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!

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Playing Guns


from this week in September, 2018  (I was 73)

         Playing Guns
If the barbed wire didn’t give
The fence post did
Stomping between the barbs
the wire sagged
or pulled the u-nails out
leaving a gaping eye to step through
onto iron mining company property
Even so I caught my pants
and tore a three-inch rip above the knee
along with the skin on my left thigh
not real deep but enough blood
to pretend it was a bullet wound
that just grazed not severe enough
to keep me out of combat but scarred
enough to remember the ersatz battle
sixty-five years later

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