Ballad of Getting Older

Ballad of Getting Older


Time came by to see me.
It was in disguise.
"Your lease is up," Time said,
with phony, heavy sighs.

I am the age I am.
What can I do?
I am not dead yet, no,
but I'm not new.

Of course I'm scared to die,
faith in God aside.
Time came by to see me.
It said something snide.

I'm alive. And next I'll die.
That's pretty much the tale.
Time said my lease is up,
my place in space for sale.

Time and space, death and life:
the basics of our being.
Faith is concentrated on
what's beyond the seeing.

Travel Plans

Travel Plans

*

*

Tokyo and Instanbul

are places I've not been.

They're the same place.

Or so claims Zen.

*

*

History, brochures,

and residents there

will, I'm certain,

beg to differ.

*

*

Given time and money

(I don't ask much!),

I hope to visit both,

compare, contrast, and such.

*

*

'Til then I keep a Tokyo

in one part of my mind,

an Instanbul nearby:

two images that bind.
*

*

Hans Ostrom Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

October 31st

October 31st


The high-school girl had been trick-
or-treating, filling sharp Pacific Northwest
air with operatically lemony perfume.
Now, at our doorstep, she stood, bleeding.

"I was happy," she said, "and skipping when
I fell." We invited her in, explained how
hydrogen peroxide wouldn't sting her
cut hand. Her mother, costumed as

a classic witch, came to our doorstep.
"Did my daughter just come in your house?"
she asked. "Yes," we said. "Please come in."
"No," she said. "One stranger in your house

is enough." The bandaged daughter
joined her mother. "Happy," we called
to them as they walked away on
concrete into shadows, "Halloween."


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Socialism

Candidate Obama has been labeled a "socialist," and "socialism" seems to be especially visible and audible in the media these days, so I thought I'd check with the venerable OED (albeit the online version) for a definition of "socialism":

"1. A theory or policy of social organization which aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all. Freq. with initial capital. Christian socialism, a doctrine or theory, promulgated about 1850 by F. D. Maurice, C. Kingsley, T. Hughes, and others, advocating a form of socialism on a Christian basis.
1837 Leeds Times 12 Aug. 5/1 Socialism.Messrs. Fleming and Rigby.On Monday evening..these two gentlemen attended [sic] an audience..on the topics of the real nature of man. 1839 J. MATHER (title), Socialism Exposed: or ‘The Book of the New Moral World’ Examined. Ibid. App. 22 To explain and expose what Robert Owen's Socialism is. 1840 Quart. Rev. Dec. 180 The two great demons in morals and politics, Socialism and Chartism. 1850 Daily News 13 Mar. 5/2 The infection of..‘Christian Socialism’ is spreading to Whitehall. 1863 FAWCETT Polit. Econ. II. i. 181 Socialism, as first propounded by Owen and Fourier, proposed that a society living together should share all the wealth produced. 1881 STEVENSON Virg. Puerisque 89, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism.

2. A state of society in which things are held or used in common.
1879 H. GEORGE Progr. & Pov. VI. i. (1881) . . . ."

A mere citizen and poet, I am obviously no expert on politics, political economy, or philosophies of government.

However, my lack of expertise, as usual, does not impede the offering of opinions.

Judging by definition #2 in the OED, the U.S. seems to have decided (to the extent a nation can be said to decide) to operate as a society that combines capitalism, socialism, repbulicanism (small r), democracy (of sorts, small d), and imperialism. By the latter term, I mean simply that the U.S. decided to control a lot of lands and countries outside its boundaries, rather aggressively. I give you the Puerto Rico, Iraq, South Korea, a piece of Cuba, and Afghanistan as examples, not to mention bases in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. We make the Romans look like provincials.

