A week ago "ammo box" was not a part of my vernacular.
Now it has become an obsession, all because of poetry.
Seriously - what is better ammunition against all that is wrong with the world than Poetry?
Last week on a spontaneous road trip to Fresno looking for materials to make more Bakersfield Viking Chorus Gear/Art my eyes landed on a big stack of Ammo Boxes.
Here we were in an old school, tight-to-squeeze through, smells like bullets, sweat and the lodge at your first sleepaway camp surplus store and just before we checked out I saw them there. "What are those?" I asked.
"Ammo boxes." I looked. And kept looking. And asked how much.
"Nine dollars."
I decided I had to have one. Seymour said, "Look through them, get one you really like."
I thought it was like seen one ammo box, seen them all but then I paid attention and found not only ANY ammo box, but one that was used by the troops of the U.N. One that didn't have any old incendiary device, but hand grenades. I know, it seems very much an oxymoron, the UN Peacekeepers and Hand grenades and perhaps this is why I was struck over the head with the idea of Poety Ammo Boxes. Words as the most potent incendiary devices of all. Perhaps I had a subconscious flashback to the artful marble proclamation outside the U.N (where I studied in my Senior Year at UOP) from the book of Isaiah, "hey will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."
Whatever it was, I decided to transform Ammo Boxes from Military Surplus into Poetry Ammo Boxes. The applications are endless and while I have yet to finish one, I simply had to share the beginnings of this creative adventure.
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