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.


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Monday, June 6, 2022

D-Day

 

June 6, 1969  (I was 24)

 

D-Day

Men met in bars

to again take up

the question of why

they did not die.

 

Their sweetest eyes

were not punctured like purple grapes;

they were not buoyed-up

by lungs knotted at the throat.

 

Now beads of sweat crystal

in their few black hair;

they nod and muscle shut their lips.

Between tender sips of old-fashioned

their eyes clank among the cubes.

 

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