I think the capitalist aspects of U.S. society are self-evident. I think some socialist ones are, too. The latter include national parks, state and interstate, highways, public schools, public universities, the Library of Congress, national monuments, social security, and Medicare. That is to say, in a manner of speaking, citizens or "the government" "own" these things and entities; or rather, these things and entities are a "commons" we share. Theoretically, at least, some of my taxes go to support Yellowstone Park, and I may visit there, enjoy myself, but not act as if I own it in the way I own a third of an acre in some suburban tract. It seems to me one great question with which a society must grapple is what parts of the society should constitute "the commons," as opposed to private or corporate property. I happen to think national parks a are a heck of a good idea, for example.

I happen to think health care should be part of the commons, something of which we all take part and something we all support, each according to our capacities. Everybody needs medical attention at some point, no exceptions. Most adults have something to contribute to a common pool; those that don't have something deserve assistance anyway because they are our fellow citizens. When somebody's that far down on their luck or their health, you don't just help them out, ad hoc, you think ahead and develop a system that's there to help them out. It's called being compassionately practical, or sensible.

Some kind of comprehensive (definition = everyone eligible to be covered) system, not necessarily nationalized but coordinated nationally, stands a very good chance of being more economically efficient and easier to navigate than the incomplete, expensive, inscrutable system we have now.

Further, I'd assert that almost all, if not all, Republicans and Democrats (including McCain and Obama) combine capitalism and socialism in their views, policies, and plans--with very little difference between them (the views, policies, and plans).

Let us now see if I, a mere citizen and poet, can get even more simplistic in my analysis:

I think a remaining piece of the socialism the U.S. is moving toward accepting is, indeed, a "universal" health care system. I think it will not look like the one in Italy or Sweden, but I think the politicians will be forced to pass laws that give almost everyone access to health care up and above visits to emergency rooms. Oddly enough, I think such a system will assist capitalism as practiced by small businesses and large corporations, and this assistance may be the capitalistic impetus required to achieve socialistic ends. Wouldn't a sensible, more-or-less universal health-care system help all businesses and corporations to assess and to control their overhead better and therefore operate more efficiently?

Then, this question: Are the combined armed forces an example of socialism? They are controlled, allegedly, by "the government," and they are funded by tax-dollars. On the other hand, how much say do citizens have in how armed forces are deployed? The last war formally declared by our elected representatives was WWII. Are the armed forces an example of capitalism (the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned)? Are they a form of oligarchic dictatorship? Did "we" decide to invade Iraq, or did Bush and a few others?

However one might define our combined armed forces politically, they present the U.S. with quite a problem. The U.S. spends almost immeasurably more money on its military than almost every other nation; the U.S. is broke; the U.S. probably needs to shrink its armed forces. Will it shrink its armed forces, whether McCain or Obama is elected? No, I think not. I think the system is self-perpetuating.

But back to the original question about socialism: all mainstream politicians blend capitalism and socialism, and many of the programs that fit the definition of socialism (like highways and bridges) keep the politicians in office. Pork is a variety of socialism, that is. Even the most right-wing politicians who rail against "socialism" support projects owned collectively by "the people." Even Bernie Sanders, the independent, socialist politician from Vermont, harbors some capitalistic tendencies. So A) let's not kid ourselves, B) let's stop hurling "socialism" and "socialist" around as if we were calling people werewolves or vampires, C) let's fess up to the fact the our system does combine and will continue to combine capitalism and socialism, and D) let's admit that we don't know how to stop spending so much money to maintain our imperial status.

Incidentally, the famous Helen Keller (pictured) liked socialism and thought of herself as a socialist.

And, deploying another abrupt, non-transitional transition, let me mention that I just finished reading a fascinating nonfiction book: Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Partnership that Defined America. Co-monopolists, Carnegie and Frick basically cornered several related markets: coke (not cocaine but raw material for steel); steel (making and selling); iron-mining; and railroads (which required steel to operate and which hauled the coke and the steel). It was all a magnificent closed loop, one that made them surrealistically wealthy but that brutalized their workforces, and I'm not being melodramatic. If you made steel, your body was basically ruined by age 40, and your family was left broke.

