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!

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

What we have we have to give

 

from this week in October, 2006  (I was 61)

 

What we have we have to give

Greed is a seed that will not digest

No platitude can survive

the cynical appetite of gluttony

We eat each other out of fear

that we will be eaten

 

What value resides in the currency of the past

A few collectors pay quaint dollars

for essays on morality

written a hundred fifty years ago

when the land on which we stand

knew no one like us

 

The dream the adult tries to realize

is out of date before the attempted fact

before the bewildered eyes of his child

to whom the symbolism is obscure

The context inaccessible

as stilted dialogue from an old movie

 

Better to offer the silence

hidden beneath all our progress

in the depths of a cave or mineshaft

or under the weight of water

or within the darkness of space

unoccupied and un-interpreted

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