June 6: Being First, New Poem, Bills

One of the first things I did this morning was go online and pay some bills.  I hate doing that.  I don't know why it makes me so anxious.  Every time I pay for something over the Internet, I print out payment confirmations and numbers and receipts.  I am not of the paperless generation.  I don't trust the binary code universe that much.  My family has recently begun purchasing Kindles.  I can't give up the tactile sensation of having a book in my hands, flipping pages, smelling the paper.  I like that.  That's the same reason, I think, that I like writing checks and sending them out in envelopes.  I'm the only person in my office who doesn't have direct deposit for paychecks.  I just can't bring myself to do it.

It's a strange character trait, because I do have a blog and enjoy posting.  Much of what I put on this blog, however, starts out as scribbles in my journal.  Especially my poems.  I can't write poetry on a computer.  I need my fountain pen and Moleskine journal to write poems.  I like the ink on my fingers and the process of crossing out and revising on paper.  I'm an old-fashioned poet, I guess.

Most of my friends who are poets feel the same as I do.  Every poet I can think of always carries around a notebook/journal/diary.  I do know some fiction writers who compose solely on computer or laptop.  That genre seems to lend itself more to keyboard and monitor.  Poetry is a more hands-on art.

Today's poem was sparked by an interview I heard this morning on the BBC radio with the novelist Oscar Hijuelos.  He was introduced as the first Hispanic writer to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  I began thinking to myself, "I want to be introduced like that.  The first person to..."  I don't know what my first is going to be, but I put it on my list of things I want before I die--right up there with an iPad and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

It's been a fairly quiet day for me.  I have to take my daughter to dance tonight.  My wife called my sister up this morning.  My wife wanted to meet my sister at McDonald's with my son after his nap.  My sister didn't say "no," but she brushed my wife off.  I know the reason why.  SH was going to McDonald's with my sister.  My sister didn't want to deal with any tension.  I'm a little pissed about it.  My sister usually has more backbone than that.  However, SH has a way of manipulating situations.

The score:  Saint Marty-0, SH-1.

First

There had to be a first everything:
First dandelion, first housefly,
First hot dog, first bowl of oatmeal.
Each first, a revelation on par
With the pyramids or Grand Canyon.

I once sat in a classroom

With the first Native American

To win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction,
Listened as he wove words
Into stories bright as turquoise.

I watched the first African American

President buy chocolate for his kids,

His smile like sun on pool water.

Karol Wojtyla, first Polish pope,
Visited Detroit, said mass
At the Silverdome with the bishop
Who baptized me as a baby,
Who held me the way he held
The Bible for the pope, delicately
As a ripe peach or spun glass.

I've seen Hemingway's childhood
Home in Petoskey, walked the roads
He walked along Walloon Lake.

Hemingway hated Bill Faulkner
For winning the Nobel before him,
For being first.  He said,

“Poor Faulkner.  Does he really

Think big emotions

Come from big words?”
That's what I want.  To be a first,

Have famous people,
Like Hemingway, insult me.

But I don’t want to be Hugh Scrutton,
First victim of the Unabomber,

Or Saint Stephen, the first Christian

Martyr, killed with a shower of stone.
I prefer more pleasant firsts. 
First person to lose fifty pounds

Eating only stuffed-crust pizza.

First writer to be named

Sexiest Poet on the Planet.

Or maybe the first person

To be canonized while still alive,
So I can cash in on the title,

Cure some loved ones of leukemia,
Breast cancer.  I would use my firstness

Like that, to help my son

Pronounce his consonants,

My daughter to leap

Like a cheetah in ballet.

To still my wife’s unquiet

Thoughts in the starless night

When her mind turns on itself.

I would be there for them all.  First

Sunbeam in the Redwood morning.



First Native American to win Pulitzer for fiction