Ultimately, the two men became sworn enemies, owing in part to the strike at the Homestead steel-making factory, the attempted strike-breaking by the hired Pinkertons, and the eventual take-over of the factory by the military, which was not pro-union, to say the least. Monopolism triumphed. Strangely enough, however, Carnegie eventually decided to "redistribute" almost all of his massive wealth. He just kept giving it away. He gave it away ostentatiously, true; that is, he made sure people knew he was giving it away. But he still gave it away. He was a mightily conflicted man. Frick, not so much. He was an unconflicted, uncomplicated, albeit very bright and ruthless capitalist, monopolist, and anti-unionist. Anyway, the book's a great read, regardless of your own economic perspective, whether you are a capitalistic purist, a muddled centrist, an anarchic syndicalist, or just a person who works, sleeps, eats, and then occasionally votes.

I'll end with two final hopelessly simplistic rheotrical questions: Isn't almost any program of taxation, even in a capitalist society such as ours, a form of redistributing wealth, even if the wealth distributed is comparatively trivial? Did any truly wealthy person ever become unwealthy because of taxation?

Light Verse for the Birds

I've been observing starlings for quite some time. Maybe you've seen them; they often lift off from the ground and take off in a great cloud of hundreds, and the cloud then undulates in what seems to be a coordinated way. This take-off and the undulating cloud are especially startling and pleasing at dusk. The phenomena are quite something to watch.

A book on birds I have describes starlings as "garrulous." I think they can be pretty aggressive around other birds, although I doubt crows or eagles take them seriously. A side note: the fictional detective and gourmand Nero Wolfe likes to have his chef, Fritz, prepare a meal of roasted starlings. Yikes. I have not dined on starlings. Nor do I know anyone non-fictional who has done so. Anyway, pictured here is a starling. I've always appreciated the speckling and the deeply yellow beak.

And here, for a bit of a glum Tuesday, is some light verse regarding birds, a poem I hope will lighten your load if you've had a tough day, as the cashier at the local supermarket did in fact have; she told me 4 people had called in sick, and at the late hour of 6:00 p.m., she hadn't yet had a lunch-break. So a special tip of the cap goes out to working folk, especially those who've been on their feet all day.

For the Birds

Here's to starlings
who travel in clouds,
and unsubtle ravens,
who caw in louds.

Here's to robins,
who run-and-then-stop,
and jays climbing trees
hop by hop.

Here's to songbirds,
sharp and small.
Hell, here's to birds--
let's toast them all,

including extinct ones,
an awful loss,
moreso because the cause
was likely us.

But let's not end there.
It's too sad.
Think of your favorite bird.
Be glad.

Hans Ostrom 2008 Hans Ostrom

Villanelle: Cosmic Status

Villanelle: Cosmic Status

If we add up all that we claim to know,
The sum is zero when compared to Mystery.
We are as nothing in the cosmic show.

Or do you disagree? Maybe it's so
That we are in control, can claim to be,
If we add up all that we claim to know.

If Universe is infinite or so,
Then we're about as trivial as can be.
We are as nothing in the cosmic show.

But if God is, well, then: there you go:
Perhaps God made it all and let us see
If we could claim to add up what we know.

Irrelevant or godly? Hard to know--
A or B? And might there be an option C
In which when we discover all we know,
We're more than nothing in this cosmic show?


Hans Ostrom 2008 Hans Ostrom

Deconstructing the Sonnet-Form

In a poetry-writing class recently, we read and discussed several traditional sonnets, some modified sonnets, and one sonnet by Sherman Alexie that deliberately shreds the form entirely. Alexie writes 14 paragraphs of varying lengths. Why he still calls the poem a sonnet and why he shreds the traditional form are both made compellingly evident by the poem itself. It's a very effective poem.

We then decided to develop our own list of improvised sonnet-forms, and we had quite a good time doing it. We may even have come up with variations you'll want to try. Here are some of the variations:

1. A traditional Italian sonnet, which tends to "break" after 8 lines. Our version, however, would be a "dialogue" sonnet, in which the first 8 lines are spoken by one person and the last 6 by another (for example). Thaks to Miriam for this one.

