A man facing eviction
Over his hostile temper
Became enraged
By how his wife
Cooked his eggs
And killed her,
His stepdaughter,
And three neighbors
With a shotgun
In two mobile homes
In rural Eastern Kentucky.
The man, Stanley Neace, 47,
Then went to his home
And shot himself.
Police found his body
On the porch of his trailer.
Kay Rastegar,
Mr. Neace’s landlord,
Said he had begun evicting Mr. Neace
Because he had become
Increasingly hostile toward neighbors.
“He was unpredictable,”
Mr. Rastegar said.
“Little things would set him off.”
Source: The New York Times, September 12, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Little Things or Watch How you Cook Those Eggs
Found Poem #18: Little Things or Watch How you Cook Those Eggs
At Risk or The Case of the Blue Sleeping Pills
Found Poem # 17: At Risk or The Case of the Blue Sleeping Pills
A 4-year-old Brooklyn girl
Who weighed 18 pounds
Was found
DEAD last month
With toxic levels
Of antihistamines in her system,
Her death has been ruled
A homicide.
In a criminal complaint
Filed last month, prosecutors
Outlined a litany of abuse
That they said
The girl, Marcella Pierce, suffered
In her final days
At the hands of her mother.
Ms. Brett-Pierce
Repeatedly
Struck the girl
With a belt and video box
At their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The mother
Lashed the girl to a bed
with twine
And forced her to take
blue sleeping pills,
The complaint added.
A caseworker and a supervisor
In the Brooklyn field office
Of the children’s services agency
Appeared not to have visited the girl
Or her family
For months — despite indications
That she was
At risk.
Source: The New York Times, October 30, 2010
A 4-year-old Brooklyn girl
Who weighed 18 pounds
Was found
DEAD last month
With toxic levels
Of antihistamines in her system,
Her death has been ruled
A homicide.
In a criminal complaint
Filed last month, prosecutors
Outlined a litany of abuse
That they said
The girl, Marcella Pierce, suffered
In her final days
At the hands of her mother.
Ms. Brett-Pierce
Repeatedly
Struck the girl
With a belt and video box
At their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The mother
Lashed the girl to a bed
with twine
And forced her to take
blue sleeping pills,
The complaint added.
A caseworker and a supervisor
In the Brooklyn field office
Of the children’s services agency
Appeared not to have visited the girl
Or her family
For months — despite indications
That she was
At risk.
Source: The New York Times, October 30, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Still Incomplete
Found Poem #16, Still Incomplete
Being a gay, Jewish,
Nearly deaf
And an otherwise disabled dwarf from Queens
Has its advantages.
And Harry Wieder
Used every one of them.
Mr. Wieder
Who was buried Friday,
After being killed by a taxi
At age 57
Spent most waking hours
Campaigning for:
Gay rights,
Safe public housing,
Health care,
Access for the disabled
And hundreds of local lefty candidates.
What he lacked in height
He would deliver in volume.
He sometimes attended
Seven or eight meetings a day
Even if he snored his way
Through one or two of them.
He was impossible;
He was lovable;
And determined to get the affection
He was due.
The only child of Holocaust survivors,
Mr. Wieder hardly considered
His own situation a hardship.
He never complained, for example,
How difficult it was for him to walk.
But it was.
Which is probably why —
After a Community Board 3 meeting on Sunday night —
He tried to cross Essex Street
In the middle of the block.
The passing cab
Abruptly ended a life
With countless agendas
Still incomplete.
Source: The New York Times. May 1, 2010
Being a gay, Jewish,
Nearly deaf
And an otherwise disabled dwarf from Queens
Has its advantages.
And Harry Wieder
Used every one of them.
Mr. Wieder
Who was buried Friday,
After being killed by a taxi
At age 57
Spent most waking hours
Campaigning for:
Gay rights,
Safe public housing,
Health care,
Access for the disabled
And hundreds of local lefty candidates.
What he lacked in height
He would deliver in volume.
He sometimes attended
Seven or eight meetings a day
Even if he snored his way
Through one or two of them.
He was impossible;
He was lovable;
And determined to get the affection
He was due.
The only child of Holocaust survivors,
Mr. Wieder hardly considered
His own situation a hardship.
He never complained, for example,
How difficult it was for him to walk.
But it was.
Which is probably why —
After a Community Board 3 meeting on Sunday night —
He tried to cross Essex Street
In the middle of the block.
The passing cab
Abruptly ended a life
With countless agendas
Still incomplete.
Source: The New York Times. May 1, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Confessions of an Art Collector or The Best Way to be Happy
Found Poem #15: Confessions of an Art Collector or The Best Way to be Happy
While recovering
From an attack of scarlet fever
As an adolescent,
Giuseppe Panza began reading art books
Intently.
To understand new art was like
Discovering a new theory in physics,
Or a new celestial body. It was
Born of this same desire:
To know the unknown.
At the beginning
My aim was to collect
100 beautiful paintings.
Soon I had those paintings
But I could not stop
Because my desire to
Have what I liked
Was too strong.
Giuseppe often seized upon
Little-known artists
Who would later attain
Blue-chip status
And command astronomical prices:
Dan Flavin,
Donald Judd,
Mark Rothko,
Philip Guston,
Claes Oldenburg,
Robert Rauchenberg,
Roy Lichtenstein,
Carl Andre,
Richard Serra,
Bruce Nauman,
Sol Lewitt —
Collecting art
Is a necessity for me
Because everybody wants to be happy,
And I found the best way to be happy.
