April 12, 2025: “Infinite Bliss,” Resist with Happiness, “Palm Sunday in Bliss, Idaho, at the Miracle Hot Springs”

Happiness is always fleeting.  A good meal with a person you love.  An unexpected hug from your 16-year-old son.  A warm spring day at the beginning of April.  Eventually, all the food will be eaten.  Your son will disappear into his bedroom again.  Footprints of snow will fill the air with winter again.

Yet, those brief moments of bliss are miracles when they appear.

Sharon Olds writes about moments of bliss . . . 

Infinite Bliss

by: Sharon Olds

When I first saw snow cover the air

with its delicate hoofprints, I said I would never

live where it did not snow, and when

the first man tore his way into me,

and tore up the passageway,

and came to the small room, and pulled the

curtain aside that I might enter, I knew I could

never live apart from them

again, the strange race of their massive

bloodied hooves.  Today we lay in our

small bedroom, dark gold with

reflected snow, and while the flakes climbed

delicately down the sky, you 

came into me, pressing aside

the curtain, revealing the small room,

dark gold with reflected snow,

where we lay, and where you entered me and

pressed the curtain aside, revealing

the small room, dark gold with

reflected snow, where we lay.

In the poem, Olds is convinced she can’t live without snow or the attention of men.  Because both bring her bliss.  I understand where Olds is coming from.  The first time I tasted the body of another person, I knew I couldn’t ever live without it again.  Ditto for chocolate and poetry and Star Wars and cradling my infant daughter and son in my arms.  You hold onto bliss as long and as hard as you can.

Today was a really good day.  Sure, 47 is still President of the United States.  Yes, there is snow predicted in the coming days.  Easter week is upon us, which, for church musicians, means a whole lot of worship and not much sleep.  However, today was . . . blissful.

My wife and I slept in.  We took our puppy for a couple long walks.  I played the pipe organ for a Palm Sunday Mass at my home church.  Then, I took my wife out on a dinner date.  We ate and talked about the state of the world and country and politics and friends and family.  When we got home, I got in my pajamas and worked on a new poem (the one included below).

Now, this bliss isn’t going to last.  I know that.  Something will come along to fuck it up.  That’s just life.  But tonight, sitting on my couch, typing this blogpost, I accept the miracle of bliss.  Yes, I said miracle.  Lots of people would say that walking your dog or spending time with a loved one or feeling the sun on your face are not miracles, but they really are.

Tomorrow, I have to play two church services in the morning.  In the afternoon, I’m going to be reading poetry at a local venue.  Then, in the evening, I’ll be leading a poetry workshop.  For me, those are all miracles, too, because they bliss me out.  

I know the world right now is difficult, especially in the United States.  However, I refuse to walk around in fear and anger every waking moment.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to hide my head in the sand.  I can be aware of all the abuses of the U.S. Constitution and civil rights and human decency, but I won’t give surrender joy.  Joy is a bigger weapon than violence or hatred or vitriol.

So, resist with happiness.  Revolt with joy.  Protest with miracles.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about miracles for today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem that begins In Bliss, Idaho, at the Miracle Hot Springs . . .  What might happen to a speaker in such a place?  Perhaps she finds true happiness and witnesses divine grace, but she might just as easily encounter obstacles that prevent either, such as a mosquito swarm or throngs of tourists wearing Snoopy t-shirts.  Share all the quirky details with your reader.

Palm Sunday in Bliss, Idaho, at the Miracle Hot Springs

by:  Martin Achatz

We the faithful smother ourselves in mud,

press it into foot ulcers, swallow handfuls

to quell indigestion and stomach cancers,

drop it into eyes clouded with cataracts, 

brush teeth and scrub bald heads with it

because we crave miracles.  In Lourdes, 

disciples come in wheelchairs, on stretchers, 

wait to bathe in the grotto’s water, be cleansed

of twisted limbs and broken hearts.  In Bliss,

the alkaline spring simmers at 106 degrees

Fahrenheit, but the Virgin Mary has never

made a personal appearance here.  Yet we still

baptize ourselves until our skin shouts hosannas 

as the sun rides its donkey across cornflower 

heavens toward the waiting arms, willing 

body of beautiful and miraculous night.

April 5, 2025: "Monarchs," Butterfly Moment, "Things I Learned About Politics from My Dad"

Some moments in life change you irreversibly.  Kindergarten.  First crush and kiss.  High school graduation.  First sex.  College.  Weddings.  Funerals.  Parenthood.  Serious illness.

There's the old saying that the only constant in life is change.  As much as I would have liked to stay chronologically around 25 or 30 years old, time marches on, bringing all kinds of transformations.  Chrysalis into butterfly.  Butterfly into sunlight.

Sharon Olds has a butterfly moment . . . 

Monarchs

by: Sharon Olds

          (for P. W.)

All morning, as I sit, thinking of you,

the Monarchs are passing.  Seven stories up,

to the left of the river, they are making their way

south, their wings the dry red of

your hands like butchers' hands, the raised

veins of their wings like your scars.

I could scarcely feel your massive rough

palms on me, your touch was so light,

the chapped scrape of an insect's leg

across my breast.  No one had ever

touched me before.  I didn't know enough to

open my legs, but felt your thighs,

feathered with red, gold hairs,

          opening

between my legs

like a pair of wings.

The hinged print of my blood of your thighs--

a winged creature, pinned there--

and then you left, as you were to leave

over and over, the butterflies moving

in masses past my window, floating

south to their transformation, crossing over

boarders in the night, the diffuse blood-red

cloud of them, my body under yours,

the beauty and silence of the great migrations.

Olds seems to be writing about her first sexual experience--something intimate and universal at the same time.  There's great beauty in what she says.  However, there's also fear and violence mixed in, as well.  I suppose any "first" conjures up these kinds of mixed emotions.

You've probably noticed that I haven't been posting much recently.  I've been finding it difficult these days to put any thoughts on a page/screen.  The reasons are manifold (writer's block, busyness, exhaustion), but they all boil down to one thing:  truth is stranger than fiction or poetry these days.  Each morning, when I perform my first doom scroll, I don't feel inspired to create anything.  Rather, doing this makes me lose focus, enrages, shocks, and embarrasses me.  

Hence, I've been spending most of my days and evenings doing anything to distract myself from this American horror story, mostly by binging seasons of television cooking shows.  Or watching movies I've already seen 500 times.  Or just laying down and closing my eyes.

Of course I have political thoughts.  Yes, I'm worried that Constitutional freedom of speech is going the way of the dodo.  Certainly, the mass deportations sicken me.  Sure, I get physically ill when I read about college students being disappeared for writing an op-ed criticizing #47.   And let's not forget what else is joining the endangered species list now:  the money in my retirement accounts.

So, I've been distracted quite a bit by the collapse of democracy in the United States.  That's why I haven't been blogging or writing much.  I try not to talk politics much during the day.  I'm not afraid of expressing my opinions.  Just ask my wife.  But I'm not a political poet for the most part, and, in my jobs for the library and university, I'm supposed to remain non-partisan.  

Today, however, I was asked by a good friend to speak at the Hands Off protest in Marquette, Michigan.  My topic:  the dismantling of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the spending freeze of its grants and awards.  Over 3,500 people showed up and marched and chanted and cheered.  (To put that into perspective:  that's about 1/10 of the entire population of the city.)  There were seniors and kids, college students and military veterans, tribal leaders and poets.

Now, by nature I'm an introvert.  I know that's hard to believe.  My jobs require me to do a lot of public speaking, and I love interacting with audience members at events I attend and/or host.  As I stood listening to the speakers and performers before me this afternoon, I found myself becoming quite anxious.  These individuals knew how to fire up a crowd.  Generally, very few people chant and cheer at poetry readings.  (Perhaps this should change?)

