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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Thursday, May 31, 2018

Change


May 31, 1975  (I was 30)

            Change
Blink eyes turn pages switch books
Go through doors fall down
manholes climb ladders
get on vehicles
spin dizzy
do drugs
lie in white beds wrestle
get your teeth fixed grow a
garden record your pulse stretch
thigh muscles with daily calisthenics
Dream of your hometown
its streets snowy springs
driving automobiles out of another winter
Correspond with strangers whose functional
letters never let you forget how
they came to be written
Go on vacation
at home don’t vote whisper
sit on your jury and hear your case
Greet expediency embrace ambiguity
order a single scoop of vanilla
say not guilty and use your napkin
Mourn the athlete who had
no time to wear honor out  Run
his track spikes daily over his grave
and over those old folks lying around it
Avoid bullets and strong tea
sodium bicarbonate is the practical antidote
and abstention is a better remedy
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