Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts

Friday, August 27, 2010

No Hope

why oh why
what have I done
to be in a place
where there
is no hope

no food
no drink
all alone
so young

no future
no past
can't understand
forsaken

gift to mankind
possibilities
unlimited
doctor
scientist

cruelty of mankind
starvation
dying of thirst

cruelty of nature
cruelty of man

food and water
everywhere
not here
never enough
hunger constant
thirst constant
suffering constant
future is dim

I am forsaken
what have I done
death is near
end the suffering

Poem by R. Jacob Post Poetic Muses

This photograph showing a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture won Kevin Carter the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.



Photographer Haunted by Horror of His Work

Obituary: Kevin Carter 1960 - 1994
Johannesburg - Kevin Carter, the South African photographer whose image of a starving Sudanese toddler stalked by a vulture won him a Pulitzer Prize this year, was found dead on Wednesday night, apparently a suicide, police said yesterday.  He was 33.  The police said Mr Carter's body and several letters to friends and family were discovered in his pick-up truck, parked in a Johannesburg suburb.  An inquest showed that he had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Mr Carter started as a sports photographer in 1983 but soon moved to the front lines of South African political strife, recording images of repression, anti-apartheid protest and fratricidal violence.  A few davs after winning his Pulitzer Prize in April, Mr Carter was nearby when one of his closest friends and professional companions, Ken Oosterbroek, was shot dead photographing a gun battle in Tokoza township.
Friends said Mr Carter was a man of tumultuous emotions which brought passion to his work but also drove him to extremes of elation and depression.  Last year, saying he needed a break from South Africa's turmoil, he paid his own way to the southern Sudan to photograph a civil war and famine that he felt the world was overlooking.
His picture of an emaciated girl collapsing on the way to a feeding centre, as a plump vulture lurked in the background, was published first in The New York Times and The Mail & Guardian, a Johannesburg weekly.  The reaction to the picture was so strong that The New York Times published an unusual editor's note on the fate of the girl.  Mr Carter said she resumed her trek to the feeding centre.  He chased away the vulture.
Afterwards, he told an interviewer, he sat under a tree for a long time, "smoking cigarettes and crying".  His father, Mr Jimmy Carter laid last night: "Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did." - The New York Times
Source: Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 30 July 1994

Monday, May 3, 2010

Oil and Water


starts with a fire
explosion in air
people die
can't be found

rig collapse
into the deep
a mile or more

bubbling crude
rising to surface
slow death
fish birds jobs

shut off none
months to recover
food gone
save what we can

earth be damned
all about
the money
drill
baby
drill

sounds hollow
now
doesn't it

oil

and

water

don't

mix

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Finally, Is It, Cough, Time, To Stop Smoking

Friday, June 12, 2009
Finally, Is It, Cough, Time, To Stop Smoking?

watching when little
on the big screen
larger than life
macho men
pretty women
a spark then a light
smoke from the lips
one likes to be
just like the heroes
want to be like him

cowboys on the range
ruggedly handsome
the wild west vision
horses and cattle
night time glow
almost perfect
want to be like him

puff on the pipe
by jove I've got it
the game is a foot
come watson
want to be like him

school years beckon
all grown up
james dean look
one hangs from the lip
be like your friends
want to be like him

Bogart black and white
hat and raincoat
in the shadows
roll your own
tug on the ear
oh so rugged
want to be like him

people are dying
holes in throat
lungs are blackened
can't breathe anymore
gasping for air
all a lie
image was built
cartoon and macho
trick them all
hook the children
replace the dying
tough to look cool
when you lay so still
not to be like him

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