Eventually, my friend called me to the mic, and I climbed the ramp to speak, looked out at the crowd, and opened my mouth.  I can't remember exactly what I said or how I said it.  I had my facts and talking points.  Had gone over them.  And over them.  And over them.  Until they were like breath.  So, when the words started coming out of my mouth, it was almost like singing a song from the 1980s.  I didn't really have to think all that much.  Of course, I ended with a poem.  

And people cheered and laughed and applauded.  If you've never had over three thousand people screaming and clapping for you, I highly recommend the experience.

Of course, the message I was delivering was much more important than the messenger.  I was there to ask people to support their libraries and museums and arts organizations.  That's it.  It's not a controversial message.  Everyone (Democrats, Republicans, straight, LGBTQIA+, citizens, immigrants) benefits from these resources.  

I spoke up and out.  Visited with the a few of the rally's attendees.  Grabbed a cookie.  Left.  It felt good.  Hopeful even.  It changed me.

If we have a presidential election in four years, and a Democrat wins, I think I would make a pretty good inaugural poet.  

Saint Marty wrote about this butterfly moment in his life tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem in which every line begins with the words I remember . . .  Here are some sample lines to help inspire you:  I remember the giant Modess sign on the lawn where we watched fireworks / I remember asking my mother "what's a tampon?" (she did not answer).  For further inspiration, check out Joe Brainard's book, I Remember.  Aim to use fresh, personal, and unexpected language in your poem as you repeat I remember at the opening of every line.

Things I Learned About Politics from My Dad

by: Martin Achatz

I remember him taking me to the John Birch Society

     bookstore some nights, where he would vanish

     into the backroom to listen to someone speak

     while I read Nancy Drew books.

I remember I loved Nancy, her tight-fitting

     sweaters, the mysteries of the melting coins

     or the disappearing diamonds or galloping

     ghost bus.

I remember the radio in the corner playing

     "Wipe Out," its insane laugh, driving drums,

     how I bobbed my head, slapped my fingers

     against my knees, imagined Nancy twisting

     and grinding and jiggling in front of me.

I remember plates of bagels by the store's cash

     register, an old (to me) Black janitor wearing

     a Pearl Harbor baseball cap handing me

     an Asiago dripping with cream cheese,

     telling me how his son loved Nancy Drew,

     too, but was killed by Viet Cong 

     in country, even though I had no idea

     where "in country" was.

I remember my dad collecting me after

     the backroom speaker was done,

     him so angry, talking all the way

     home about commies and pinkos

     and Jimmy Carter.

I remember wondering, in my bed at night,

     if I was a pinko for dreaming of Nancy

     naked while the janitor's son stared up

     at strange, alien stars and surrendered 

     his last breath.

I remember how, when my dad was dying,

     he looked like he was marching

     off to war in his hospital bed,

     his legs kicking, moving,

     his face a loaded gun.

I remember thinking to myself

     this was a case for Nancy Drew--

     The Mystery of the Father's Ghost--

     my dad storming the Pearly Gates,

     trying to Make Heaven Great Again.

     

March 24, 2025: "Station," Daily Magic, "You Can't Get Blood from a Turnip"

I never go anywhere without my journal and fountain pens, because you just never know when a poem might magically materialize in front of your eyes.  It could be a fingernail of moon in a morning sky.  Or a blueberry pancake made with last summer's berries that still taste of sun and sand.  Or an angel buried in snow up to its wings.

Sharon Olds conjures poems out of thin air . . . 

Station

by: Sharon Olds

Coming in off the dock after writing,
I approached the house,
and saw your fine grandee face
lit by a lamp with a parchment shade
the color of flame.

An elegant hand on your beard. Your tapered
eyes found me on the lawn. You looked
as the lord looks down from a narrow window
and you are descended from lords. Calmly, with no
hint of shyness, you examined me,
the wife who runs out on the dock to write
as soon as one of the children is in bed,
leaving the other to you.

                                            Your thin
mouth, flexible as an archer’s bow,
did not curve. We spent a long moment
in the truth of our situation, the poems
heavy as poached game hanging from my hands.

I love this image of a young Olds sneaking away to write poems at the end of the day, after her kids are in bed and the world is drifting into night.  Gone are the days where rich patrons simply paid poets to write, providing money and housing and such.  Instead, poets are busy parents and professors and doctors and insurance adjusters.  As Olds describes, poets cobble together writing times from stolen moments.

Me?  I think about poetry all the time.  Sort of the same way that my dad, who was a licensed plumbing contractor for close to 70 years, always noticed bathroom fixtures and faucets and copper or lead piping.  If you’re passionate about what you do, you will bring that passion to almost every other aspect of your life.  So, when I see a spiderweb in the corner of a room, my first impulse isn’t to grab a broom or dust cloth and eliminate it.  My first impulse is to stare at it, take a picture of it, take out my journal and write about it.  

I see a muddle puddle rainbowed with and oil slick, and there's a poem.  Snow melting to reveal piles of dog shit in the backyard:  poem.  First dandelion in the spring:  poem.  A wonderful piece of pecan pie:  poem.  An eagle crashing into Lake Superior to snatch a fish:  poem.  Every breath of every day:  poems and poems and poems.

For me, poetry is the magic that fuels my waking (and sometimes sleeping) hours.  I can't imagine a day without it.  Neither can Olds.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight that is a little tricky (pun intended), based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1874, magician Harry Houdini was born.  Write a poem about a magician's trick or a poem where you are the magician or magician's assistant.  Think of all the details that make up a magic show--the bunny in the hat, the doves, the sawing in half of a body, the lights, the smoke, the effects--and include your favorite details in your poem.

You Can't Get Blood from a Turnip

by: Martin Achatz

my dad used to say when I was

a kid, usually if I asked for money

or something too extravagant for him

and my mom to get me.  I once wanted

a kit of magic, tricks that included

a plastic top hat with secret compartments,

handkerchiefs that tied themselves in knots,

a finger guillotine that never amputated

thumb or pinkie despite its razored edge.

No rabbit--just a stuffed toucan, spring-

loaded, that jumped out of the hat

like it was escaping a circle of hell

where toucans were forced to eat

sins until their stomachs bloated,

feathers smoked, bills melted like

popsicles on a July afternoon.

                         I never got my top hat with 

toucan and Chinese rings the joined,

unjoined the way my brother coupled,

uncoupled with girls as easy as breathing.

My dad shook his head when I complained

about the lack of magic in my life, intoning

that phrase about root vegetables and bodily fluids,

as if that explained all the injustices of the world.

March 22, 2025: "The Sisters of Sexual Treasure," Worst, "True or False"

We all create our own versions of the truth.  That's just the way the human mind works.  My truth is different from your truth is different from Donald Trump's truth.  Okay, Donald wouldn't recognize the truth if it walked up and bit him in the ass, so perhaps that's not a good comparison.  But you understand what I mean.  Truth is a slippery creature.

Sharon Olds writes discuses some truths about her sister and herself . . . 

The Sisters of Sexual Treasure

by: Sharon Olds

As soon as my sister and I got out of our
mother's house, all we wanted to
do was fuck, obliterate
her tiny sparrow body and narrow
grasshopper legs. The men's bodies
were like our father's body! The massive
hocks, flanks, thighs, male
structure of the hips, knees, calves–
we could have him there, the steep forbidden
buttocks, backs of the knees, the cock
in our mouth, ah the cock in our mouth.
                       Like explorers who
discover a lost city, we went
nuts with joy, undressed the men
slowly and carefully, as if
uncovering buried artifacts that
proved our theory of the lost culture:
that if Mother said it wasn't there,
it was there.