2. "The Baker's Dozen." A sonnet that is about baking or a baker but goes only to 13 lines. I think this was Jean's idea.

3. A free-verse sonnet--the only real restriction being the 14 lines.

4. A blank-verse sonnet--14 lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter. This might have been Meg's idea, but I'm not sure.

5. A "choose your own adventure" sonnet. I have to confess I did not fully understand the guidelines for this one, but basically the idea is that within the poem, you give the reader different options as to what line or lines to read next. This one's above my pay-grade. I think Ryan may have come up with this one.

6. A blues sonnet. Tricky. Two traditional blues stanzas (six lines each), followed by a couplet. One would want to go very easy on attempting to imitate African American dialect as sung (for example) by Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, or Son House. The emphasis here is more on the f0rm than on imitating the vernacular because such imitation can go very badly. I am intrigued, though, by combining the two blues stanzas with a couplet--an interesting formal experiment.

7. I told the students about a "diminishing sonnet" I once wrote (and may have posted here earlier): The rhyme-scheme is more or less traditional, but in the first quatrain, you use iambic pentameter; in the next quatrain, you use iambic tetrameter; in a couplet, you use iambic trimeter; in the following couplet, you use just two iambs; and in the final couplet, you use two syllables per line (could be one word with two syllabes or two words with one syllable each). And yes, the last two "lines" still have to rhyme. The shape of the poem is like that of a somewhat lopsided triangle.

8. Two stanzas in limerick-form (for a total of 10 lines) plus a quatrain (for a grand total of 14 lines). The additional twist: it must be a serious "sonnet," not a joke-poem.

9. A "Joycean" or "Faulknerian" stream-of-consciousness sonnet. In traditional sonnet-form--or not? It's up to you. Intriguing. I think Cory might have come up with this one.

10. Traditional sonnets that embody the plot and/or convetions of fictional genres. For example: a "mystery" or "detective" sonnet; a "science fiction" sonnet; a "trashy romance" sonnet, also known as a "bodice-ripper," I believe; an autobiographical sonnet; a picaresque sonnet (or Don Quixote in 14 lines) ; a "sex sonnet." This last one was supposed to be in contrast to the traditional "love" sonnet, but I expressed the view that one pitfall to avoid was writing a pornographic sonnet.

11. A sonnet in 7 heroic couplets. Oy! Shakespeare meets Alexander Pope.

12. An "indecision sonnet." I wrote this down, but I confess I can't remember what the rubric was.

Uncertainty

Those who cast news often speak of something being surrounded by a great deal of uncertainty. At the moment, the stock markets worldwide are alleged to be surrounded by much uncertainty. It's more likely that they're surrounded by certainty--that things aren't going well.

I don't think I've ever fully understood Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, but that hasn't kept me from liking it very much. For one thing, I like the inherent paradox of an Uncertainty Principle. How principled can a principle be if it's an Uncertainty Principle? I think but do not know that the U.P. refers to the atomic and sub-atomic level of reality, which, when studied by humans, can be changed by the studying. Therefore, by studying item X, especially at the sub-atomic level, scientists change what they're studying and consequently cannot reach a definite (certain) conclusion about X. Apparently quantum mechanics support the H.U.P., but you couldn't prove it by me because I'm uncertain about the whole thing. I urge you to contact your local physicist, but there's no rush. Take your time, which is a function of space.

I had a different kind of uncertainty in mind, I think (I'm not sure), when I wrote the following poem. I suspect the poem may be, in part, a response to the sense in which we are pushed and pulled to decide quickly all the time, or almost all the time.


