June 18: "Little Things," Sister's Interment, "Fairy Tale"

Yes, I am still alive and kicking, as the Simple Minds sing.  

I haven't given up writing.  Or moved to a remote cabin in the Canadian wilderness.  Or been arrested and flown to an El Salvadorian concentration camp.  I'm still working at the library.  Teaching for the university (one summer class).  Attending protest rallies.  Watching with increasing horror as democracy is dismantled Executive Order by Executive Order.  It's hard to find things to love in this world right now.

Sharon Olds writes about things she loves . . . 

Little Things

by: Sharon Olds

After she’s gone to camp, in the early
evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes
from the rosewood table, and find a dinky
crystallized pool of maple syrup, the
grains standing there, round, in the night, I
rub it with my fingertip
as if I could read it, this raised dot of
amber sugar, and this time,
when I think of my father, I wonder why
I think of my father, of the Vulcan blood-red
glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a
broken-open coal. I think I learned
to love the little things about him
because of all the big things
I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.
So when I fix on this image of resin,
or sweep together with the heel of my hand a
pile of my son’s sunburn peels like
insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,
I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have–as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

It's important to practice loving daily.  I truly believe that.  However, putting that belief into practice can be quite challenging, especially with President 47 pushing us closer and closer to nuclear war with Iran.  Granted, the United States of America was built on stolen land out of the blood, bodies, and tears of enslaved African Americans, so there's a lot about this country that isn't all that inspiring.  

However, I'm constantly looking for things to love in this universe.  That's kind of what poets do.  Some days are easier than other days in this pursuit.  Strangely, today was one of the easier days.

I say "strangely" because, at 2 p.m. this afternoon, at Holy Cross Cemetery, my sister Rose's cremains were interred.  It's been about a year and a half since Rose died, so this ceremony was long overdue.  My family and three of my siblings were present as our parish priest prayed and led the liturgy.  Father Larry got to know Rose about ten years ago when our sister Sally was dying.  

I didn't think I was going to get emotional during the service.  Since it's been so long since Rose's passing, I thought I'd developed a thicker skin.  I haven't.  As I drove back to work afterward, I found myself crying a little uncontrollably.  

The rest of the day is sort of a blur.  I got a lot of work done, but nothing that really sticks in my head.  This evening, I hosted a concert by one of my favorite local bands--the Make Believe Spurs.  Not only are they great musicians, but they're also three of the nicest people you will ever know.

As I listened to them sing Joni Mitchell's "Paved Paradise," I suddenly had this image of Rose dancing.  Rose had Down syndrome, so she was all love and excitement about everything.  And she loved to move her shoulders and hips.  She would have been grooving the entire concert.

I found things to love this evening:  my friends Brian, Molly, and Mavis singing and playing on the library steps; my sister Rose's ghost boogying in front of them; a seagull sitting on a tower across the street, watching the entire show.  

I'm so grateful for my friends who brought music and joy into my life tonight.  And for my sister Rose, who was literally music and joy every day she was alive.

Saint Marty finished a new poem today, based on the June 7th prompt from The Daily Poet:  

Nikki Giovanni, whose birthday is today, states in her poem "Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day":

It seems no matter how I try I become more difficult 

                         to hold

I am not an easy woman

to want

Write a poem that defines who you are:  are you becoming more difficult to hold?  Are you an easy woman/man or a difficult one?  Share details about yourself using concrete imagery and forthright language in an open/free-verse poem that describes and defines you.

Fairy Tale

by: Martin Achatz

Once     upon     a     time      I was hope     was

sperm and egg      chance for breath     was
girl     boy     unsung Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da     unpainted
water lily     unwritten Call me Ishmael     waiting      waiting

Then I was     pain     pant pant pant     scream
blue skin to pink     perfect thumb
snail tongue     hunger     frost fragile

Now     husband     father     empty-nester
bald      passport-less      unable to stand
under The Creation of Adam     now voter     protestor
insomniac      lover of chicken pizza     old
Dracula movies      van Gogh nights      now quick
to anger     now patient      guilty     ABBA fan
Milky Way eating     diabetic     now poet     now failed
plumber     grower of hair in odd places      God
lover      God doubter     in debt     rich     church organist
now grief-drenched     yesterday’s tears     yesterday’s laugh
sweating like a July toilet tank     now pierced ear
occasional joint smoker     unbalanced checkbook

Tomorrow     I’ll sit on a beach     drink sunrise     fly with gulls
recite a poem     loaded     with iron ore     launch it across Superior
watch it     sail happily     sail ever     sail after     distant     Thunder     Bay

May 31, 2025: "The Month of June: 13 1/2," Grad, "Graduation Party"

It is that time of year when young people march in caps and gowns, high school orchestras struggle through "Pomp and Circumstance," and parents feel old.