Basically, Olds and her sister are rebelling against their upbringing--religiously strict (both her parents being "hellfire Calvinists"), sheltered, sexually repressed, emotionally and physically abusive.  Once they are freed from those shackles, they wallow in all the behaviors that their mother and father discouraged.

I don't think I ever rebelled as strongly against my upbringing.  Sure, I stopped attending Mass for a few years after I graduated from high school.  Yes, I may have consumed more than my fair share of illicit substances during that time (mainly weed).  No, I didn't go sexually crazy.  (Given the opportunity, I probably would have.)  Compared to Olds girls, my initial forays into adulthood were pretty tame.  Boring even.

Of course, that’s how I remember that time in my life.  Someone else who knew me in my undergraduate days may have totally different recollections.  Perhaps I was completely out of control.  Maybe I was a complete dick to some people.  Or, conversely, perhaps I was the model student, non-confrontational and hardworking.  (I did graduate summa cum laude, so . . . there is that.). My guess is that I was somewhere in between those two polarities.  

My point is that memory, I think, is a combination of truth and wishful thinking.  Verifiable fact and exaggeration/outright lies.  I truly believe that Donald Trump, as he’s standing in front of a microphone, actually believes the shit that is coming out of his mouth.  In his addled mind, he thinks he’s the best President of the United States since Abraham Lincoln.  Hell, he probably thinks he’s better than Abe.  If you tell lies about yourself your whole life, eventually, you’re going to have a hard time sifting fact from fiction.

I’m not saying life is a True/False quiz.  Far from it.  Life (and memory) are more nuanced than that.  There’s all kinds of gray areas, and it’s in those spaces that we all exist.  We’re the greatest poets in the world, AND the shittiest poets in the world.  The best President of the United States, AND the worst President of the United States.  Mike Brady, AND Al Bundy.  We’re the best AND worst versions of ourselves, depending on the day, time, and circumstance.

Currently, I’m the worst blogger in the world.  AND the best.

Saint Marty wrote this poem tonight about the unreliability of memory, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem where every line but one is a lie.  See what amazing stories you can make up, then offer one interesting thing that actually happened to you.  Allow yourself to be as creative as you can without sounding as if you're lying.  For example, instead of saying, "I was once a movie star" maybe write that you were an extra in the movie Forrest Gump.  Remember to include specific details in your lies so they seem more realistic.

True or False

by: Martin Achatz

A tarantula once bit my toe,

and it swelled to the size 

of an Anjou pear.  I ate a pickled

mouse on a dare after smoking
16 ounces of Nicaraguan weed

at a friend's Halloween party.

I shoveled manure on a dairy

farm an entire summer, wallowed

knee-deep in its sweet perfume,

held it in my hair, on my skin

the way my first girlfriend's neck

held Love's Baby Soft so strong
it blinded me when I pressed

my mouth to her nape, tasted

her on my tongue all day long like

bubblegum.  I found a six-foot snake

in my toilet bowl one morning, coiled

so neatly it could have been

a green electrical cord hanging

above my dad's work bench.

My brother shot a deer on Thanksgiving.

It was so big, after he gutted it,

he stuffed me inside its chest

cavity the way Han shoved Luke

inside the belly of the Tauntaun.

It smelled like summer blueberries 

and blood.  When I was 13, I spent

two or three days in a coma--I don't

remember exactly how long.  What I do

remember:  a nothing like a snow

storm, being erased, swallowed,

as if God made a mistake

on a pop quiz and was changing

his answer from True to False.

March 18, 2025: “Indictment of Senior Officers,” Boring, "Nothing Happened Today"

There are some days where I struggle to find anything to write about in my blog posts.  I literally sit and stare at my blank laptop screen, trying to conjure up any kind of interesting idea or anecdote.  I don’t always succeed

Hence, I sometimes don’t post for a few days and search for anything of note to discuss.  Recently, it’s been Agent Orange and his band of Merry Pranksters who’ve distracted me.  It always seems like people in power (however stupid or morally bankrupt those people are) inflict abuse on the less fortunate.

Sharon Olds writes about the abuse of power . . . 

Indictment of Senior Officers

by: Sharon Olds

In the hallway above the pit of the stairwell
my sister and I would meet at night,
eyes and hair dark, bodies
like twins in the dark. We did not talk of
the two who had brought us there, like generals,
for their own reasons. We sat, buddies in cold
war, her living body the proof of
my living body, our backs to the mild
shell hole of the stairs, down which
we would have to go, knowing nothing
but what we had learned there,

                                                    so that now
when I think of my sister, the holes of the needles
in her hips and in the creases of her elbows,
and the marks from the doctor husband’s beatings,
and the scars of the operations, I feel the
rage of a soldier standing over the body of
someone sent to the front lines
without training
or a weapon.

It's a pretty dark poem, written by Olds right as the United States was recovering from Watergate and the Vietnam War.  The President of the United States had been forced to resign, and the AIDS epidemic was in the wings, waiting to show its fatal face.

I don't remember much of those days.  I was fairly young and too wrapped up with my own dramas.  Puberty does that to you.  My memories are simply flashes, like a slide show running so fast the images all blur together.  I survived the Reagan years.  The first presidential candidate I voted for was Michael Dukakis.  My first kiss was so unremarkable that I've forgotten the name of the owner of the lips.  

You see what I mean.  Memory is a slippery thing, always swimming downstream on the way to an ocean or sea.  So I'm not sure how accurate my childhood recollections are.  I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone the name of my kindergarten teacher or first grade crush.

I do remember the guy who used to beat me up on a frequent basis in second grade.  (I eventually beat the shit out of him, and he left me alone after that.)  And I remember my second grade teacher who took pleasure in humiliating me in front of my classmates.  I could tell you about the person who used to take pleasure in holding me underwater in freshman swim class, and I know the days my brother and two sisters died.

I guess trauma and cruelty stick with me more than simple, daily pleasures.  I think that's what Olds' poem is getting at.  Pain (physical, emotional, and spiritual) leaves scars that don't heal.  Maybe that's why a boring day, like today, when nothing too damaging occurred to me (on a personal level--I'm not talking the horror show in Washington, D. C.), doesn't really take up too much space in my brain.  

I guess you could call my current state being and nothingness.  (Look it up.  It's an allusion.)

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about absolutely nothing, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet . . . 

In a memorable Seinfeld episode, it’s proclaimed that Seinfeld is “a show about nothing.”. Of course, everything is about something, so for this expertise, write a poem about nothing—a poem where nothing fantastic happens.  Make sure to focus on the particulars of this regular day where nothing out of the usual happens.  Focusing on the specific details will help to ensure that your poem connects with its audience.

Nothing Happened Today

by:  Martin Achatz

I ate two hardboiled eggs and kumquats

for breakfast  The kumquats made my ears

ring and jaw ache from the sour.  I answered

an email from one of my students whose car

ran out of gas on the way to school for the third

time this semester, plus he's had two bouts

of food poisoning.  Salad for lunch--spinach, 

flax seeds, boiled chicken, shredded cheddar.

Watched the sky change from blue to gray

to black to gray, as if it couldn't make up

its mind.  A writer friend stopped by 

my office to give me a copy of her new

book--poems about growing up during

Adolf Hitler's rise to power.  She weeps

every night watching the news now.

I read a Mary Oliver poem, and a Sharon

Olds and a Joy Harjo because they were

beautiful.  Ate Chinese, drank beer for 

dinner with some old friends, decided

not to have a second beer since

I had to drive home and it was getting

dark.  Took my Australian shepherd

for a walk, let her bark at passing

cars and a squirrel tightroping

across a power line.  Changed into

my pajamas, sat down with my journal,

took out my fountain pen, write at the top

of a blank page "Nothing Happened Today."

