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, January 19, 2019

You are in another country


January 19, 1979  (I was 34) 

You are in another country
Had I asked you to be here
you probably would have stayed
I told you to go
You are in Mexico
I don’t voluntarily go places
though I have been lured to a few
I have not gone to Mexico
I think of second marriage
You are in Mexico now
living for awhile in Mulegè
and it is January
Maybe you think of having babies
and maybe I’ll resign myself
to a life of fatherhood for your love
and hope that the price in years
is not your love
And in Mexico I imagine you toughening
like a native in the sun while I’m soft
and white as the underbelly of the U.S.
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