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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Friday, December 3, 2021

we do good

 

December 3, 2006  (I was 62)

 

                  we do good

Waiting for the big event that directs life

is what you get from a religious childhood

where faith is more heroic than realism

Divine intervention is expected

the ears of the deaf open like flowers

sin demons leap from sanctified mouths

Boys with slings slay evil giants

virgin girls bear sons who save the world

Prophets of exclusion defile foreign nations

ceremony and sacrifice cajole the air

 

We are diminished by our supernatural acts

Attribute victory and defeat to angels and devils

and man is responsible for neither

Healing is of the Lord cut off the surgeons’ hands

Accept the infinity of possibility

but expect science to furnish the wings

before seraphic sproutings change the neighborhood

The good carpenter down the street

plying an honest craft in the face of vile convention

is more rare than the divine who rises from the dead

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