March 17, 2025: "The Couple," Saint Patrick’s Day, "Reek Sunday on Croagh Patrick"

Yes, it is Saint Patrick’s Day.  No, I didn’t drink green beer or eat corned beef and cabbage, and I completely forgot to wear any green clothing.  (I was saved by the fact that my winter coat is green, and there was a splash of green in my socks.). 

These days, I’m just completely distracted by social media posts and news reports about the latest Agent Orange idiocy.  Just this afternoon, I saw a car pulled over to the side of U.S. 41 driving home.  Behind that car was a State Police cruiser, and behind the State Police cruiser were two vehicles marked “Border Control.” Yes, even the Upper Peninsula of Michigan isn’t immune to the three-ring circus of the Oval Office.  

Mostly, I’m worried about the future of my kids.  I was speaking to my daughter the other day, and she said how terrified of the government she is.  The world they’re going to inherit is going to be vastly different from the world I inherited from my parents.

Sharon Olds writes about the relationship between her son and daughter . . .

The Couple

by:  Sharon Olds

On the way for the country, they fall asleep

in the back seat, those enemies,

rulers of separate countries, sister and

brother.  Her big hard head

lolls near his narrow oval skull

until they are crown to crown, brown

hair mingling like velvet.  Mouths

open, the rosebud and her cupid’s bow,

they dream against each other, her calm

almond eyes and his round blue eyes

closed, quivering like a trout.  Their toes

touching opposite doors, their hands in

loose fists, their heads together in

on consciousness, they look like a small

royal bride and groom, the bride still a

head taller, married as children

in the Middle Ages, for purposes of state,

fighting all day, and finding their only

union in sleep, in the dark solitary

power of the dream—the dream of ruling the world.

All siblings have their differences.  I had three brothers and five sisters growing up.  Three of those siblings have died in the past ten years.  My two remaining brothers are Trumpers.  My sisters align more with my cultural and political standpoints.  Not completely, but close enough.  I love my siblings, but I don’t get along with all of them. 

My son adores his sister, and the feeling is mutual.  Sure, they have their disagreements.  There have been blowups between them, but those storms don’t last very long.  Then they’re back gaming together online at night.  My son can be quite . . . passionate and mercurial with his emotions.  My daughter, on the other hand, takes after me—always thinking things through, trying to see an issue from all sides.

I know that my daughter and son love each other.  Long after I’m gone, when I’m just a forgotten book in the library, they will be close friends.  I’m sure of that.  From the beginning, my son has cherished his sister’s attention.  My daughter waited eight years for her brother, and she has adored him since the day she first held him as an infant.

So, no matter what happens in the United States—whether the constitutional democracy is preserved or an Orange dictatorship prevails, my kids will have each other’s backs.  That gives me comfort as this country edges closer and closer to a Margaret Atwood dystopia.  My daughter and son are going to be alright.

Maybe we can just pray to Saint Patrick, asking him to drive the snakes out of the White House and Congress.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem in celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, write a poem about Ireland or something Irish.  It can be Delaney's Bar or the Book of Kells, Guinness beer or a Celtic cross.  If you're Irish yourself, explore your own heritage.  But even if you're not Irish, make sure to include images of Ireland and Irish culture.  You can start the poem with the line, The last time I was in Ireland or I've never been to Ireland, but . . .

Reek Sunday on Croagh Patrick

by: Martin Achatz

Thousands climb to the summit

every July, some barefoot to atone

for that one-night stand in college

and the abortion after, or the cheeseburger

eaten on Good Friday when Christ

hung on the cross like a graduation

picture.  Even Saint Patrick fasted

forty days at the top, tortured by

a murder of demonic birds, a female

serpent named Corra offering him

colcannon, barmbrack, soda bread

salty as tears.  My friend scaled

Croagh Patrick in her sandals,

her feet already hard as diamonds, 

not seeking forgiveness or penance,

but simply to breathe the holy air,

touch with her toes the hungry stones.

This was before she got sick and needed

a miracle, when her life seemed

endless as the summer solstice.

She sat, read Seamus Heaney poems

to the grasses and winds, felt

displaced in time, Corra coiled

around Patrick's naked body, testing

his faith with her forked tongue,

both of them robed in sunlight.

My friend brought me a rock

from that sacred place, on its surface

a smudge of mineral, maybe hematite

or copper, in the shape of a figure

(Adam?  Bigfoot?  Patrick?) strolling

like a prayer toward God's distant eardrum.

March 16, 2025: "The One Girl at the Boys' Party," Sundays, "Resurrection X"

I'm not a fan of Sundays.  They fill me with melancholy.  I don't like the sound of church bells, and, even though I'm a church organist, I find traditional church hymns (even the happier ones like "Ode to Joy") depressing.

My wife and I have been slowly making our way through the television series The Crown on Netflix.  This afternoon, at lunch, we watched the final episode where Imelda Staunton, playing Queen Elizabeth, wrestles with existential questions about the meaning of her life and impending death.  It was incredibly moving.  (Yes, I did cry a little bit.)  

And it put me in a deeply thoughtful mood about my own place in life and the world.  I even made a comment to my wife about our daughter moving away for medical school and our son talking about getting an apartment with a friend when he graduates from high school next year.  "I think we're becoming obsolete," I said.

Sharon Olds feels her daughter slipping through her fingers like pool water . . . 

The One Girl at the Boys' Party

by: Sharon Olds

When I take our girl to the swimming party
I set her down among the boys. They tower and
bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek,
her math scores unfolding in the air around her.
They will strip to their suits, her body hard and
indivisible as a prime number,
they'll plunge in the deep end, she'll subtract
her height from ten feet, divide it into
hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers
bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine
in the bright blue pool. When they climb out,
her ponytail will hang its pencil lead
down her back, her narrow silk suit
with hamburgers and french fries printed on it
will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will
see her sweet face, solemn and
sealed, a factor of one, and she will
see their eyes, two each,
their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes,
one each, and in her head she'll be doing her
wild multiplying, as the drops
sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body.

It's difficult when you realize that you can't protect your kids from all the cruelties of the world.  Olds can't save her daughter from becoming an object of sexual desire.  She has to let her daughter dive in and tread those waters alone.  Olds is on her way to becoming obsolete as a mother, and all she can do is write a poem about it.

My wife told me this afternoon that we won't every become obsolete as parents.  Speaking about our daughter, my wife said, "Who's the first person she calls if something good or bad happens to her?"  As for my son, my wife said, "Who did he come to for help with his English paper this afternoon?"

Thus, I guess it's not a matter of being unneeded.  It's a matter of feeling unneeded.  I've been a father for close to 25 years.  Frankly, I can't remember NOT being a father anymore.  However, that role is quickly shifting.  Pretty soon, my wife and I are going to be empty nesters.  (I hate that term, by the way.)  Then we're going to have to figure out who we are again.  It's almost like graduating from high school all over and deciding what my major in college is going to be.

Unless I live to be 114, I am well past the halfway point in my life, quickly sliding into my "golden" years, although, I'm not sure how golden they're going to be, thanks to the Dictator Tot.  I'm also not sure what, if any, legacy I will leave when I die.  A couple of poetry collections.  A whole lot of unpublished poems and essays.  My daughter.  My son.  A bunch of books that my kids will probably pitch or give to Goodwill.  And this blog, which currently stands at 5,858 posts.  

Aside from my kids and wife and family, nobody is going to remember me even five years after I'm gone.  And that's okay.

