Foreward
a few years ago i started writing poetry; for what reason i couldn’t tell you. maybe i’m hunting something. maybe something is hunting me. i’m not from the elite poetry circles. i’m not high society. i grew up poor and feel just as at home fighting in an alleyway someplace or sneaking up behind you at an ATM. so i hope (for your sake) that this whole poetry thing works out. but now, when people find out that i write poetry they more often than not ask: “what do you write about?” when challenged with this question i’m forever at a loss and usually end up responding: “everything, sort of.” well this time around i can cleanly say “the third world” and be done with it. no explanation needed, i hope.
in April i traveled to Thailand in order to write Dispatches from the Third World. as some of you newspaper readers already know the country is going through yet another civil conflict. military men patrol the streets with automatic rifles, protesters have been killed, cars burned, a political leader was nearly assassinated, the ex president has been exiled. at least the king is still sitting pretty on his golden cushy throne. so then the crowd asks: “why no poems about the revolution?” well here it is. i don’t give a freckled shit about the revolutionaries or their ephemeral ideals. this kingdom has a revolution every six months and i’m not swallowing it. nobody can tell asshole from mouth. sooner or later the revolution becomes the new oppression – the anarchists become the bureaucrats. and ain’t that the way it always goes? yes it is, yes it is. Marx a million times over couldn’t change it.
what you will find in this book is a small collection of autobiographical poems which were experienced, written, edited, and published all within two months. the poems you’ll find here arrived in brutal fashion and were written on initial impulse. most of the material included in this chap was written within two incredibly long weeks. i suppose that makes Dispatches unique, at least in terms of the delay between author (me) and reader (you), which, in this case, is very diminutive. this book is dedicated to other people –
a few years ago i started writing poetry; for what reason i couldn’t tell you. maybe i’m hunting something. maybe something is hunting me. i’m not from the elite poetry circles. i’m not high society. i grew up poor and feel just as at home fighting in an alleyway someplace or sneaking up behind you at an ATM. so i hope (for your sake) that this whole poetry thing works out. but now, when people find out that i write poetry they more often than not ask: “what do you write about?” when challenged with this question i’m forever at a loss and usually end up responding: “everything, sort of.” well this time around i can cleanly say “the third world” and be done with it. no explanation needed, i hope.
in April i traveled to Thailand in order to write Dispatches from the Third World. as some of you newspaper readers already know the country is going through yet another civil conflict. military men patrol the streets with automatic rifles, protesters have been killed, cars burned, a political leader was nearly assassinated, the ex president has been exiled. at least the king is still sitting pretty on his golden cushy throne. so then the crowd asks: “why no poems about the revolution?” well here it is. i don’t give a freckled shit about the revolutionaries or their ephemeral ideals. this kingdom has a revolution every six months and i’m not swallowing it. nobody can tell asshole from mouth. sooner or later the revolution becomes the new oppression – the anarchists become the bureaucrats. and ain’t that the way it always goes? yes it is, yes it is. Marx a million times over couldn’t change it.
what you will find in this book is a small collection of autobiographical poems which were experienced, written, edited, and published all within two months. the poems you’ll find here arrived in brutal fashion and were written on initial impulse. most of the material included in this chap was written within two incredibly long weeks. i suppose that makes Dispatches unique, at least in terms of the delay between author (me) and reader (you), which, in this case, is very diminutive. this book is dedicated to other people –
other people with faces that are
black, white, brown, yellow,
and the faces that are faces.
-Ananda Osel
Bangkok, Thailand
June 1, 2009
Bangkok, Thailand
June 1, 2009
