morose,
habitual, and unpredictable. He is by turns
too loud and too quiet. Our operatives,
who do a lot of listening and watching,
report he does a lot of listening
and watching. These latter are his most
worrisome traits, but our operatives
have determined he's no threat to the State.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom