“For the wages of sin is death… ”
Romans 6:23
The Seven Deadly Sins are old fashioned.
Punishment in the afterlife is a quaint idea.
No one takes the sin part seriously
anymore which makes sin so easy to find.
.
Greed and Pride grease the one percenters
Lust and Envy fill reality TV and court dockets.
Fast food, delivery and Netflix fuels Gluttony and Sloth.
Anger divides and conquers, filling graves.
.
Any one of those can kill you fast and hard
but the non-lethal misdemeanors
will kill you slow and soft.
We are wounded daily by a thousand unkind actions.
.
It takes a long time to die
when you are stoned with pebbles.
JeanMarie Olivieri was a business writer but now writes poetry. She has been published in several journals and anthologies. A co-organizer of Living Poetry, a large meetup group in North Carolina, she has won or placed three years in a row in the annual North Carolina Poetry Society contest. https://jeanmarieolivieri.wordpress.com/
Whispers and Echoes 
I love that last stanza!
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Thank you! I didn’t want the cliche of a thousand paper cuts so came up with that one.
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Yes, I agree with Peter. A simple stanza that made me suddenly pause for thought.
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Thank you! I’ve done my job then.
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I love the middle stanza, where she lists the Seven and, of course, seven being half fourteen this subject was made for a Sorta-sonnet and the second line “Punishment in the afterlife is a quaint idea” is just brilliant!
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Thank you Bartholomew! Kind words indeed.
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Excellent JeanMarie and spot on in today’s world! Love “we are wounded daily by a thousand unkind actions.” Being one who wears her heart on her sleeve and is very thin skinned, this line strikes a resonating chord in me for sure! 👏🏼❤️👏🏼
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Thank you Gypsie. Yes, I’m a bit thin skinned as well.
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Wow? Powerful. Well done, Jean Marie.
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Wow! Hit wrong punctuation
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A sin for every demographic. Well-crafted, JM!
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Nicely done. Especially the ending
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Simply wonderful!
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I loved this poem. So true to life that it’s sad. Loved it!
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