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!

Sunday, September 5, 2021

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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