June 9: Hot Stuff, New Poem, Guilt

I didn't think I was going to write a new poem today, but I did.  For some reason, when I started thinking about what I was going to blog about today, the image of a comic book I used to read as a kid popped into my head.  The comic book was about a little devil boy named Hot Stuff.  He came out of the same group of comics that contained Richie Rich and Little Lotta.  For those of you who weren't exposed to these comics, I feel sorry for you.  They were great.  Anyway, Hot Stuff was always getting into trouble, as most devils do.  The whole joy of reading Hot Stuff was witnessing how he got his little tail out of these jams.

Perhaps I'm the only person, aside from my brothers and sisters, who remembers Hot Stuff, but I really loved reading his adventures.  Growing up Catholic, I was constantly engaged in worrying about right and wrong, having to go to a priest and confess my sins.  It created a good deal of stress for me.  As most kids did, when I stepped into a confessional, I made up sins.  Swearing always did in a pinch.  So did talking back to your mother.  If you didn't want to talk about what was really weighing your conscience down, you could always use those two sins.  You never talked about girls or dirty thoughts or masturbation to a priest.  That would have been like paging through a Penthouse with your grandmother.

Having attained a certain age and level of maturity, I realize how adolescent my thinking was.  But I was an adolescent at the time, so I guess that's to be expected.  The poem I wrote today is about those feelings of guilt and shame and excitement.  It's a narrative poem, and has no political aspect to it at all.  I think it does capture the struggle most boys go through at some point in their young lives.  Maybe most girls, too. 

Saint Marty has a little confession...

Silver Dollars

Sunday mornings, my dad piled

Us kids into the van, took us

To church, a place of stained glass heat

In summer, wet wool in winter.

For over an hour, we sat in wooden pews,

Went to the dark confessional,

Unloaded all our guilt.  I kept

My trespasses to myself, hid them the way

I hid my Halloween candy every year.

So no one could find it.

We listened to priests talk about

Lepers, sin dark as patent leather,

Mary the Virgin, who never did

The things girls in the magazines

Under my brother’s mattress did.

After the final hymn, we piled

Back into the van, drove

To the Clock, a diner with vinyl

Booths and silver dollar pancakes.

I ate my plate of silver dollars,

Drank a vanilla malt, topped

With whipped cream, a maraschino

Red as Hot Stuff, the comic book

Devil boy with horns and trident.

Hot Stuff never went to confession,

Did anything he wanted, learned

About right and wrong the easy way,

By sleeping in on Sundays,

Studying girls’ bodies in secret

Pages, glossy and stapled.

By eating stack upon stack

Of gold pancakes, piled

Up, buttered, seeped in syrup.

He stuffed himself until

His red belly bloated

To the size of a roasted pig,

Until his devil skin split open,

Spilled out his jackpot of crimes.

Hot Stuff couldn’t conceal his sin

The way I could on those Sunday

Mornings, in those pews, dreaming

Of girls and silver dollars.  So many.

Brown, sweet, warm, beautiful.