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, May 31, 2022

Change

 

May 31, 1975  (I was 30)

 

         Change

Blink eyes turn pages switch books

Go through doors fall down

manholes climb ladders

get on vehicles

spin dizzy

do drugs

lie in white beds wrestle

get your teeth fixed grow a

garden record your pulse stretch

thigh muscles with daily calisthenics

Dream of your hometown

its streets snowy springs
driving automobiles out of another winter

Correspond with strangers whose functional

letters never let you forget how

they came to be written

Go on vacation

at home don’t vote whisper

sit on your jury and hear your case

Greet expediency embrace ambiguity

order a single scoop of vanilla

say not guilty and use your napkin

Mourn the athlete who had

no time to wear honor out  Run

his track spikes daily over his grave

and over those old folks lying around it

Avoid bullets and strong tea

sodium bicarbonate is the practical antidote

and abstention is a better remedy

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