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.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Friday, March 7, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
"Lucid Mansion"
Grace creates a spaciousness,
a spacious nest like a meadow
between cedar groves, or a placid
piazza—a place, that is,
for consciousness to consider
its conscious nest,
its fortunate fest of being. In
the howling storm of time,
grace manages to accrue
some space, in dark
vacuity manages to
maintain a lucid mansion.
hans ostrom 1984/2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Men at 60
Men at 60 have certain
urges. Check that. They
imagine they have certain
urges. Men at 60 are
uncertain. They rarely
speak or act as if
they are uncertain.
Men at 60 wonder if
they'll die right now
walking in sunlight or just
later sleeping or at
63.27, 80, 71, 69.45,
or . . . . Men at 60
unlike men at 40 or 50
aren't appealing, even
to themselves. Dear
Narcissus: Go fuck yourself.
Men at 60 have done it all
and done nothing and done
some things that have
amounted to nothing. They're
bored by photos of koala
bears and panda bears and
most every other
goddamned thing.
At 60 men eat the same things
over and over. Secretly
they hate their own opinions
most of all. If they don't,
they should. Men at 60
like to hear singing but
do not like to plan to or
to pay to listen to it.
Men at 60 have bizarre
ugly regions on their
bodies, too many to count.
hans ostrom 2014
urges. Check that. They
imagine they have certain
urges. Men at 60 are
uncertain. They rarely
speak or act as if
they are uncertain.
Men at 60 wonder if
they'll die right now
walking in sunlight or just
later sleeping or at
63.27, 80, 71, 69.45,
or . . . . Men at 60
unlike men at 40 or 50
aren't appealing, even
to themselves. Dear
Narcissus: Go fuck yourself.
Men at 60 have done it all
and done nothing and done
some things that have
amounted to nothing. They're
bored by photos of koala
bears and panda bears and
most every other
goddamned thing.
At 60 men eat the same things
over and over. Secretly
they hate their own opinions
most of all. If they don't,
they should. Men at 60
like to hear singing but
do not like to plan to or
to pay to listen to it.
Men at 60 have bizarre
ugly regions on their
bodies, too many to count.
hans ostrom 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
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
Thursday, February 20, 2014
"Truck Driver's Aubade"
Listen: sunrise stirs bugs in dry grass.
The long whine of a steel guitar
curves into a wide blue highway.
This peace is easy to take, I'll
tell you.
We kiss, kick off the covers
as if they were dead butterflies,
and grab each other, laughing.
The radio drops out its
three-chord,
Two-minute-fifty songs,
most of them the same
except for the names, just like
the matchbooks in amber ashtrays
on the sticky counter-tops
on outdoor tables at truck-stops.
--Where I’ll rest elbows,
the thick roar of sixteen
tires still in my ears.
Darling, if I look at the ass of
the waitress
while she's filling up my Thermos,
know it's only out of habit.
If my heart growls like a diesel
for you
when dawn spills across the hood
of the Peterbilt, know I'm thinking
of this morning
and of gearing down again on the
grade
a full two miles from your place. This place.
copyright Hans Ostrom 1983/2014
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