But I'm not dead yet.  I still have a chance, like Ebenezer Scrooge, to make the world a better, safer place for my children.  And to write a few more poems.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about becoming obsolete and extinct, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter.  To give a nod to this book, choose a letter of the alphabet plus an interesting color, and write a poem where the color and letter repeat throughout.  The poem can be about anything, but you're welcome to make it scandalous, perhaps about an affair.

Resurrection X

by: Martin Achatz

Christ is tall as Mighty Joe Young

in the painting behind the altar.

Haloed in resurrection gold, shaking

off the mold of the tomb, he towers

over the Roman centurion who stoops,

crab crawls away, afraid Christ's foot

will flatten him like Godzilla flattened

Tokyo or Little Boy flattened Hiroshima,

leaving behind just a smudge, an X marking

the spot where he once was.  Or maybe

the soldier isn't afraid of oblivion, but

the whirls, loops, arches in Christ's toes, 

a divine map of the universe showing 

just how insignificant he is--a sandstone

grave marker with its name eaten away

by wind and rain and time, now only

a rocky blank face, mouth open, ready

to accept anything from the heavens:

salvation, radioactive breath, or the tender

lips and tongue of an old, old lover.

March 15, 2025: "Bestiary," Guilty as Charged, "What's Wrong with Being Woke?"

I have a confession:  I'm having trouble writing at the moment.

It started happening on January 21, after you-know-who moved back into the White House.  In the past 45 days, so much trauma and damage have been done by the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that I find it difficult when I sit down with my journal or laptop simply not to write "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck" over and over and over.  (I actually did that one day in my journal, from the top of one page to the bottom.)  

So that's why my blog posting has been spotty recently.  Forgive me.  I will try to do better.  Finding enough beauty to write poetry is challenging.

So, here's a poem by Sharon Olds that made me laugh and also contains some beauty:

Bestiary

by: Sharon Olds

Nostrils flared, ears pricked,

our son asks me if people can mate with

animals.  I say it hardly

ever happens.  He frowns, fur and

skin and hooves and slits and pricks and

teeth and tails whirling in his brain.

You could do it, he says, not wanting the

world to be closed to him in any

form.  We talk about elephants

and parakeets, until we are rolling on the

floor, laughing like hyenas.  Too late,

I remember love--I backtrack

and try to slip it in, but that is

not what he means.  Seven years old,

he is into hydraulics, pulleys, doors which

fly open in the side of the body, 

entrances, exits.  Flushed, panting,

hot for physics, he thinks about lynxes,

eagles, pythons, mosquitos, girls,

casting a glittering eye of use

over creation, wanting to know

exactly how the world was made to receive him.

It's a conversation I could have easily had with my son or daughter at some point.  Kids are creatures of curiosity.  They spend the first 18 or 25 years of their lives trying to figure out how the world works.  And the world is a pretty crazy place.  It's up to parents to help their children negotiate their interactions with this insanity.

My wife and I tried to raise our daughter and son to be caring, empathetic, loving people.  When my daughter was in second grade, she was the only person in her class to interact with an autistic girl on the playground.  My son had a hard time in elementary and middle schools because of his ADHD.  He had very little impulse control, and his classmates relished pushing his buttons to get him in trouble.  So many days, he came home in tears, vowing he was never going back.  Because of these experiences, my son is incredibly sensitive to cruelty of any kind.

In today's politicized society, some people would call my family "woke."  Conservative politicians use that term as a way to demean individuals who believe there are systematic injustices in America, like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia.  If you're woke, that means you’re sensitive to the struggles of others.  That you embrace inclusivity, kindness, and understanding. 

If that's how you define being "woke," I am proudly guilty as charged.  So is the rest of my family.

Really, what I don't get is how being kind and accepting is a bad thing.  Ever.  I was raised Catholic, and, as I remember the Bible, Jesus never put conditions on love.  In fact, the only people he really got pissed at were the Pharisees and Sadducees who were leading people away from the love of God.

Jesus was woke.

So, if anyone uses the word "woke" as a way to insult me, it won't work.  Being woke means my eyes are open, and I see this country for what it is:  deeply flawed and full of petty hatred and violence.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about being woke today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem that begins with a difficult question and ends with an answer.  Let the poem meander through different subjects that have nothing to do with the question or the answer.  Allow your brain to write in almost a stream-of-consciousness way until you can tie in the answer at the end.  And if you can't come up with an answer, that's okay, too, just refer back to the original question, perhaps with an image, and end the poem there.

What's Wrong with Being Woke?

by: Martin Achatz

It allows me to be blinded

by sunrises the color of ripe

peaches, to sit with pen

and notebook, chase feathered

poems singing in the pines,

to sneak to the fridge

and eat the plums my wife

was saving for breakfast,

so sweet and so cold,

to remember the burn

of my mom and dad's coffee

in my nose as I left

for school, stepped outside

after a night of snow, saw

everything erased.  

So set your alarm.

Go to bed early.

Wake up and give thanks

for another chance

to save this wild

and precious world.

March 11, 2025: "Bread," Letting Go, "Before and Before"

I spent this afternoon participating in a writing workshop led by one of my best friends.  (I almost typed "best writing friends," but we've known each other for over thirty years, which makes our friendship a little more than acquaintances getting together at a coffee shop once a month to scribble in notebooks.)  He knows me and my struggles pretty intimately.

One of the topics my friend and I always wrestle with is staying fresh in our writing.  Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro once said, “My subject matter doesn't vary so much from book to book. Just the surface does. The settings, etc. I tend to write the same book over and over, or at least, I take the same subject I took last time out and refine it, or do a slightly different take on it.”  

So, yes, all writers have subjects they obsess over.  It's the nature of the beast.  I've written so many poems about my daughter and son that I can't count them all.  (Sharon Olds writes about her kids a lot, so I'm in good company.)  Even when I set out to write about something else, my offspring will sneak into the poem as if they were playing hide-and-seek with the words.

Sharon Olds writes about her daughter making some . . . 

Bread

by: Sharon Olds

When my daughter makes bread, a cloud of flour
hangs in the air like pollen. She sifts and
sifts again, the salt and sugar
close as the grain of her skin. She heats the
water to body temperature
with the sausage lard, fragrant as her scalp
the day before hair-wash, and works them together on a
floured board. Her broad palms
bend the paste toward her and the heel of her hand
presses it away, until the dough
begins to snap, glossy and elastic as the 

torso bending over it,
this ten-year-old girl, random specks of yeast
in her flesh beginning to heat,
her volume doubling every month now, but still
raw and hard. She slaps the dough and it 

crackles under her palm, sleek and
ferocious and still leashed, like her body, no
breasts rising like bubbles of air toward the 

surface of the loaf. She greases the pan, she is
shaped, glazed, and at any moment goes
into the oven, to turn to that porous
warm substance, and then under the
knife to be sliced for the having, the tasting, and the
giving of life.

Olds wrote this when her daughter was still young, full of bubbles of yeast, rising in the pan.  So many of my poems over the last 24 years have been about this process of watching my kids grow older and away from me.  That's what parenting is all about--nurturing, loving, teaching, holding your breath, and letting go.

As many of my faithful disciples know, over the last ten years, I've lost a lot of loved ones--family and friends.  I carry the weight of those losses every day.  I'm not saying I'm in a constant state of mourning, but that grief floats to the surface a lot, especially in my writing.  Tonight, I wasn't planning on writing about the empty nest of my heart again, but here I am.

I think I'm a person who falls in love a lot.  I fall in love with poems, books, movies, music, friends, food, trees, birds, weather.  I'm not talking the casual "oh, I love Lucky Charms" kind of love.  I'm talking strong, visceral attachments.  Because of this habit of love, I frequently find myself experiencing nostalgia for past, better times.  

