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.


Comments Welcome!

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

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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