Uncertainty

When in doubt, why not stay there?
Sure, the station claims a train leaves
for Clarity every two hours (or so),
but that city may be ironically named,
like New York, which is neither new
nor connected to York in any substantial
way. When in doubt, enjoy the contours

of uncertainty. Sigh. Stall. Scratch
yourself or a domesticated animal.
Stare out or into a window. Check
your store of provisions. The world's
always in a hurry to urge you to decide.
The reasons for this circumstance may

chiefly be economic and political.
Also, impatience self-perpetuates.
What, in fact, is the rush? I don't
know. I'm not sure. I'm uncertain.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

As Chance Would Have It

Why Here, Why Now?


Is this the place in which
you planned to be,
or not particularly?
Is that the face
you hoped to see
in the mirror when
you arrived?
You've survived
thus far by means
of grace, you might say,
or we could always
phrase it another way--
chance or will or accident.


To be is to embody
mystery. Would you agree?
These are the places
of your life, it seems,
and these are the faces
of those you'll know
during your time.
It's tempting just
to leave it at that,
so let's, as the sun
sets at a point west
of exactly where you are,
and where are you, exactly?


Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

Horses in Cinema

Being a citizen of the United States, and of the western United States, and having grown up during an era in which the cinematic Western was quite popular, I watched a lot of Westerns in theaters and on TV. In Sweden, in 1994, I also learned from an Irish scholar (that is, a scholar from Ireland), that many Irish men more or less of our generation were and are awfully fond of Westerns.

The more eccentric the Western, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Therefore, I love the one with Johnny Depp (is it called Dead Man?), directed by Jim Jarmusch and featuring a splendid cast, including Robert Mitchum, who was acting in his last movie. I think Neil Young did the soundtrack.

The plot is witty and surreal, and what poet can resist a Western in which the protagonist is called William Blake? I like the "spaghetti" Westerns very much, partly because of the spare scripts and over-the-top music, but also because of the post-modern combination of Spanish locations, one American star, mostly Italian actors (although Klaus Kinski is in one), and an Italian director. One detail I liked in those movies was the food. It really looked like the kind of slop people had to eat in the West back then.

I'm awfully fond of High Noon, mostly for technical reasons (no fuss, no muss direction), the casting, and the tossing of the badge in the dirt at the end. Arguably, that movie is the grandfather or grandmother of the anti-hero Westerns from later decades, such as the Culpepper Cattle Company and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, although in the latter film, Altman does his dumb thing with dialogue and sound in which people mumble and are not audible on purpose. Just make the damn film.

With the exception of Dead Man and The Unforgiven, I don't like most contemporary Westerns, not Costner's, not the one with Kevin Kline and Danny Glover, not the one with Lou Diamond Philips and the other "rebels" of the moment. There's an abundance of predictability, an excess of costuming and sets, and a ponderousness of direction.

Shane, of course, is supposed to be a great film, and it has its moments, but Alan Ladd isn't believable, in my opinion. They couldn't ever really hide the fact that he was a miniature man who wouldn't last 2 seconds in a bar-fight. In that long fist-fight scene, I think they had to use all sorts of ramps and boxes for him to stand on. I thought Ven Heflin was terrific. Monte Walsh is a pretty darned good Western, with Lee Marvin and Jack Palance.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is good because it has some real political, intellectual, racial, and sexual complexity to it. There's some great lore about Woody Strode and John Wayne on the set of that one, but I'll skip it. John Ford knew how to make movies, but I find most of them kind of boring, except for the use of exteriors, and almost all his movies are unbearably racist.

The greatest comic Western is Blazing Saddles, although Cat Balou is a close second. My favorite musical is a Western: Paint Your Wagon, in which the casting is superbly absurd: neither Marvin nor Eastwood can sing! How lovely. I'm one of the few people, apparently, who liked The Missouri Breaks. I loved Brando's cross-dressing schtick as "the Regulator." The Western Brando directed (I can't think of the name) fell apart, but it also had its moments. Brando didn't know how to direct. He probably wasn't practical enough.

I appreciate what they tried to do with Sharon Stone in that one Western, or maybe I don't; anyway, it was miserable. I can't think of a Western with a genuine female protagonist that really works. There's probably one out there.

On the small screen, I have to go with Deadwood. Before that, I really liked the Virginian--a 90-minute per week series! Seems incredible now. Gunsmoke left me cold.