At the end of this coming summer, my daughter will be moving downstate for medical school.  In a year, my son will be a high school graduate (he's already talking about getting an apartment with a friend).  And I'm thinking about how much I miss reading to my daughter at bedtime and watching bad Bigfoot movies with my son.

They are becoming strong, independent people.  That means I did something right as a parent.  However, that doesn't make the letting go any easier.  I'm going to have to redefine who I am soon.  That's part of letting go:  figuring who you are again and again and again.  It's déjà vu.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about the déjà vu of writing a poem, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a déjà vu experience.  To strengthen that "I've been here before" feeling and allow your reader to experience it with you, repeat words and images from the first stanza in the stanzas that follow.  If you don't know how to begin, start with I walked into a room I had alread walked into before . . . and see where it takes you.

Before and Before

by: Martin Achatz

after Robert Hayden

I have written this poem before and before,

first on the night her final breath

sat in my eardrum like a trapped

moth, battering its wings against

the corners of my skull and brain.

I have written this poem before and before,

next on the eve of her funeral

when I wandered through strawberry

fields, following God's glowing soles

in the eyelid of dusk.

I have written this poem before and before,

on the night I saw her constellation

in the heavens, bright as Orion

in January, each star freckling

the darkness with her face.

I have written this poem on her birth

and death days, sitting in my car

near her grave, when my son became

a teenager and my daughter graduated

from high school then college, before

and before and before and before,

and now I write this poem before

I go to sleep, because a dog

is barking and barking outside, reminding

me of grief's austere and dogged hunger.

March 10, 2025: "The Missing Boy," Roz Chast, "Riding with Kendrick"

I spent over a year and a half planning for today.  

Putting together a large, grant-funded programming series takes a lot of things.  Imagination.  Organization.  Courage.  And a little stupidity.  I have written an NEA Big Read grant three times for the library where I work.  Two times, I was successful, and tonight, Roz Chast--a brilliant cartoonist from The New Yorker and author of the graphic memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?--appeared at the library virtually.  She joined us via Zoom and was everything I expected:  wildly funny, incredibly insightful, and painfully truthful.

Sharon Olds confronts a painful truth . . . 

The Missing Boy

by:  Sharon Olds

(for Etan Patz)

Every time we take the bus
my son sees the picture of the missing boy.
He looks at it like a mirror--the dark
blond hair, the pale skin,
the blue eyes, the electric-blue sneakers with
slashes of jagged gold. But of course that
kid is little, only six and a half,
an age when things can happen to you,
when you're not really safe, and our son is seven,
practically fully grown--why, he would
tower over that kid if they could
find him and bring him right here on this bus and
stand them together. He sways in the silence,
wishing for that, the tape on the picture
gleaming over his head, beginning to
melt at the center and curl at the edges as it
ages. At night, when I put him to bed,
my son holds my hand tight
and says he's sure that kid's all right,
nothing to worry about, he just
hopes he's getting the food he likes,
not just any old food, but the food
he likes the most, the food he is used to.

It's a heartbreaking poem--Olds' son confronting the danger of the world as only a little boy can:  with hope and assurance.  If you're not familiar with the story, Etan Patz was a six-year-old from SoHo in Lower Manhattan who disappeared on his way to school one morning in 1979.  After a massive manhunt, Etan was never found and eventually declared dead.  In 2012, as a result of new evidence, a man was arrested and charged with Etan's kidnapping and murder.  

Of course, little kids always believe in happily every after.  Thus, Olds' son is sure "that kid's all right," even without any evidence.  The story of Etan Patz became the stuff of legend, inspiring the creation of National Missing Children's Day in the United States.  

All this happened one year after Roz Chast published her first cartoon in The New Yorker, 22 years before the 9-11 attacks, and 35 years before Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? was published.  I'm sure, as a New Yorker and former resident of Brooklyn, Chast knew the story of Etan Patz pretty intimately.  (I vaguely remember Etan's story in the news when I was a kid.)  These days, very few people remember Etan's name, I'm sure.  He's become a footnote in Wikipedia.  

On the other hand, Roz Chast's Wikipedia page is pretty extensive.  She commands large fees for any appearance she makes.  (I won't reveal how much of the almost $17,000 NEA grant went directly to Roz, but it was substantial.)  Let me just say that, if I could make the same amount of money as Chast for sitting in a one-hour Zoom meeting, I would work exactly one month per year and then spend the rest of my time writing poems on a beach in the Bahamas.

I'm not saying Chast wasn't worth her fee.  She was witty and intelligent, a great storyteller.  Worth every penny it took to get her to appear.  During the event, it felt like I was having a conversation with a close friend or relative.  I'm pretty sure the audience felt the same way.

I wrote a poem for tonight about meeting a famous person, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1965, Neil Simon's play, The Odd Couple, debuted.  Write a poem in which two famous people you wouldn't expect to see together interact.  The people can be dead, living, or fictional.  Think Frida Kahlo having a conversation with Bugs Bunny, or Elvis Presley doing a crossword puzzle with Elvis Costello.  Feel free to use any two people or characters one would never expect to see together.  Put them in a poem and see what they do.

CONFESSION:  Saint Marty may not have followed these rules explicitly.  

Riding with Kendrick

by:  Martin Achatz

My son educates me about T-Pain, 

Denzel Curry, Lil Yachty on our

drives to and from school these days.

I resisted at first, me stuck in the 1980s

with Cyndi Lauper and Simple Minds.

But each day, like a Harvard professor 

unraveling details of constitutional law,

my son talks about breathing, hooks,

samples, diss tracks.  He is so passionate,

I drive and listen to his lectures the way

I used to listen to my grad school profs

speak about red wheelbarrows and 

cold plums.  Last night, my son played

"King Kunta" with its pounding bass,

tongue-twisting lyrics.  It was 60

degrees out, a warm March night.

We rolled down our car windows, 

bounced our heads, ran the game

as Kendrick, sitting in the backseat, 

grooved us all the way home under

a bright bullet hole of moon.

March 9, 2025: "35/10," Feel My Age, "Meeting Jesus' Twin Sister at Taco Bell on the First Sunday of Lent"

It's been a day where I feel my age.  I'm sore as shit.  

Yesterday evening, as my wife and I were taking our puppy for a stroll around the block, we noticed an older neighbor woman stuck on the snow piled in her driveway.  My first impulse was just to keep walking, ignoring the situation.  Of course, my Catholic guilt kicked in, and I went back to help the woman out.  It took lots of shoveling and pushing with another of our neighbors before the car finally slid out of the driveway onto the street.  

Today, my shoulders, arms and back have been objecting to my act of charity.  It's taken a lot of ibuprofen to get me to this point, and I feel, well, ancient.

Sharon Olds on getting older . . . 

35/10

by:  Sharon Olds

Brushing out our daughter's dark
silken hair before the mirror
I see the grey gleaming on my head,
the silver-haired servant behind her. Why is it
just as we begin to go
they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck
clarifying as the fine bones of her
hips sharpen? As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a small
pale flower on the tip of a cactus;
as my last chances to bear a child
are falling through my body, the duds among them,
her full purse of eggs, round and
firm as hard-boiled yolks, is about
to snap its clasp. I brush her tangled
fragrant hair at bedtime. It's an old
story—the oldest we have on our planet—
the story of replacement.

Yes, Olds is feeling her age in this poem.  Her daughter, young and full of promise.  Olds, going gray and counting her wrinkles.  I've been a parent now for over 24 years, and I can state emphatically that nothing makes you feel older than being around your kids.  My son just has to look at me, and I can tell what's going through his mind:  You are so old.  Stop trying to be cool.  My five-year-old dog can do the same to me.  

