This Unfortunate World

This world of ours is an awfully
frantically busy place, its
inhabitants obsessed with
their various preoccupations
all geared to fulfilling aspirational
choices made of free will and
the urge to succeed, taking
little notice of the inconveniences
posed by the casual unexpected.

In Germany, fate has caught
up to destiny with a 90-year-old
former SS assassin sentenced now
to life in prison. In Bangladesh,
a man, enraged his wife did not beg
his assent as Islam decrees before
embarking on a college degree,
taped her mouth, then proceeded
to amputate her right hand
in a righteous rage of entitlement.

Twenty-six unfortunate passengers
on an overloaded boat that
capsized in Nigeria have been
recovered by authorities. Among
the dead, a 6-year-old child. Of
those rescued who lived, was a woman
who proceeded into childbirth in a
successful full term pregnancy.

In Japan, a precocious one-year-old
toddler demonstrated his cool
mettle by directing his plummeting
body into shrubbery after his father
deliberately discarded the child at
their apartment's 10th story height.
The child, face scratched, wept in
disfavour of the peculiar new game
his father introduced to their union.

Finally, at a New York-based,
high-profile advertising agency,
two elevator occupants stood by as
another woman accessed the elevator
incompletely, her body only half
within as the door slid closed and the
elevator ascended, crushing its
unfortunate almost-passenger.