Poet's Musings

Friday, February 10, 2012

"Youth and Beauty," by Al Akhtal

New Novel About a Bizarre Plague

So I finally published my most recent novel via Kindle. It is called WITHOUT ONE, and it concerns a bizarre epidemic that strikes in the near future and that hits men where they live--but otherwise let's them live. One tag-line, so to speak, is "Something is happening to men; their penises are falling off."

Mostly droll satire, I'd say, with some pathos and comedy. The ensemble-cast includes first sufferers, researchers, doctors, media-folk, conspiracy-theorists, and of course politicians, including the POTUS.

The disease is soon known as RAPIDS--Rapid Penile Degeneration Syndrome.

My favorite anecdote from my adventures in trying to find an agent for the book: A male agent responded almost immediately to the email query and wrote, "I couldn't possibly represent this book because I have a fear of castration." Which was funny. And which, to me, suggested the book might have some appeal. Technically, the disease doesn't castrate, but I got his drift. I think I apologized for scaring him, too.

Anyway, if you're not scared, and in the unlikely event you have time to read, sigh, another novel, and you like somewhat bizarre fiction, here is a link:

Without One

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Anti-Epic

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Anti-Epic

Here's a thought: stay home.
Quell grandiose ideas.
Let understanding invade you.

Consider all those people
and animals you won't kill.
Admit that whatever you

would seek doesn't exist--
revenge; a cup; glory.
Construct manageable

fantasies. You're an organism
that eats and sleeps. A deeper epic
lies in being nothing special.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Dog Outside a Bar

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Dog Outside a Bar

Memory is loyalty
to something not there.
I sit outside the past
like a dog outside

a bar, and what
I'm waiting for went
out the back door
hours ago. I furrow

my brow and alert
my ears and eyes.
And I remember.
The future wants

to take me for a
walk. It hooks
a leash to my collar.
And here we go.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom