Commando: A Poem

A man takes 10 bullets to his chest in front of his house.
A man takes a chair leg through his chest in hotel room.
A man has a large pipe thrown through him.
A man has his throat slit.
A man is impaled.
A man is scalped by a flying saw blade.
A man is axed in his groin.
A man has an arm cut off by a machete.
A man says “Slitting that little girl’s throat will be like cutting warm butter.”
A man is hit by a car and killed.
A man is dropped from the edge of a cliff.

—From IMDB’s Parent’s guide to Commando, via Austin Kleon

Limits

There is a line of Verlaine I will never remember
There is another street I can no longer walk down
There is a face in the mirror I have seen for the very last time
There is a door that is closed until the end of the world.
Among the books of my library (I am seeing them now)
There are some that will never be read.
This summer I will be fifty:
Death consumes me, constantly. 

 ---Jorge Luis Borges 

translation of Borges' 'Limites' by Rebecca Walker