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 16, 2019

You could be known


May 16, 2009  (I was 64)

You could be known by the things
you did not write about.  If you wrote
thoughtfully about something you thought
about things of which you did not write.
Composition is what it is called.  Composing
is what you do when you don’t
choose certain thoughts or certain words
because they are uncertain.  Uncertainty
in meaning or how the meaning is perceived
is taken into consideration when things are unchosen.
This does not mean the unchosen ones
are not revealed.  Their invisibility
is a strong presence in every written line.
They express the doubt the indecision
the fear the disgust the nakedness
the unspeakable truth you do not want
to reveal.  Watch what you do not say.
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