Source: William Grimes’s obituary of Giuseppe Panza in the New York Times, May 2, 2010
While recovering
From an attack of scarlet fever
As an adolescent,
Giuseppe Panza began reading art books
Intently.
To understand new art was like
Discovering a new theory in physics,
Or a new celestial body. It was
Born of this same desire:
To know the unknown.
At the beginning
My aim was to collect
100 beautiful paintings.
Soon I had those paintings
But I could not stop
Because my desire to
Have what I liked
Was too strong.
Giuseppe often seized upon
Little-known artists
Who would later attain
Blue-chip status
And command astronomical prices:
Dan Flavin,
Donald Judd,
Mark Rothko,
Philip Guston,
Claes Oldenburg,
Robert Rauchenberg,
Roy Lichtenstein,
Carl Andre,
Richard Serra,
Bruce Nauman,
Sol Lewitt —
Collecting art
Is a necessity for me
Because everybody wants to be happy,
And I found the best way to be happy.
Source: William Grimes’s obituary of Giuseppe Panza in the New York Times, May 2, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Found Poem #14/The Demise of THAT Rat
Found Poem #14/The Demise of THAT Rat
Susan Riley, the deputy lord mayor
Of Melbourne, Australia
Dispatched street cleaners to Holier Lane
After residents complained
About squalid conditions in an alley —
Known for its displays
Of public art.
Among the works
Was a stencil
Of a goggle-wearing rat
Created by Banksy
During a visit to Melbourne
In 2003.
The crew — instructed to
Remove all graffiti from the area —
Removed IT.
“Unfortunately the contractors
Were not made aware by us that
THAT was an important piece,”
Said Kathy Alexander, the chief executive of the city.
“And unfortunately, that means
THAT piece is gone.”
Source: The New York Times, April 29, 2010
Susan Riley, the deputy lord mayor
Of Melbourne, Australia
Dispatched street cleaners to Holier Lane
After residents complained
About squalid conditions in an alley —
Known for its displays
Of public art.
Among the works
Was a stencil
Of a goggle-wearing rat
Created by Banksy
During a visit to Melbourne
In 2003.
The crew — instructed to
Remove all graffiti from the area —
Removed IT.
“Unfortunately the contractors
Were not made aware by us that
THAT was an important piece,”
Said Kathy Alexander, the chief executive of the city.
“And unfortunately, that means
THAT piece is gone.”
Source: The New York Times, April 29, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Found Poem #12/A Man with a Knife or A Failed Romance
Found Poem #12/A Man with a Knife or A Failed Romance
At least 28 children were injured
when a man with a knife
attacked a kindergarten
in east China on Thursday morning.
Most of the victims were 4-year-olds.
Three of the children
were in critical condition.
Police said they have arrested
a 47-year-old suspect.
It comes a day
after a man with a knife
attacked 18 students and a teacher
at a primary school in south China.
Another man with a knife
stabbed eight children to death
and wounded five others
at an elementary school in east China last month
He was executed yesterday.
Authorities said he carried out the attack
because he was frustrated at
"failures in his romantic life."
Source: CNN World News, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
A Rather Ordinary Case
Found Poem #10: A Rather Ordinary Case or Why I Don’t Trust the Interpreters of God’s Word
Convicted of sorcery
And sentenced to death,
Ali Hussain Sibat of Lebanon
Has been held
In a prison in Saudi Arabia,
For more than two years.
His head is
To be chopped off
By an executioner wielding
A long, curved sword.
His crime:
Manipulating spirits,
Predicting the future,
Concocting potions
And conjuring spells
On a call-in television show
On a Lebanese channel, Scheherazade.
He was arrested in a sting operation
Staged by the religious police —
Men with long beards and ankle-length gowns —
Who technically have no authority to arrest
But wield tremendous power
In this conservative kingdom.
He was jailed after agreeing
To give a woman a potion
So that her husband would divorce
A second wife.
Several times in recent months
Mr. Sibat’s wife and his four children
Were told he would be escorted
To a public square…
For his beheading.
There has been little public outcry in Saudi Arabia
Over the case —which is considered
Rather ordinary.
“The judges think they are
The interpreters of God’s word,
And this is the whole problem in Saudi Arabia,”
Said Ibrahim al-Mugaiteeb,
Director of Human Rights First Society,
An independent monitoring group in the kingdom.
Mr. Sibat had traveled to the kingdom
On a minor pilgrimage to the city of Mecca.
Source: The New York Times, April 25, 2010
Convicted of sorcery
And sentenced to death,
Ali Hussain Sibat of Lebanon
Has been held
In a prison in Saudi Arabia,
For more than two years.
His head is
To be chopped off
By an executioner wielding
A long, curved sword.
His crime:
Manipulating spirits,
Predicting the future,
Concocting potions
And conjuring spells
On a call-in television show
On a Lebanese channel, Scheherazade.
He was arrested in a sting operation
Staged by the religious police —
Men with long beards and ankle-length gowns —
Who technically have no authority to arrest
But wield tremendous power
In this conservative kingdom.
He was jailed after agreeing
To give a woman a potion
So that her husband would divorce
A second wife.
Several times in recent months
Mr. Sibat’s wife and his four children
Were told he would be escorted
To a public square…
For his beheading.
There has been little public outcry in Saudi Arabia
Over the case —which is considered
Rather ordinary.
“The judges think they are
The interpreters of God’s word,
And this is the whole problem in Saudi Arabia,”
Said Ibrahim al-Mugaiteeb,
Director of Human Rights First Society,
An independent monitoring group in the kingdom.
Mr. Sibat had traveled to the kingdom
On a minor pilgrimage to the city of Mecca.
Source: The New York Times, April 25, 2010
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