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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Saturday, July 8, 2017

There are certain waves of bad stuff


from this week in July 2013  (I was 65)

There are certain waves of bad stuff
you have to personally wade into
to get caught up and carried off
You have to make a conscious association
know on some level at least you are
on the periphery of vulnerability
So you thought you kept your distance
and only saw the bad stuff on TV
But the web of association vibrates
and the pulse in the current carries
the ripple of every stone
that strikes the surface of the grid
Associates from work die of cancer
jogging heart attack car wreck
suicide by gunshot by hanging by pills
Drunken uncle in mangled car with prostitute
Even living in a serene wooded enclave
Neighbor on one side
put a shotgun to his angry chest
Neighbor on the other side
sentenced to death then commuted to life
in San Quentin at the age of twenty-three
Threw a dope deal informant
off the San Mateo Bridge
Other stuff too  Most recently we hear
Chris who had his volcano dormant
more than thirty years moved to Thailand
to go to jail after drunkenly running his pick-up
into the motor scooter of two young girls
killing one  I leave out personal stuff
and I’m serious when I say
my life has been pretty normal
pretty suburban middle-class fortunate
it’s just that we start life
with such crock of shit expectations
the actuality can take us by surprise
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