There are men and women who enjoyed, during their lifetimes, the fruits of struggle---struggle by those we call "leftists", anarchists, socialists, communists---and they enjoyed the fruits of those struggles, without ever asking where their advantages came from.


Today those advantages, those hard won benefits, are disappearing.  And the ignorance of those who did not know their own history is no small part of the problem.  Not willful ignorance, not an ignorance chosen, but ignorance all the less---ignorance which benefits all those whose heels are crushing us now.


My Prison/My Own Personal Hell


Some call it "ElPasoTexas",
I call it Hell;
It is most of all a prison of recurrent thoughts,
fantasies of escape,
memories of life before my imprisonment.


It is a prison of repeating thoughts,
and imperfect expression,
day after day,
a bad translation,
a translation which misleads, distorts,
and betrays the emotion behind it,
which blunts the emotion and clouds the thought,
a distorting mirror.


A life of undigested thoughts and an obsession with the thought
that even I deserve better than this.