It's 9:33 p.m. right now, and today was daylight saving time.  We pushed the clocks ahead by an hour, losing a hour of sleep.  I had to take a nap this afternoon.  I used to be able to stay up all night, take a 20-minute snooze, and then go to work and school without any problem.  Those days are long gone.  My brain is pretty much Jell-O by about 10 p.m.

I've earned every gray hair, wrinkle, and scar on my body.  It's the price all humans pay for existing on this little broken world.  We live, love, fuck up, and then go to a therapist for years to work through those fuckups.  Life isn't about perfection.  It's about being and doing the best you can.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about feeling the weight of his life choices, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1996, comedian George Burns, who played a cigar-smoking God in the movie Oh, God!, died.  Write a poem where God or any Supreme Being (from a religion or mythological) is doing something you don't expect him/her to do.  Maybe God is not only a creator, but a comedian.  Maybe this Supreme Being has signed up for a Facebook account.  Maybe God wants to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  This is another exercise where your imagination and the peculiarity and specific details in your poem will strengthen your work.

Meeting Jesus' Twin Sister at Taco Bell

on the First Sunday of Lent

by: Martin Achatz

Her feet glowed, I swear,

sandals wrapped around

the suns of her ankles and toes.

The teenage boy at the cash

register didn't look up

as she ordered a toasted

sausage breakfast burrito,

large Baja Blast Zero,

and cinnamon crisps.

The boy asked for her

name, and she said Janice

as she fished money out 

of her coat pocket, put it

on the counter, stepped 

aside to let me order.

The space she left for me

glowed, too, like a spotlight

on a stage, and I wondered

how her mother slept with

so much light in the walls

of their home, noon bright

at midnight.  Struck dumb,

I stared at Janice.  She put

a hand on my elbow, something

like understanding passing

between us, as if she'd just

heard my confession, absolved

me of lying to my parents

in high school about smoking

weed, tasting the flesh of all

those girls in the backseat 

of my Dodge Aspen in college, 

convincing my family to let

my sister die of the lymphoma

eating her brain.  

The boy at the cash register

stared at me, annoyed at my

silence.  Janice nodded.

I opened my mouth, felt my

heavy tongue move, heard

myself whisper like penance

I'll have what she's having.

March 8, 2025: "Armor," Fathering a Son, "Where Have You Gone?"

Most of my faithful disciples know that I am not a typical red-blooded American male.  I don't go deer hunting or fly fishing.  Couldn't change the oil in my car even if a gun was aimed at my head by a January 6th insurrectionist.  The only reason I even watched a minute of the Super Bowl this year was to see Kendrick Lamar.  I detest country music, and my definition of a relaxing day is a good book of poems and a glass of wine.

So, when I found out my second child was going to be a boy, I panicked.  I'd had eight years of fathering a girl.  I knew all about braiding hair and ballet lessons and piano lessons.  My parenting skills were limited to a specific gender.

Sharon Olds' son goes to war . . . 

Armor

by: Sharon Olds

Just about at the triple-barreled pistol

I can't go on.  I sink down

as if shot, beside the ball of its butt

larded with mother-of-pearl.  My son

leaves me on the bench, and goes on.  Hand on

hips, he gazes at a suit of armor,

blue eyes running over with silver,

looking for a slit.  He shakes his head,

hair greenish as the gold velvet

cod-skirt hanging before him in volutes

at a metal groin.  Next, I see him

facing a case of shields, fingering

the sweater over his heart, and then

for a long time I don't see him, as a mother will

lose her son in war. I sit

and think about men.  Finally the boy

comes back, sated, so fattened with gore

his eyelids bulge.  We exit under the

huge tumescent jousting irons,

their pennants a faded rose, like the mist

before his eyes.  He slips his hand

lightly in mine, and says Not one of those

suits is really safe.  But when we 

get to the wide museum steps

railed with gold like the descent from heaven,

he can't resist,

and before my eyes, down the stairs,

over and over, clutching his delicate

unprotected chest, my son

dies, and dies.

I can absolutely identify with Olds in this poem.  A museum full of weapons and suits of armor would fascinate me for a short while.  Then I'd be looking for the nearest exit.  I didn't play with toy guns as a kid.  War was not something glorious in my mind.  It terrified me.  Still does.  I was a Star Wars kid--lasers, aliens, and princesses with cinnamon-buns for hair.  

But I think I've done an alright job with my son.  He hasn't been exposed to the kinds of things most young males in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are.  I've walked through woods with him, but the only thing we've shot are pictures of deer and interesting trees.  I've never tinkered on car engines with him, but I have shown him how the engine of a poem works (image and metaphor and meter and line).  

Yet, my son is a pretty cool sixteen-year-old.  He's sensitive and loving.  Doesn't judge anyone by gender or skin color or sexual orientation or religion.  He's getting mostly A's in school and has never once asked me to thread a worm on a hook or play football.  We don't even own a football.  My son does boy things.  Plays basketball with his friends.  Surfs porn on his phone.  Gets his heart broken by crushes.  

In short, I haven't fucked him up too much.  That's a win.  I bet there's not too many fathers who can say that their sixteen-year-old sons say "I love you" at the end of every one of their conversations.  My son does that with me.  And my response is always the same:  "I love you, too."

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about another father thing he doesn't do--baseball.  It's based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1999, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio died at the age of eighty-four.  Think about that iconic line and question:  Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? from the Simon & Garfunkel song "Mrs. Robinson," and write a poem that addresses it.  Does Joe DiMaggio meet up with Marilyn Monroe in heaven?  Does his spirit remain alive in the threads of his New York Yankees uniform?  Let the poem explore a specific memory you have with baseball, and let Joltin' Joe wander into it.  If you're not familiar with Joe DiMaggio, do a little research and see if you can find an unusual fact about him to include in your poem.

Where Have You Gone?

by: Martin Achatz

Some say your life passes

before your eyes when you

die, like a Macey's Thanksgiving

parade.  Maybe he saw himself

as a balloon the size of the Empire

State Building, a baseball bat

as long as an aircraft carrier

in his hands.  Perhaps a float

rolled by, on it the Rockettes

with cups of coffee balanced 

on their heads kicked from

Central Park West to Herald Square.

Five hundred bagpipers in kilts

played "Take Me out to the Ball Game"

as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

sang along.  Simon & Garfunkel

reunited in his honor, crooning 

about Mrs. Robinson while above

Yankee Stadium fireworks flowered

for 56 minutes straight.  At the end,

not Santa Claus in a sleigh.  No.

It was her, all her, always, as rose

petals blizzarded from the heavens,

she in her strapless pink gown, long

white gloves, riding in a convertible,

her platinum hair blinding in November

sunlight, waving, lip syncing "I Wanna

Be Loved By You" to him, only him,

always, as he wound up and swung

for the fences one last time.

March 7, 2025: “The Sign of Saturn,” Brokenness “Broken”

It was a cold day, but no new snow.  I just took my puppy for a last spin around the backyard, and the moon and stars looked like crystal in heavens.  When my dog barked, I thought the sky would splinter into pieces and rain down on my head.

Now that the first week of March is over and Lent has begun, I can feel the world shifting into spring mode, despite the recent blizzard.  Something ending, something beginning.  (Don’t worry.  I’m not dumb enough to think that we’re done with the white stuff,  However, the sap is starting to flow, metaphorically, at least.)

So much in this world is broken right now.  I’m not going to get political here, but most of my faithful disciples will agree with that statement.  Russia is still in Ukraine.  Trump still wants to turn Gaza into a luxury resort.  And the pope is still in the hospital.  

