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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Saturday, June 20, 2020

Blunt Object


from this week in June, 2013 (I was 68)

                  Blunt Object

My grey T-shirt with the inscription “Blunt Object”
pictures an old standard black Royal typewriter
The tee is from the Newseum in Washington D.C.
On the paths of the sports park
I get a blunt stare from a woman with a big dog
Eyes turned askance from a lady with a little dog
Some puzzling grimaces I guess of exasperation
Of course many at their phones miss it
Someone my age passes by
eyes not good enough to read it
It would have been funnier in 1968
and if Nixon had seen it in ‘73
he would have said, “No shit.”

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