From the small towns and county seats of rural and suburban America come -- yet more police blotter haiku.
I still can't help myself. Those tersely-written columns of short crime items from newspapers in towns where little ever happens -- they just beg to be boiled down into seventeen-syllable poems. So I do.
A friend told me he'd like the haiku better if he could see the police blotter items that inspired them. So I've included them (in italics). Let me know if you like the haiku better with or without the original blotter articles. And as always, enjoy.
They never did find
the woman who was being
chased by feral dogs.
1:20 a.m. — A woman from the 18000 block of Joad Road reported she was being chased by a large pack of 20 to 25 wild dogs. She could not be located.
Christmas ornaments.
Shattered, scattered 'cross the road.
No dreams survived it.
8:33 p.m. A box fell from the back of a truck traveling along Highway Three, scattering an assortment of broken Christmas ornaments across the road.
He was punched not just
in the head or stomach, but
In the post office
1:46 p.m. The Wingsdale Post Office was the unlikely scene of one man punching another man.
Man and wife fighting.
Assault with a rolling pin.
It’s over -- for now.
11:46 a.m. A resident reported that his neighbors were fighting and yelling and that the woman was armed with a rolling pin. Deputies separated the couple for the night.
He greeted police
with a smile and a soft drink.
But they knew him well.
Multiple Blue Street residents reported a man in a red tank top darting across their porches and lurking around their houses. When police arrived, the prowler, holding a bottle of Mountain Dew, a Coke can and a tape measure, approached them with a smile on his face. Officers recognized the man coming from the backside of a building, “from the numerous dealings we have had with him.” He was arrested for burglary.
The "obscenities"
scrawled on your car aren't obscene.
And they wash off, too.
5:53 a.m. Someone reported his vehicle had been spray painted with obscenities during the night. Deputies pointed out that the words in question were not actually obscenities and that removable paint had been used.
A suicide note:
Left in a library book
for strangers to read.
7/13/10 2:56 p.m. A possible suicide note was found in a library book, in which a juvenile female wrote that she was going to kill herself by taking pills.
He took off months ago.
Now he’s back and just can’t see
why she changed the locks.
Police went to an Washington Street home where a guy “wanted in his residence to speak with his wife about what is going on and why she changed the locks on the doors.” His wife said that’s because he’s been gone for over two months, she filed for divorce and “she is not going to let him in.”
Their child fell down the
stairs but landed on the dog.
No word on the dog.
A caller reported that a child had fallen down the stairs and landed on the family dog.
A tattoo parlor
that wouldn't do swastikas?
It angered racists.
A tattoo parlor employee called police when a group of men became upset because he would not tattoo swastikas on them.
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9 comments:
Boomer
Here is an excellent source for your Haiku. This is my favorite Thursday reading material. One week a woman reported being raped after she woke up naked in her car after a night on the town. Of course she could not remember how she got to her car, how she lost her clothes, nor with whom she had sex.
The town of Espanola, NM reminds me of Cannery Row without Doc.
Forrest
Opps - forgot to attach the link!
http://www.riograndesun.com/articles/2010/07/26/cops_courts/doc4c4708602a970625105595.txt
Forrest:
Thanks, but too much on the raw side for me. It's really a tragedy and a degradation. Stories like that are not, believe it or not, hard to find. If you think that's raw, take a look at blotter articles in Florida. Lord!
My take on these haiku is and has always been the zen/congnitive dissonance approach. As in: this happened, but what else did you expect? Or, why have you let your perceptions cloud the reality? Or, how have you limited yourself? I'm seeing more and more stories about people who, say, don't hear from an elderly friend for a few days and call the cops to check on her -- only to find a note on the door saying, "I'll be gone for a few days." People keeping themselves at a disconnect even from people they care about. These are the directions I'm going in, and you find them mainly in small towns or the 'burbs.
Oh, there's some real crime, more of it in this last set than others. But the haiku are mainly about people not too much different than you and I who just, well, throw a rod in some interesting way. Or people who aren't like you and me who get upset about things we wouldn't even image.
Thanks for the link, though, and I will look over there.
When I saw this story in our local paper, I wondered how you'd distill its essence:
"A Buddhist beneficiary who could not bear to have a cat euthanised when it was disabled and in pain has been prosecuted for failing to provide the animal with adequate veterinary care.
Alan Chant, 61, was discharged without conviction after pleading guilty to two charges part way through a defended hearing in the Christchurch District Court.
They had been laid by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Chant admitted failing to ensure that the physical health and behavioural needs of the neutered male cat were met, and failing to ensure it got veterinary care.
The cat, Blackie, was among up to 40 homeless cats he has been feeding daily for nine years.
The animal was seized from Chant's property last September, under a search warrant, after an SPCA officer spotted its condition."
It's a koan already, isn't it?
Otepoti:
I agree, that's a koan and a good one.
Here's a short haiku.
Buddhist, he could not
kill a cat to end its pain.
"Nothing"'s a hard road.
Boomer, apt poet,
Your haiku is masterful.
I applaud your skill.
Thank you, Otepoti
I further applaud your skill. To the point that I think the source material actually diminishes the art.
I'll confess to having been curious about the source articles behind the haiku, but now, somehow, I find the experience diminished by their presence; the mystery and multitude of possibilities attending each haiku extinguished by facts, and, face it, the leaden prose of the small town blotter.
Michael, I must admit I'd rather run them without. But I was getting some feedback from people who were curious about the source material. Glad to get your feedback as well. I'm now including the source story for only some.
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