I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Sunday, October 20, 2019

We rely on hypocrisy to save the world


from this week in October 2014  (I was 69)

We rely on hypocrisy to save the world
Were all who declare devotion actually practitioners
we’d have a chaos of justified warfare
to establish one theocracy or another
It is uncivilized to sanction brutality
except in the name of business
We leave the butchery to the ignorant and the poor
who best interpret canonical law in pictures
or metaphor lurid enough to be thought literal
Wealthy nations have their armies
They sell their enemies outmoded weapons
so instead the foes make missiles of themselves
and believe the fables of celestial bliss
that promise forbidden fruits of the un-ripened mind
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