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, March 14, 2021

More Postcards from Hell

 

from this week in March, 2014  (I was 69)

 

More Postcards from Hell

Of course there is respite

The deepest agony requires contrast

 

Up there you got pals

Down here you got mals

 

No flint no matches no butane lighters

no Irish sermons

our brimstone is ever aflame

 

They like to say there is no hope here

but they cannot dispel the obvious

If there is a just god there is always hope

 

Graffitti tends to the positive

Message charred to a chimney:

There are no lackeys here

 

Up there seven deadly sins, here:

         sloth?  can’t be lazy with nothing to do

pride?  not even in jest

         lust?  needs a hunger

         anger?  requires someone to blame

         gluttony?  you can only eat so much shit

         covetousness?  if you want what I got take it

         envy?  and you can keep whatever you are

 

Ask anyone here, “What did you do?”

Invariably they answer, “Not enough.”

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