Perfection, Chapter One

Three Years Later The First Day Nones “He’s crazy,“ Geraut said. He was hunched next to Jannequin, both of them wrapped in their cloaks with their hoods pulled down to their noses, backs against the rough front slats of the cart, trying to doze as the old mule plodded along. Eastertide had come late that

Hymn To The Sun

Hymn To The Sun (excerpt) How manifold it is, what thou hast made! They are hidden from the face (of man). O sole god, like whom there is no other! Thou didst create the world according to thy desire, Whilst thou wert alone: All men, cattle, and wild beasts, Whatever is on earth, going upon

Two Horror Stories

Short Horror Story The last person on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock on the door. Shorter Horror Story The last person on Earth sat in a room. There was a lock on the door. – Harlan Ellison. 1934-2018

Socialism

SOCIALISM I agreed with every principle Bernie Sanders advanced during his presidential run, and I was sorry when he dropped out. But I wasn’t surprised. He was elected to the Senate as a Democratic Socialist, and the majority of Americans have always been leery of socialism, because it sounds like a sneakier form of communism.

i sing of Olaf glad and big

i sing of Olaf glad and big whose warmest heart recoiled at war: a conscientious object-or his wellbeloved colonel trig westpointer most succinctly bred) took erring Olaf soon in hand; but–though an host of overjoyed noncoms(first knocking on the head him)do through icy waters roll that helplessness which others stroke with brushes recently employed anent

Pharmacopaeia

To paraphrase Dorothy’s line in The Wizard of Oz, “Acid and reefer and coke, oh, my!” (Well, Dorothy knew something about drugs – think of what happened to her in the poppy field.) I doubt if too many Americans of my generation got through the 1960s and early ‘70s without fooling around with various forms

Cooking Disasters

COOKING DISASTERS The worst meals I ever ate, I cooked myself, because I had to. My mother cranked out food reluctantly and ineptly when I was a child, and in boarding school, college and the Army, meals were also laid on. They were all swill, but there was plenty of it, and I wasn’t picky.