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, July 14, 2019

One by one I’ve slammed the doors


from this week in July 2017  (I was 72)

One by one I’ve slammed the doors
and had them slammed back at me
Mocking sounds curiously unfinal
as if there was something more to be heard
that no one cares to say
insincere admissions of guilt
humorous clinging to hopeless hopes
that any perception might be commonly shared
Without that achievements are meaningless
Our lives have become
petty failures of imagined magnitude
The result of unreasonable expectations
we did not deserve to have
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