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!

Sunday, November 6, 2022

I know people are afraid to speak

 

from this week in 2010  (I was 66)

 

I know people are afraid to speak

about the unspeakable and unmentionable

knowing it will put them on a list

that will impede or even restrict travel

To question makes them sympathizers

to associate makes them guilty

vulnerable to detachment

and government claims that they are one of them

or at least complicit dupes

Even to research or inquire rouses suspicion

It’s McCarthyism without a name

Categories of lists intersect electronically

I know people who won’t vote

afraid to mention suspected impropriety

places them on another list waiting to be counted

The government is only Little Brother

Secret Agencies Corporate Entities

International Banking Privatized Armies

Mythical Job Markets employing from lists

buy educated employees with pennies and threats

A class kept in poverty as a buffer

from the starving class they will be required to eradicate

While those whose job it is to deflect taxes

Wiki-leak their open admiration

for the Smartest Men In The Enron Room

whose only mistake was getting on a list

 

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