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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Tuesday, December 3, 2019

we do good


December 3, 2006  (I was 62)

                  we do good
Waiting for the big event that directs life
is what you get from a religious childhood
where faith is more heroic than realism
Divine intervention is expected
the ears of the deaf open like flowers
sin demons leap from sanctified mouths
Boys with slings slay evil giants
virgin girls bear sons who save the world
Prophets of exclusion defile foreign nations
ceremony and sacrifice cajole the air

We are diminished by our supernatural acts
Attribute victory and defeat to angels and devils
and man is responsible for neither
Healing is of the Lord cut off the surgeons’ hands
Accept the infinity of possibility
but expect science to furnish the wings
before seraphic sproutings change the neighborhood
The good carpenter down the street
plying an honest craft in the face of vile convention
is more rare than the divine who rises from the dead
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