Primary Colors

In golden light yellow

hay made me sneeze,
wheeze.

I don't see many women
nor even men nor trans
wearing red lipstick anymore.

The 1950s kissed
with thick crimson lipstick, kicked
like a mean horse full
of bad yellow hay gas.

When an alpine lake,
I say brothers and sisters,
if an alpine lake
turns truly blue,
you must pause in awe
your fishing or kayaking,
your known rowing.

As the fog began to thin,
the sun looked like a flat,
cool yellow disc.

Bombs, bullets, missiles,
rockets, shrapnel, make
bloody death, dead bloody
children, babies, their mothers,
fathers, lying in blood
because Power does not
want in its red fury, its
ruinous hatred, to share.

Hans Ostrom 2023

It's 1949 . . .

... and the rural mountain saloon's
full of cigarette smoke and men, maybe
a woman or two, though the word gal
is still in use. One man's missing
a leg up to the hip. Another's
almost blind: the war. No one
shares their most private thoughts--
of death, desire, fear, poverty.

Glasses of beer and whiskey
go to lips. It's an age of basic booze.
Smoke goes in and out of lungs,
spiders up to the stained wood ceiling.

The bartender, red-faced, washes
glasses, empties ash-trays, wipes
the dark varnished bar, counts back
coins stained with dirt and grease.

Already another war is coming. Like
waves, wars keep coming. The bosses
of history don't visit bars like this
or live in towns like this or work
with their hands. Calendars
and clocks trick the mind,
and it's almost dinner time.

hans ostrom 2023

Not to Kill

 

The ageless human challenge still

Is will we ever find the will
not to kill? Not to kill.

hans ostrom 2023

A Shepherd In War Time

 A shepherd sees drones cruise

over the pasture and blast his village
to bits. Bloody bits, he knows. He
falls to his knees, collapses.

The panicked sheep have scattered.
The dog cowers--but now approaches
the shepherd. Who holds tight
to the dog. They are both shaking.

The shepherd begins to walk
toward his village. The closer
he gets, the more wailing he hears.
His mind fades in and out.

His legs will barely carry him.
He trusts the dog will gather the sheep
and protect them.

hans ostrom 2022

© 4 days ago    war • shepherd • atrocity • 

Under a Roof, Wondering

Environmental doom, catastrophic war: these clots
of syllables squat in my mind when my mind

prefers to ponder cold rain coming in from
the Pacific, coming down with uncanny steadiness,

crackling on roofs and windows like spiders
wearing cleats. I order fresher syllables to arrive

carrying different ideas--rivulets, storm, traffic
rush, water (water!) I offer them a hot beverage,

tell them to let their vowels and consonants
rest a while, because I feel like just hanging out

with some words tonight, under a roof, wondering.


hans ostrom 2020

We've Always Had Good Answers

We've always had good answers. We know
what's best to do. We've been at war
always so have forgotten many answers.
Permanent war permanently distracts.
Plus when we use religion only
as a V.I.P. badge
and a fulcrum to extert force,
we get godlike, and you know
how that goes. Buying, also

the buying, shopping, shopping.
Quite a thing-culture, they were
may be said of us in retrospect or
now. Good answers are just lying
around all over the place like
jewels no one thinks are valuable
anymore. We just have to forget
what we know and start picking them up.
That's all? Pretty much.

hans ostrom 2015

"Quietude of Minnows," by Hans Ostrom

Minnows, floating like flexible
galvanized nails, bunch their crowd
tightly in shadow, then disband
and dart. Clouds of starlings come
to mind. Quietude, sure, if only
I knew what that meant. I take it
to mean the opposite of noisetude,
so you can see I don't take it seriously.

For thoughts are imperialists and may
invade one another at any time. No reason,
then, to go out of your way to confuse
yourself and others. Or is there?

We need less reflection:
difficult to argue that. Of course
the sound of fighter-jets will intrude
noisetudinally (coordinates, please) and seem
to shake the surface of the lake
(to ask if there's been a goddamned mistake)
because we are at war again always, and the
joint-base is just down the road, right? In

other news, the Greed Opera is coming to town,
colleges have become pimps for loan-sharks,
Black folks remain under siege in some cities, decades
of that shit. And now somebody walks out from
the back of this poem carrying a gun,
a flashlight. I want to move but I can't. I

can sing, though, sort of, so I croakingly
melodize something about poets and minnows in their
schools, and I keep an eye on that gun,
and the Son of God is nowhere in sight.


hans ostrom 2014

"There Will Come Soft Rains," by Sara Teasdale

Triviality and Guilt

I celebrate your new coiffure
and worry about the hungry and the poor
at the same time. What
good does either trivial focus or guilt
do to affect big problems? I state
the question in a homely way.

I congratulate your hips
and fret over how White Americans
will never "get it"
(until they get it).
What good? Fuckin' white people.

I remark on a grey cat's
behavior and think of
our water on fire
our air carcinogenic
our land
either flooded
or
baked
our politicians
embalmed
with corporate money,
ah, what good?

I rest my teeth
on the image of a chrome fender
and I wonder
how many bombs "we"
have dropped, on what,
on whom, and why
(why not!)
since, say,
1941. What. Good?




hans ostrom 2013