I
There're a lot of beautiful people, beautiful women
who flock and flaunt, flaunt and fuck
as desires commingle in accordance with the beat
and burning on the television. Style's a pale
hand-me-down from ten advertisers,
who flaunt and fuck the public
just the same, for controlling style is power
over people too dumb and sterile, sterile and starry-eyed,
staring at the TV like a fireplace,
warming themselves at the TV's glowing promise
of fleece, beauty, and intimate warmth
at a reasonable price.
II
My girlfriend and my roommate got the same rusty Abercrombie pamphlet,
the capitalist manifesto,
through United States mail. She's not on any lists,
and he's just moved in four months ago,
so how'd Finch find them?
The calendar was pressed out for teens and early twentysomethings.
It's the (true) story of ten boys and girls
who duck class to dash up the mountains
in a stylish beat-up blue bus
(mysteriously pictured in 3rd person,
behind, from above,
as if taken from a helicopter)
and rummage in a cabin with too few beds
in their underwear, or a handknit sweater
(from Asia)
or in knit caps in the hot tub.
An insert in the back adds prices to each page.
Before that, there're just scribbled sexually-suggestive notes
inscribed on the tender memories
of a photo shoot.
The prose links the pretty men and women by sexual friction,
a tenderized depiction of the Abercrombie dream-world.
In the patchwork plot, they've got too little money for beer or more beds
but they don't mind smashing pillows apart
in their mountaintop snowy retreat
equipped w/ marvelous hardwoods, hot tubs, erotic imagery,
all in 80 dollar tank tops and 100 dollar jeans.
A&F vends the Kerouac experience
the way Volkswagen's new Beetle sells stock in the 60s.
III
After Abercombie, my clothes wont for an elegance I never noticed before.
Secondhand slacks with a rip at the bottom weren't pre-torn,
and they've got pen-marks on them from stray swinging notetaking hands.
So I feel like I'm missing out on a "teen experience,"
perhaps one you've only got to buy into,
to wear a weak "ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH" block-letter t-shirt
that's mauve, or the latest "dirty" color.
I should march down to the corner store-—
no, the mall department store—-and
avail myself of their sales,
minding the most important goal: sexual compatibility,
and like my peer-group, I'll trod one step at a time to sexual fulfillment
with guaranteed, impressed, alluring styles,
none of us knowing the location of the Philippines.