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!

Saturday, November 20, 2021

Cats in the carnival game

 

from this week in 2018  (I was 74)

 

Cats in the carnival game to be toppled

off their fence by baseballs thrown

by rubes three for a quarter  Three cats

upset to win a stuffed bear your choice

of plushy colors hung about the tented concession

Cats so easily tumbled by tosses

casually pitched by the pitchman yeowling

“Three pussies down and you pluck the one

your girlfriend wants to cuddle”

You plunk down enough quarters to buy a bear

before she leads you out of there empty-handed

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