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.


Comments Welcome!

Monday, September 9, 2019

Ollie is selling axe handles


September 9, 2010  (I was 65)

Ollie is selling axe handles
   at the lumberjack convention
      guaranteed for a lifetime
         two for the price of one
            but everyone’s buying the chainsaw
               Ollie frets his misfortune
               Stanley hears the accordion sing
            a song from the thick hands
         of the black-bearded big man
      sitting on a stump
   in his checkered woolen shirt
He sees Stanley dance round the axe handle
              
-I began a series of pieces using Laurel and Hardy as
representations of right brain and left brain perception.
Not an original idea, I got it from Colin Wilson’s study,
Frankenstein’s Castle.  More appear in later posts.

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