Yet, out of brokenness comes healing.  I truly believe that.

Sharon Olds struggles with her daughter.

The Sign of Saturn

by:  Sharon Olds

Sometimes my daughter looks at me with an
amber black look, like my father
about to pass out from disgust, and I remember
she was born under the sign of Saturn,
the father who ate his children. Sometimes
the dark, silent back of her head
reminds me of him unconscious on the couch
every night, his face turned away.
Sometimes I hear her talking to her brother
with that coldness that passed for reason in him,
that anger hardened by will, and when she rages
into her room, and slams the door,
I can see his vast blank back
when he passed out to get away from us
and lay while the bourbon turned, in his brain,
to coal. Sometimes I see that coal
ignite in her eyes. As I talk to her,
trying to persuade her toward the human, her little
clear face tilts as if she can
not hear me, as if she were listening
to the blood in her own ear, instead,
her grandfather’s voice.

Olds is writing about the brokenness of her own childhood, and I think she’s a little frightened that her daughter has inherited that brokenness.  It’s sort of the way I’m always on the look out for signs of bipolar in my son and daughter because of my wife’s mental health struggles.  

But, as I said above, brokenness begets healing, just as sure as winter begets spring.  That’s what this time of year is all about:  something beautiful pushing through the frozen earth to reach for the sun.  Hope never dies.  It just lies fallow every once in a while.

Since late November, this winter season has been difficult for me.  I’m still climbing my way out of a major depressive episode.  I have more bright days than dark days now.  I notice things like snowbanks glowing blue, clouds turning orange at sunset, my favorite songs playing on the radio.  I am surrounded by possibility, and for that I am truly grateful.

I may still be broken, but I’m on the mend.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about brokenness tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In the poem, “For practice, let something stay broken,” Molly Tenenbaum writes, the faucet’s drip keeps you waking.  Write a poem about something that’s broken, whether a relationship or an item in your house.  What lesson can you discover from this broken item?  If you can’t think of anything broken, find something in your home you don’t need—like a chipped plate, a paper clip, a scratched frame—and break it.  Write about the experience of breaking a material item and the details of the moment, including how it felt, what it sounded like when it broke, and what it looked like in its brokenness.

Broken

by:  Martin Achatz

Linoleum on the bathroom floor

buckles, almost breathes

under my bare feet like a living

thing.  The kitchen faucet drips

unless the spigot and handle 

line up just so, one to the left

sink, one to the right, a balance

almost political between

abundant water and drought.

The lamp in the living room decides

when it wants to shine or remain

dark, the way my teenage son

waffles between loving me

and wanting me assassinated.

Joseph in the manger we display

at Christmas has lost his staff,

his decapitated head glued

back on his shoulders, hairline

scar circling his neck as if

he’s had surgery on his carotids.

So much is broken at home,

from the front porch light to 

shower drain, an endless

list of needed repairs 

that sometimes keeps me

awake, listening to make sure

the furnace kicks in on frozen

January nights.  Yet, this brokenness

reminds me that I am still

needed, that the world, however

splintered, can be fixed if

I have the correct crescent wrench

or roll of duct tape.  I guess

what I’m talking about is hope,

leaking, clogged, fractured 

hope just waiting for me

to pull out my toilet plunger

and get to work.

March 6, 2025: "The Killer," Digging Out, "A Selective History of Oreos"

My little piece of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan spent the day digging out from yesterday's blizzard.  The drifts were three feet deep, and the snow glowed blue with moisture.  All the area schools were shut down again today, and the library where I work opened at noon instead of 9:30 a.m.

When I was a kid, I used to love snowstorms and blizzards.   Bad winter weather meant a day off from everything—school, homework, gym class, tests, you name it.  Now, as an adult, it means shoveling, treacherous driving, more shoveling, and postponing/canceling plans.  Did I mention shoveling?  The magic of a snow day doesn’t exist once you get out of high school

Sharon Olds’ son plays with guns . . . 

The Killer

by: Sharon Olds

Whenever there's a lull in the action, my son

sights along his invisible sights and

picks things off.  He eyes a pillar

three rows over, pivots and easily

fires--a hit, you can tell by the flames and

smoke reflected in his glittering eyes.

Everything becomes a target--

cops topple, a whole populace

falls as he aims, yet I know this boy,

kind and tender.  He whirls and lets them

have it.  Tangents straighter than the arc of his

pee connect him to all he sees

like a way to touch:  as the spider travels its

silver wires, our son goes out along his

line of fire, marking each thing

with the sign of his small ecstatic life.

Yes, kids know how to make tedious situations fun.  All it takes is a thumb, a forefinger, and a target. Suddenly, you’re Luke Skywalker picking off Stormtroopers or Flash Gordon battling Ming the Merciless.  (If you’re a millennial—Flash Gordon was your grandparents’ version of the Star Wars universe.)

However, tedium is pretty normal for adults.  I spent most of today answering emails and writing reports and planning events.  However, it was National Oreo Day.  So, at the library, we sampled several different kinds of Oreos and ranked them.  That’s the great thing about my job.  We’re all very serious about the work we do, but we also know it’s important to have a little fun.  Today’s fun was the world’s best sandwich cookie.  It allowed us to be kids again for a little while.

This evening, I led a poetry workshop at the library.  It was part of the NEA Big Read that I organized.  I was skeptical that anyone was going to show up for it.  I thought everyone would be too tired from digging out from the blizzard.  Instead, ten people showed up, and we sat and wrote for an hour and a half.  Whenever I can get paid to teach poetry and write poetry, it’s a good day.  Throw Oreos into the mix, and it’s damn near perfect.

Saint Marty wrote a poem in honor of Oreo Day, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:  

In 1912, Nabisco introduced Oreo cookies, and since then, they've become the bestselling cookie of all time.  Write a poem about your favorite cookie or about the Oreo.  Have your cookie appear where you don't imagine cookies--each a cookie while waterskiing or taking a bath, eat an Oreo at a black-tie event, or have a stranger offer you a cookie on the subway.  Feel free to use the names of more than one cookie or dessert, such as macaroon, shortbread, animal crackers, etc.  To provide inspiration, snack on cookies while you write.

A Selective History of Oreos

by: Martin Achatz

1.
If there had been Oreo
bushes in Eden, we’d all
be running around naked,
not caring about snakes or apples.

5.
Paleontologists discovered
a mammoth frozen
in Siberian tundra, its last
meal, eight Double Stuf Oreos,
still in its stomach, waiting
for a glass of milk to thaw them.

11.
King Tut’s tomb contained
several packages of Golden
Oreos, a gift for all the hungry
gods, except Anubis,
who preferred Red Velvet Oreos
the color of blood.

23.
They say Michelangelo only
ate Lemon Oreos while on
his back painting the Sistine
because they tasted like
the love of God.

41.
Pope Urban II started
the Crusades not to reclaim
the Holy Land, but to capture
the sacred stash of Rocky Road
Oreos guarded by Knights Templar
with the body of Mary Magdalene.

63.
After beheading Anne Boleyn,
Henry VIII feasted on
Oreo Heads or Tails cookies.

75.
Newton didn’t discover
gravity while sitting under
an apple tree. He was eating
Apple Pie Oreos after dinner,
dropped one on the floor
where his Great Dane
Copernicus gobbled it
down at the rate of 9.81
meters per second.

92.
Einstein preferred the cream
in a Space Dunk Oreo
to the cookies at twice
the rate sunlight takes
to reach Saturn’s rings,
thus relativity was born.

112.
Pope John Paul II’s face
once appeared on the top
cookie of an Easter Egg Oreo,
and the cream inside
made several goats start
singing Ave Maria.
The next day, John Paul
was made a saint.