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!

Friday, April 15, 2022

Where Our Taxes Take Us

 

April 15, 2007  (I was 62)

 

      Where Our Taxes Take Us

Somewhere April is the bitch of months

new snow whines to ice underfoot

sloppy spring stays coyly undercover

I have lived there and chose to leave

Now tax day

the sidewalks of Pleasanton fill with flowers

lavender blown from fragrant trees

I am royalty strolling the royal path

in the vernal warmth of prosperity

 

In the green zone of Baghdad

a roadside bomb blossoms

calyx of concussive smoke

odor of purple flesh scattered

over the stones in deranged disorder

across a path none would choose to walk

where one could bless a land frozen pure

and never comprehend a path of petals

in a town where blossoms stain the gutters

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