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!

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Read us a story we’d say

 

April 7, 2013  (I was 68)

 

Read us a story we’d say

and of course we meant one each

Comic books before bed

and she would  The three of us

atop the double bed she’d read

Little Lulu, Uncle Scrooge, Daffy Duck

Maybe Superman or Batman

Real super heroes were my solitary literature

Blackhawk

an international team of ethnic Caucasian stereotypes

Andre, Olaf, Stanislaus, Hendrickson, Chuck, Blackhawk

and the non-uniformed almost mascot Chop-Chop

who carried a cleaver for a weapon

Later often amused by Archie

I would prefer Betty to snobby Veronica

and Jughead saved us all from being jugheads

We grew out of her reading and the comics

But the peaceful choice to be engaged

in little communal stories never left me 

How foolish would it be

to read them to her now, share again

small predictabilities and satisfactory conclusions

A good start for tomorrow before we ended today

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