Dr. Fog

Doctor Fog, what might you

prescribe in your inscrutable scrawl
for this gray pall
through which we crawl?

You will say it's all
in our heads. We'll say
But isn't everything?
You'll take the trouble

to scribble, then send us
away. One night, one day,
we'll hear an awful bawl
from a beast atop a wall

and finally we shall fall
down upon the hide of the city
and we shall know enough
not to expect much pity.

Dr. Fog, you know all this,
now don't you? For you have
slithered daily through moist pall--
physician, ah, magician to us all.

hans ostrom 2022

Magnetic Resonant Imaging

Although recovering Inquisitors designed
the machine, I'm told it's safe--just as
a member of the Frankenstein team
goes into a sealed control room.

The gizmo's noises range from
from punk-goose-shrieks to
psychotic jackhammers howls.
A magnet orbits my head like a mad
moon, a sadistic satellite. All
for some photos? The total effect

hypnotizes me. That and boredom
put me to sleep like a chicken at dusk.
Thus my head moves, ruining pictures.
The operator's voice intrudes,
imploring me not to nod off, and although
Fuck you forms in my pummeled
brain, I still myself, who has become
a hot-dog stuffed into a plastic bun
at a nightmare country fair.


hans ostrom 2020

Transformation: Doctor

When I visit a physician, I become a martyr,
forced to wear a backless tunic. Large white
spiders crawl all over my body, touching,
probing, tapping. Then flies swarm
around my head, each with a number painted
on its back. Then the needles. At last
I'm sent down into a dungeon of potions
and sacrificed to constant worry.


hans ostrom 2016