But anyway, no matter what kind of Western it is, I always watch the horses. They are the movie within the movie. Hence this poem:


Cinematic Horses

In movies with horses, watch the horses,
not the actors. The horses are thinking
all the time. They react to phenomena
while professionally fulfilling the task of giving
a stunt-man a lift or standing still beneath
a vapid star who hates working with animals,
children, and complexity. Horses snort.

They rear their heads, swat at flies with their
tales, sweat. They appear not to understand
the plot. They fear smoke and loud noises,
get wild-eyed with fright for good reason.
Their intuition is as wide as a pasture.

No matter what the movie may be,
the horses tell a horse-story while
the film drains through its reels
into accounting books and profits,
the manure of Hollywood.

Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Anti-American, Un-American, American, Feminist

Congressperson Bachman from Minnesota has raised the specter of certain members of Congress (and of Obama) as being "un-American," or "anti-American," and Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin has claimed that the "folks" in small towns love America, whereas, presumably, the folks in cities don't love America. William Bennett, on his radio show, opined that "liberal feminists"don't like Palin because a) she works b) she's attractive and c) she's happy.

Oh, my, there's so much to sort out here, especially for poets.

As a poet and a literalist, I tend to interpret "un-American" as "not-American." In other words, a Swedish citizen or a Chinese citizen would qualify as un-American. However, I am aware that Senator McCarthy defined "un-American" as Communist. I think that definition (his) is too limiting. I think a capitalist who is a citizen of Great Britain could be un-American.

"Anti-American" is more difficult. An anti-American person might be one who disagrees significantly with something economic, social, political, or aesthetic about the U.S.A., or about the Western Hemisphere, which consists of North and South America, and which, bizarrely, is named after an Italian. If one concedes that both the Constitution and American traditions value dissent and disagreement, might one proceed to argue that "anti-American" is "American"?

Meanwhile, Bennett's sentiments constituted a blast from the past, especially the 1970s past, when those opposed to, unfamiliar with, or frightened by feminism liked to caricature feminists as physically unattractive, unhappy ("bitter" was a code-word back then, as was "angry," as in "she [a feminist] seems so angry"), and not traditionally employed.

My definition of feminism is pretty basic. I define it as a perspective that advocates for and values the equal treatment of women in society, economics, politics, and the arts. Therefore, I don't agree with the premise that feminists would be bothered by how attractive Palin is, assuming she is attractive, and I assume she is, within certain conventional boundaries. I think she is a physically attractive person, but I think most people are physically attractive. I don't think feminists would be opposed to Palin's working, although I am reminded of the old joke about a White feminist and a Black feminist converging at a rally; the White feminist says she is protesting so that she can achieve employment (probably middle-class employment). The Black feminist says, "I've always worked"(at jobs that weren't so great).

I think I'm an American, by virtue of having been born in the United States. I think I am anti-American to the extent I disagree with certain policies put forward by the U.S., and with certain aspects of American culture and American history. I don't think I'm un-American, but that's chiefly because I think that term is a smelly red herring dressed up as an adjective.

I'd just add that feminists, be they White, Black, male, female, or whatever, are (in my experience) in favor of employment, physical attractiveness, and contentment. That Bennett thinks otherwise makes me think he is stuck, psychologically, in a place that's about 40 years old.

If he weren't well paid and well employed by such entities as CNN, I might attempt to generate pity for Bill B. It's as if he missed a lot of history. Rip Van Bennett. I suspect Bennett started out as an academic, didn't really like academic work, teaching, and academic pay, and decided to become a professional conservative media performer--not a bad gig in the Reagan and post-Reagan era.

