Dark Morning

In my old plaid flannel robe,

nose to cold window, I peek
out at the neighborhood, 4:40 a.m.,
which except for bulbous weak lights,
looks like a smudged sketch.

People's selves crawl through
the last of slumber toward waking
and working and waiting for life
to get better. The new mothers are up,
holding newborns close.

What odd, fragile creatures
we are, huddled behind and under
our wood and bricks, getting on
with our little lives--in spite

of competing catastrophes--
the worst maybe being this
wave of right-wing hysteria
bent on blasting the nation back
to 1860, smashing all the things
that have opened up society
in America. Hatreds turned
loose like rabid dogs. Science
and sanity out of fashion.

I shuffle toward a chair,

sit down, and wonder. 

I Want to Hope It's Not Too Late

 Some "white" Americans understand

and try to share their understanding
and act upon it: they live their lives
as if all human beings are... human
beings, as if there is no essentially
superior "race," as if the fact that
we're all one species is.... a fact.

But too many millions
now insist, still insist, on White Supremacy
as a way of life and government.
As the basis of their identity.

Every time the country looks
like it might escape the quicksand,
millions drag it back at the behest
of one of two major American parties,
and parts of the media, and billionaires.
This gets people killed. It gets deranged
people, even a president, elected,
and spurs people to violence.

It is America's permanent disease.
It eviscerates its core. White Supremacy
is founded on air, on the irrational belief
that phantom "whites" are essentially
better and more entitled than groups
they choose to hate. 2022 is very,
very late. As with climate change,
and nuclear weapons, I want to hope
it's not too late.

hans ostrom 2022

In Feral Times

In feral times, brains tear

into propaganda in rabid

frenzy. Brains fill with rage,

which displaces sense

and empathy. Minds want

to hunt mythic stock prey--

who turn out to be people

just like them. Afterwards. 

In feral times, mirages

cloud minds, blind them 

to facts and finding ways. 

Mobs over-run common 

ground because cults

are total. The wicked

trick the deranged to gain

so little--like pickled

ideology or weary greed.

In feral times, reasoners

don't know what to do.

They wonder if they 

should seek a better place

to live. They tend to stay

to fulfill duties. Once

the Grand Wreckers rise 

to unbound power,

a cycle ensues. It

may end in a shabby

bunker but too late. 

The reasoners know

because they've read

and know what to read. 

hans ostrom 2022

From a Diary of the Plague Year (16)

And so it came to pass

That in the midst of plague,

The plague of white supremacy

Again rose to kill. A tide

Of no: no-more swelled

And swamped the shore.

We hope this won’t turn out

As it has before, waters

Retreating, the chalk beach

Bright white again.

Hans Ostrom

June 2020

Read and See

re-posting one from 2017

("Aspiration," painted by Aaron Douglas, 1936, oil on canvas, 60" x 60", Fine Arts Museum of
San Francisco)


Black chained hands rise. They have
become the shears of history and cut
through evil. Tilting, layered stars
share a central point that rests
on the right shoulder of a reading,
seeing Black woman. Read and see.

Two Black men stand on an indestructible
foundation. It goes by many names.
Read and see. The men's broad
shoulders defy the past and square
up with the future. Their jaw-lines
assert. One man points through
a spectral sun at pale green towers
and 36 lit windows on a mountain.

The lightning bolt is permanent in purple
skies. It portends the death of White
Supremacy, the Master Depravity.
The men carry necessary tools,
the most necessary of which
are spirit, body, mind. Read
and see. Aspiration is a prophecy.


hans ostrom 2017

Quiet Whiteness

(for Walter Scott, South Carolina,  George Floyd, 
Minneapolis, and uncounted others)   


If you've ever asked yourself
what we did to deserve these
depraved politicians of ours,
you may have considered
genocide of the indigenous
people, slavery, Northern investment
in slavery, Jim Crow, Northern
acceptance of Jim Crow, lynching,
child labor, eugenics,
imperial lust, monopolies,
Chinese expulsion, Japanese
internment, anti-Semitism,
McCarthyism, the blasting of
air, land, water, and people.
We've done everything to deserve
the depraved, you might have thought
in a moment of clarity, or
in a moment of despair (same
difference?) 

White supremacy remains robust;
that is the truth. The President
is the Klan, except with more
power. Racism thrives
not just because of
psychopaths and the cynical
who bait them, but because of
quiet whiteness:

the indifference, the privileged
numbness, the excuses of whites
who know
better but cast out the knowledge
because it asks too much.
The smug passivity
of whites who won't educate
themselves. The endless string
of lame excuses, casuistry,
deflections, and weaselly rationales.

Quite whiteness likes these
politicians. Otherwise,
they would be intolerable
in 2015 or 2020 or
1950 or 2050. Any year.
So much would be
intolerable, including
quiet whiteness itself.

If you've ever asked yourself
when the white choruses will
stand up and sing, stand up and
shout, get up and make damn sure
this depravity's demolished,
maybe in a moment of clear
despair the word
(printed in white against
a black background)    'NEVER, '
came to mind. Don't
accept it.


hans ostrom 2015/2020

Local Residents Are Disturbed

      (found poem based on news headlines)


Disgruntled diner shoots waiter
to death over sandwich delay. Girl
dies after being left in hot car.
"Stand your ground" trial begins
in killing over handicapped
parking spot. Giant hand statue
touches down in New Zealand
and local residents are disturbed.
At least 6 teens are shot at Houston
"instant house party" organized
on Snapchat. A man has been
arrested for allegedly threatening
to shoot up a Jewish center in Ohio.
Lynching reemerges in new rhetoric
of hate. Fracking prompts global
spike in atmospheric methane,
study shows. Climate change
to shrink economies of rich
and poor, hot and cold countries
alike. Hottest month on record
for the planet, scientists say.


