Tuesday, March 25, 2008

"The Crunch"

He wrote about 12 poems a day for decades and decades and so has a grand ocean of poetry waiting in libraries. I have read a lot of Bukowski poems. More than anyone else's poetry its fair to say. It's for the rare discovery like this that I sift through millions of words, thousands of sentences, and hundreds of poems, reading reading reading reading.

And I will continue flipping the pages at 4 in the morning semi-interested in the written words & woes of other men - but I will really just be passing time waiting for another one like this.

Is this not life? Is life just not years and years and years of traveling on a lone fast train through a deep fog, accidentally stumbling upon transient moments where the greatest poetry of god and life read clear like laughter?

The Crunch

too much too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
thought of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
"no."

"Kevin didn't know he was shot. The iPod was how he found out."



I found this crazy story through StumbleUpon at Flickr.

The following is the tale from the person who posted the picture.

"The armor stopped the bullet.

The iPod was how Kevin Garrad found out he was shot. This is the real story.
Kevin said he got into the fight with the insurgent and afterwards he did not know he was even shot. He said he returned to his bunk after the patrol, put on his earbuds and began to clean his weapon.

He said: “you get into a ritual out there.”

No music came on. He dug around in the pockets where he kept the iPod and pulled out the twisted hunk of metal that is in the pictures. He said that was how he found out that he had been shot during the fight. He was happy that his armor worked.

He said the upgraded armor he was wearing could stop the AK-47 round. It was not the newest armor that is in Iraq now, but it was an upgrade. This was his second iPod that he had brought to Iraq. The first had been damaged earlier and the store would not replace it, even with the additional warranty he purchased.

The pictures are what happens when an AK-47 bullet hits an iPod.

He’s talked to Apple and is happy that they sent him another iPod. He’s gone through two already. If any others send him iPods he’ll put them in care packages back to friends in his unit who don’t have them."

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiki/445618364/in/pool-appleusers/