"1970s Spasm"

Hey, man--hey, you net-box jumper
and rainbow-thumper. I'm seeing
albums raining down without their
covers. I mean thousands
of black albums coming on in
like swarthy, thin UFOs. ("It
just means it's unidentified,
okay? You need to fucking
lay back, man.") And I see now
the complex map of my life
is being etched by a diamond
needle, digging into undulant
vinyl, shined on by blue
lava-light. Hey, play the
other side, play the other
side, hey play--oh, okay,
cool. (It's getting cold.)
Nice tuner! I need a beer.


hans ostrom 2013

Our Own Business

Our Own Business


I saw a man carrying a ladder walking alone beside
a highway on the plains. Dusk only just
lit up the shirt on his back and the ladder's
angles. Had he climbed, or was he going
to climb, and what? There weren't any houses,
trees, or barns around. The man had that stiff,
relentless gait of a resolute person in an awkward
situation. As I drove past him,

I was about to laugh and judge him to be
"crazy," but I noticed I was driving a car alone
across the plain listening to a radio talk-show
about mysterious lights in the sky, and I'd just
decided to bypass a human hauling a ladder,
and not to talk to him or offer transportation.

I set aside judgment, looked at the speedometer
and fuel gauge, and turned on the headlights,
which made the highway mysterious.
Say what you will about that man and me. We
were minding our own business on the plains.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Water-Boarding Is Torture; "Unidentified" Means "Unidentified"

Poets are known for using figurative language and for taking words out of customary contexts, so to some degree they, like politicians and pundits, are known for playing "fast and loose" (whatever that means) with the language--if for purposes different from those of the pols and the pundits. However, poets tend to work within such tight limits--often in less than one page--that they tend to examine every word. Therefore, poets can sometimes be mystified by how politicians and pundits seem not to understand a given single word.

For example, the new attorney general of the United States couldn't say whether water-boarding is torture. He said he would need to see whether it was listed in some policy that dubbed it "illegal" before he could give a straight answer (I am paraphrasing, of course).

Thanks to a former soldier who had water-boarding demonstrated on him and on video, everyone knows exactly what water-boarding is. It's bringing a victim close to drowning, repeatedly. What creditable definition of torture would not include such a practice? Answer: none. The new attorney general was hiding behind a prospective legal definition when the question wasn't legal in nature. The question was this: Do you think water-boarding is torture? The only correct and proper answer is this: "Of course I do," followed, if he were feeling especially frisky, by, "What, do I look like a moron?" But that question may not have been regarded as rhetorical by those interviewing him.

For another example, Dennis Kucinich admitted to having seen an unidentified object in the sky. After he admitted that, Chris Matthews, who tends to combine a smug insider's attitude with an astounding incapacity to listen (even to himself), mocked Kucinich for admitting to having seen "UFOs." A UFO is an unidentified flying object, and "flying" is in this case understood to suggest "something in the sky," so whatever object the thing is or is not, it may seem to be floating, gliding, or hovering, not literally, narrowly "flying."

"Unidentified" means "not [yet] identified." It does not mean "identified" [as an alien craft]; otherwise, the "un" wouldn't be there. "Unidentified" clearly suggests that the person simply can't identify the object--yet. During the debate, Tim Russert allowed as how only 14% of the American people "believe in UFOs." Probably what the poll and Russert mean is that 14% of the American people believe in the existence of alien space-crafts. Of those American people who understand what "unidentified" means, 100% must necessarily believe in unidentified "flying" objects--meaning they believe it's possible, even probable, that a human being might see something in the sky and not know how to identify it without more observation and/or information.

That the new attorney general couldn't say bluntly that water-boarding is torture is further evidence that our government supports practices we identify as evil when others engage in them. That alleged reporters like Matthews and Russert don't know what "unidentified" means may be evidence that aliens have taken over our mass media--aliens who left their dictionaries home.

Poets aren't perfect, but we know torture when we see it demonstrated on video, and we know what "unidentified" means.