hans ostrom 2019

All He Could Manage To Do

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you
a man cut grass and picked up trash
and sat down then. He thought
about America's most recent
consolidation of white-supremacist
power, became queasy. Thought
of vomiting on the cut grass but
did not. A hummingbird

visited a nearby rosemary bush,
pale blue blossoms fluffed out
modestly like women's
handkerchiefs in 1911. Hummingbird
throat-chirped when it backed off
a blossom, and again when it
air-wheeled itself back for another
nectar-strike. The man made
a powerless choice. He let

sight and sound of one bird
help him breathe out of his
disgust and go more lightly
through next tasks. It was pitiful.
It was all he could manage to do.


hans ostrom 2019

The Ministry of Obvious Questions

At the Ministry of Obvious Questions,
we ask why America is still full of White Supremacists,
including a certain president. Why
can't we create shelter for homeless people
huddling in tents and doorways? Why
is medicine to expensive for working-class
people to buy? One of our favorites is
What's wrong with you people? We
believe, in other words, that it all starts
with asking the obvious questions. The
Ministry of Answers has been instructed
to remain silent. Why is that?


hans ostrom 2019

American Product

The nihilionnaire American
president swells like a boil
full of white-supremacist pus.
His central capacity
is rage, which no amount
of hatred and greed
can dilute. He is an American
product, promoted and sold
and deadly.


hans ostrom 2018

Frail Wishes

Everything seems more fragile now:
my hip, democracy, seas, trees, trust,
wisdom, wolves. I wish dictators
and white supremacy were more
fragile, to the point of collapse.
Such wishes seem especially frail.


hans ostrom 2018

Everything Had Its Say Today

Everything  had its say today.
Behind their branches, fir trees murmured.
Cars, as always, couldn't shut up, their
speeches dull and linear. Beams and joists
and pipes chatted, whined, and groaned
in buildings. Lots of complaining.

I kept waiting for rocks to talk.
They will one day. It takes them eons
to formulate a thought.

The sky speaks sign language,
except when lightning strikes.
Then comes that unmistakable
laughter of delighted air.

Also, sounds of screaming
and crying seemed to spring
from cages America locks children
in on borders, in jails. Yes,
weirdly, even steel and depravity
had their say today.


hans ostrom 2018

Jim Crow Never Left

In America White Supremacy's
the deepest state of all. Jim Crow
never left. He became Chief Justice.
He became President and Senate,
infiltrated police departments
and border patrols. His spores

live in millions, who demand
(and get) a nation in which only
they are people. Jim Crow always
demands and gets. His sulphorous
spirit rides in white sheets through
people's stupidity-soaked rage.

Only people who think they're white
can get rid of White Supremacy,
and they never do. They can't live
without it. It forms the core
of their religions, schools,
and neighborhoods. So

Jim Crow never left,
stays obese by feasting
on America's depraved soul.
He's driving the segregated
train back toward 1920
and off a cliff.


hans ostrom 2018

These Awful Times

leaves make light
bright green. hate makes US
power White. these awful times



hans ostrom 2018

American Rust

White Supremacy is like rust.
It never stops devouring
American structures.
It never gets eradicated.


hans ostrom 2018

white folks crazy

white folks crazy
lazily leaning
on a rotten post--
souperiority

one may try
to divest his
her their whiteness--
not so fast, say

the structures
holding one.
ruptures of these
structures

i do perceive--
but: too few,
too narrow.
it is very, very

late: 1619-2018,
and a White Supremacist
in the White House.
of course even

1620 was very late--
it should have stopped
then, should not have
started, white folks crazy


hans ostrom 2018

Thumpers

Hail Grace, full of Merry, how
does your garden grow? And another
thing: why are people
who are full of hate and empty
of sense in charge of things?
Is it just tradition?

Blessed art art, at least
it's a vector in which to stuff
the rage of futility, the roar
of despair. Jesus, Christians

have made up a bunch of crap
about you, turning you into
a white supremacist policer of sex
& gender and a lobbyist for guns and greed.
They preach the "gospel of wealth."
No, really. Thugs, they really
thump the love out of the Bible.


hans ostrom 2018

An Under-rated State of Being

Beside a creek, we discussed creeks.
At a table we talked of American
depravities--acidic combinations
of sex-policing, racist hate, and greed.

In a bookstore, we spoke of sex.
In many places, we used language
to evade. Hiding, we sometimes
told the truth. We asked questions

in anger, illness, lust, inebriation,
shock, exhaustion, and fear. We
fiercely expressed certainties
that, seen later, were all wrong.

At our best, we had nothing to say and
said nothing: an under-rated state of being.



hans ostrom 2018

Blood Estuaries

Blood estuaries, the slaughter arts,
and radioactive crania of psychotic
power-addicts all have me a bit on
ledge. Industrial Whiteness

sells bigot spigots, 90 days
same as cash. Keep the hatred
flowing is their slogan. A
certain segment of the public

weaponizes Jesus and beats up
people who know facts.
Dictators proliferate worldwide
like syphilis chancres.

Ignorance is tidal.
Civilization's suicidal.


hans ostrom 2018

I Am a Native of Earth

You tell me I seem as if
I'm not from Earth. You
tell me I am an alien
and wish to see my documents.
(I have so many documents--
please specify.)

Sadly for you, certain
verified claims of physics
and biology confirm
my native status.

Yes, that's right, you
may infer that we are all,
that they who lived and
shall live are all, Earth Natives.

Our segregations, degradations,
and depravities seem
to spring from a different premise,
one I can see you share--
you with that supreme look
of deranged identity in your eyes.



hans ostrom 2017