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, October 20, 2018

What we have we have to give


from this week in October, 2006  (I was 61)

What we have we have to give
Greed is a seed that will not digest
No platitude can survive
the cynical appetite of gluttony
We eat each other out of fear
that we will be eaten

What value resides in the currency of the past
A few collectors pay quaint dollars
for essays on morality
written a hundred fifty years ago
when the land on which we stand
knew no one like us

The dream the adult tries to realize
is out of date before the attempted fact
before the bewildered eyes of his child
to whom the symbolism is obscure
The context inaccessible
as stilted dialogue from an old movie

Better to offer the silence
hidden beneath all our progress
in the depths of a cave or mineshaft
or under the weight of water
or within the darkness of space
unoccupied and un-interpreted
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