Friday, October 19, 2012

Reaganomics and Its Metaphors

A link to an older post about the rhetoric and images of "Reaganomics," from  my other blog, which concerns politics and language:

http://politicsandlanguage.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/reaganomics-in-the-portmanteau/

The post's title is "Reaganomics in the Portmanteau"

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

"The Spell Broken" by Arnold Wall

This Digitation

An ant on a twig in a flood
can't conceptualize all that wet
force, nor can I even fake-imagine,
that is to say bullshit my way through,
what this digitation of being-human
is-or-means. My eyes and hands

sometimes attach themselves
(they are mammalian)
to that screen or this, and
this touch-screen or that
keyboard are twigs in the
something, which is of a something
else inside a whatever it may be,
which is purveyed retailishly.  

I'm no more than a furloughed
extra in one of coding's lesser
dreams. Maybe you're an electric
fruit-fly, nothing personal. Maybe
we're real holograms, or holygrams,
merely faking ironic asides on
shit they call social media.

Perhaps most happenings now
pour forth frothily from corporate
virtualizers. That G to the P to the S
can pin my point doesn't mean
I'm being or that I'm found.


Hans Ostrom, 2012



Alive, I Am Allowed

Alive, I am allowed
to perceive large pieces
of whatever this stuff
is we call the world.

Today (what is today?)
I feel the arrangement
to be such a strange
and temporary contract,
one I never signed
but one I greedily fulfill.

Sunlight comes under
blinds, a jet plane high
sounds like an air-duct's
mumble, and  later I must
go collect some things to eat.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

"Symphony in Yellow," by Oscar Wilde

"Fall Wind," by William Stafford

Monday, October 15, 2012

Precise, Indifferent, Fluctuating

Hiram liked to piss outside in any season.
There's little reward in asking why.
It does have something to do with men.
Inquire of them. Or not.

Hiram, in socks, no shoes,
pissed outside in a rainstorm.
He said to himself,
"This is outstanding. It is right."

As urine flowed through
his cock into sodden grass
lit dimly, he thought, "One
trouble for humans is

that the universe is
absolutely precise (he
was looking at things
that could be only

what, when, and how
they were), in constant
flux, and indifferent to
human preferences. 


Hans Ostrom 2012

Giant Eye

(found language)

Giant Florida eye
is from
swordfish,
state says.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

"As Others See Us," by Basil Dowling