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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Sunday, September 18, 2016

emigration


September 18, 1999  (I was 54)

         emigration
The borderline is unmarked, non-linear, invisible
First crossing finds confusions
also present in the homeland
familiar feelings of minor disorientation
escalate immediately beyond manageability
swallowed to the burning neck
in a quick sucking quagmire
that allows incoherent ranting
but pins limbs too fatigued to flail
then and most cruelly refuses
to finish the job
Reduction to hopeless despair
belches release upon the new shore
in a state of redefined nothingness
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