Now, however, the act, the gig, is wearing a little thin. Memo to Bill: "louder, funnier, and more original"--that's what your act needs. But I'm glad you're employed, attractive (in a full-figured way), and happy. A lot of people I know think you're an asshole and a fraud, but I'm not willing to go quite that far. I think you got stuck in a gig, just like the guy who had the plate-spinning act on The Ed Sullivan Show. To be a member of the Punditocracy is to be a citizen in one of Dante's circles of Hell, and I think Bill B. would understand the reference. To change myths, I think the likes of Bill Bennett and George Will sold their souls to the Conservative PR machine and to popular corporate media. The machine and the media have lived up to their ends of the bargain. Bill and George are well paid and well known. However, the part about the loss of the soul is a problem, maybe.

Skin-Scanning

There is a whole generation of native Californians (and Arizonans, et al.) who grew up not knowing how deadly the damage of sun-exposure could be. I'm in that generation. Our parents told us to slather on stuff like Copper Tone lotion, which was a nice-smelling oil but which block the sun not at all. When we went swimming in alpine lakes--about 6,000 feet above sea level--the sun-burns tended to be worse because there was less air between us and the sun, I guess. However, the worst sunburn I ever received was when I spent all day at Huntington Beach. One result is that I've had to have a melanoma hacked out of my leg. Another is that I must visit a dermatologist frequently. Hence the following poem.









Skin-Scanner



As he scans my skin, the dermatologist
talks politics. One of his eyes enlarges
comically behind a magnifying glass.
"Nobody changes Washington D.C.,"
he says, focusing on a small brown
constellation on my wrist. He deems
it "odd but not dangerous." "The most
anyone can do is play the system," he
continues. My body

grants citizenship to new moles every year.

Some are cherry-red. Most are dark brown.

The dermatologist periodically checks

their passports and papers. He's

the Border Patrol of my epidermis.

"The drug companies," he says,

"are raping the system. I can't believe

what they charge for medicine." I'm

naked now before him. He looks
at the scar from a melanoma-excision.
"Looks fine--keep up the good work,"
he says to my leg, which does not respond.
All my moles applaud the compliment.
I begin to add items of clothing to my
my mole-crowded body. The scanner

writes notes to himself about

the case of my skin. He presses the pen

hard into the surface of the paper.

Hans Ostrom





Copyright 2008

Everything Must Go!

When I was in California briefly to visit a member of the family, I read in a San Diego newspaper that the corporation, Mervyns (no apostrophe, as far as I know), based in Hayward, California, had decided to declare bankruptcy. Mervyns is a lot like J.C. Penny, except with fewer household goods for sale. That's my sense, anyway.

The head of the corporation was quoted as saying (and I paraphrase) that they'd explored the possibility of being purchased by another corporation but that, ultimately, they decided that the best way to pay their creditors was to announce that they were going out of business and then conduct "going-out-of-business" sales (through the end of the year?). This was the first time I had heard a corporate executive articulate a business-practice I had long observed: Stores go out of business (slowly), but first they attempt to ingest one more large meal of cash. They do so by creating a sense of urgency, a kind of store-apocalypse, and consumers get the sense that they will be able to buy things very inexpensively by "taking advantage" of the "wounded" store, which is more likely taking advantage of them by "slashing prices" on things consumers don't really need and still making a nice profit.

Nonetheless, I'm sorry that Mervyns is going out of business. I kind of like stores that are on the lower end, so to speak, of the market, and my eldest aunt worked for Mervyns in Hayward for a long time. She died quite a while ago, but I tend to remain slightly sentimental about these things. I'm also sorry for the people who are working for Mervyns now. May they find good work speedily after Mervyns closes for real.

Anyway, I exhumed a wee poem about "everything must go," the customary tag-line for going-out-of-business-sales.

Close-Out


Hurry—everything must go!
This sale won’t last forever.
We accept all major credit cards
with unconditional love.
We’re closing our minds forever. The
savings are incredible, so don’t believe
them. We’ve forgotten what business
we’re in, so we’re closing our doors.
We know our business concerned
merchandise, which must go, so
hurry to the corner of Want and
Need. We’ve slashed our prices,
which are bleeding. You must
hurry, we must go, and everything
that doesn’t last forever is on sale.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom