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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Sunday, May 26, 2019

This small discipline


May 26, 1974  (I was 29)

This small discipline
The little monk
kneels in sealed rooms
to pray away various dooms
He expects enlightenment
He expects a vision to shatter his brown world
a gift of tongues a voice of fire
He chants the sun and forecasts rain

What is this practice of limited ingestion
these weeks of rice and lettuce and cheese
this fine attunement of visceral media
manipulating wavelengths of the nervous system

What is this small carpet from which to see the world
this drifting lily pad this flying prayer rug
from which to flick a sticky tongue at sustenance
Ritual diet floating in the middle of a ripple
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