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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Monday, October 9, 2017

Goin’ crazy on the freeway of the 90’s


October 9, 1995  (I was 50)

Goin’ crazy on the freeway of the 90’s
one way no off ramp minimum allowed speed
faster than that heading west only perpendicular
to the sun too bright to know better too
indifferent to be on a car phone in Japanese
vehicle with the ambience of an ambulance
headin home

Goin’ nuts tryin to read the erratic digits
of time in light emitted from a diode fed
by a battery soon dead but still trying
to inform me it is later than I think
that I thought time could ever be
in this brief eternity on the road
headin home

Burned out laid rubber squealed tires
passed on the right and left by the oblivious
unnoticing that I am where they are hurrying
to be or not to be to be more exact
always just a little late for work for it to work
out right oblivious that the work is
headin’ home

Moon risin’ in the rear view mirror pale
rider notices vaguely half blind from refusing sun
to set confusing the mind behind the eye
seeing or not seeing behind the moon the sun
in front still reflecting off the distracted thought
of moon and sun and flying down the road
headin’ home

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