Sharon Olds' daughter matriculates . . . 

The Month of June: 13 1/2

by: Sharon Olds

As our daughter approaches graduation and
puberty at the same time, at her
own, calm, deliberate, serious rate,
she begins to kick up her heels, jazz out her
hands, thrust out her hipbones, chant
I’m great! I’m great! She feels 8th grade coming
open around her, a chrysalis cracking and
letting her out, it falls behind her and
joins the other husks on the ground,
7th grade, 6th grade, the
magenta rind of 5th grade, the
hard jacket of 4th when she had so much pain,
3rd grade, 2nd, the dim cocoon of
1st grade back there somewhere on the path, and
kindergarten like a strip of thumb-suck blanket
taken from the actual blanket they wrapped her in at birth.
The whole school is coming off her shoulders like a
cloak unclasped, and she dances forth in her
jerky sexy child’s joke dance of
self, self, her throat tight and a
hard new song coming out of it, while her
two dark eyes shine
above her body like a good mother and a
good father who look down and
love everything their baby does, the way she
lives their love.

It's difficult for parents to see their children grow, mature into thinking, autonomous creatures.  We always want our kids to stay small, dependent.  Each passing year makes us more and more obsolete.  Pretty soon, you're sitting in bleachers, watching your offspring stride across a stage to collect a piece of paper that pretty much says, "Congratulations!  It's up to you now!"

I went to a graduation party this morning for the son of one of my best friends.  I've watched this young man grow from a quiet kid to a smart, outgoing high school senior.  I used to tower over him.  He now towers over me.  

He's an amazing, empathetic kid.  (I say "kid" because that's what he'll always be to me.)  When I think about the future, I worry a little less because I know young people like him exist.  My generation (and the generation before) has fucked up the world pretty bad and still continues to do so.  It's up to my friend's son and his generation to somehow rescue it.  And I think they will.

Saint Marty wrote a poem tonight about this grad time of year, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:  

On this day in 1859, Big Ben became a working clock in London, England.  For a long time, hearing the bells throughout the city was how Londoners knew what time it was.  Write a poem where the reader knows what time it is and what season it is through the details of your poem.  Do not use words like morning, evening, winter, summer, but let the poem reflect the time of day or season by what is happening in the poem and by the images you use.  For extra credit, have someone in the poem running late of showing up early.

Graduation Party

for E. F.

by: Martin Achatz

I observe the evolution of this boy

from just born to just graduated,

the table jammed with photos,

crayon drawings, poems about pizza

and dogs, ribbons for spelling,

finally a diploma and tassel.

It's like those charts in biology

class:  Dryopithecus to Homo

habalis, erectus, neanderthalensis,

sapien--crawling to knuckling to 

walking.  Now, he sits at a table

with friends, plate piled with

donuts, muffins, bacon and cheese

quiche, his first meal on this day 

after when all he can think about

is tomorrow and tomorrow, his spine

straightening, thick fur melting away,

brain expanding to make room

for the invention of fire.

May 30, 2025: "The Moment the Two Worlds Meet," Vacations, "Honeymoon at Seashell City"

I took today off work, and then I pretty much worked all day long--on poems and cover letters and resumés and church music.  My life rarely is without tasks that need to be completed, for the library or university or churches or home.  

I also spent a lot of time thinking about my kids--my daughter who's 24 and heading off to med school in a couple months, and my son who's 16 and will be a senior next school year.  It seems like yesterday they were just tadpoles swimming in my wife's belly.

Sharon Olds reflects on the birth of a child . . . 

The Moment the Two Worlds Meet

by: Sharon Olds

That's the moment I always think of--when the
slick, whole body comes out of me,
when they pull it out, not pull it but steady it
as it pushes forth, not catch it but keep their
hands under it as it pulses out,
they are the first to touch it,
and it shines, it glistens with the thick liquid on it.
That's the moment, while it's sliding, the limbs
compressed close to the body, the arms
bent like a crab's cloud-muscle legs, the
thighs packed plums in heavy syrup, the
legs folded like the wings of a chicken--
that is the center of life, that moment when the
juiced, bluish sphere of the baby is
sliding between the two worlds,
wet, like sex, it is sex,
it is my life opening back and back
as you'd strip the reed from the bud, not strip it but
watch it thrust so it peels itself and the
flower is there, severely folded, and
then it begins to open and dry
but by then the moment is over,
they wipe off the grease and wrap the child in a blanket and
hand it to you entirely in this world.

Sharon Olds pretty much captures the experience of childbirth for women in this poem.  For nine months, the fetus swims in its own little liquid world of heartbeat.  Then the woman's body opens, and a new body appears, becomes a part of this world we all know.  That previous world of ocean and warmth and music becomes ancestral.

It always feels to me like I'm shuttling back and forth between different worlds.  Library world to university world to poetry world to church world to blog world.  I've juggled this whole solar system of worlds most of my life.  Occasionally (not often in the last couple years), I'm able to take a break, visit an uncharted world to just relax and forget about life on my other planets.

I haven't taken a true traveling vacation for quite a while.  No lounging on the beaches of Cancun.  No climbing the Swiss Alps.  No tours of the Louvre.  Instead, when I take time off, I stay home with my dog, sleep a lot, write a lot, read a lot, and binge TV a lot.  

It is the cusp of full summer now.  As I said, my daughter is moving away in a little over a month, and, in a week or so, my son will finish up his junior year of high school.  My worlds are going to shift and expand again.  I'll probably be on the road a lot more in the coming years.  I have no idea what birthdays and holidays are going to be like.  To paraphrase the book of Exodus, I will be a stranger in a strange world again.

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

Write two ten-line pomes about two places you've visited--one that you loved and one you disliked or didn't like as well.  Now, intersperse the lines of the place-you-loved poem with the lines of the place-you-didn't-like-so-much poem until you have one twenty-line poem.

Honeymoon at Seashell City

by: Martin Achatz

we stand at the edge of that igneous

moonscape in the dark, watch

a man-eating clam under glass, mouth

propped open, a mousetrap waiting for

the lava roar off the cliff into the Pacific,

a sound like the beginning of the world

a curious toddler to wander by,

boxes of dried starfish, polished conchs

in our ears, so loud I have to press

my lips to my wife's ear for her

displayed like produce in a grocery store,

tomato snail shells, sea cucumbers

to hear my words even though I really

have nothing to say about Hadean

carved wooden gull glued onto a piece

of driftwood bleached almost white

oceans under her body's volcanic pull and

my hunger for the magma of her skin

by waves and sun and time while

the Beach Boys croon about Kokomo and surf

May 29, 2025: "I Cannot Forget the Woman in the Mirror," Quiet, "Poem for an Ordinary Day on which I Wasn't Exposed to Measles and Lilacs Are Beginning to Bloom"

Some days are just . . . quiet.  

Nothing special happens.  No catastrophes or Nobel Prizes.  You just get up, go about your normal, daily business, have dinner, maybe watch a little television, and then go to bed.

Most people don't realize that quiet days like today are gifts.  Blessings.  Full of common, everyday miracles.

Sharon Olds writes about living her true life . . . 

I Cannot Forget the Woman in the Mirror

by: Sharon Olds

Backwards and upside down in the twilight, that
woman on all fours, her head
dangling, and suffused, her lean
haunches, the area of darkness, the flanks and
ass narrow and pale as a deer's and those
breasts hanging down toward the center of the earth like 

               plummets, when I
swayed from side to side they swayed, it was
so near night I couldn’t tell if they were yellow or
violet or rose. I cannot get over her
moving toward him upside down in the mirror like a
fly on the ceiling, her head hanging down and her
tongue long and purple as an anteater's
going toward his body, she was so clearly a human
animal, she was an Iroquois scout creeping
naked and noiseless, and when I looked at her
she looked at me so directly, her eyes all
pupil, her stare said to me I
belong here, this is mine, I am living out my
true life on this earth.

Olds isn't describing anything earthshattering in this poem.  It's simply a sexual encounter in front of a mirror, her watching her mirror self "living out" her "true life on this earth."  

Most of people aren't really cognizant of their true lives.  They go through their daily routines with blinders on, moving from one mundane thing to another.  That pretty much describes almost every one of my days.  I never really stop to smell the lilacs.  Instead, I rush everywhere, trying to milk as much productivity as I can out of each second that passes.

I literally have to remind myself to pause, look around, and give thanks for all the quotidian miracles around me.  Staples.  A good fountain pen.  Sunlight.  A bad joke.  A good joke.  A nickel in my pocket.  Trillium blossoming in the backyard.  Because I'm a poet, I do this kind of thing all the time.  If you look for moments of grace, you'll find they.  Or they will find you.

Now, not all grace is beautiful or transcendent.  The writer Flannery O'Connor said this about grace:  "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful . . . The reader wants his grace warm and binding, not dark and disruptive."  Ultimately, all grace is good, even if it causes discomfort or pain.  

Yes, it's difficult to see grace in all situations.  Yet, if you look around right now, I'd bet you could list at least five things for which you're grateful.  Gratitude is an acknowledgement of grace.

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

On this day in 1903, comedian Bob Hope was born.  Bob Hope was known for his own rendition of the song "Thanks For The Memories."  Write a poem where you give thanks, but make sure it includes humor as well as gratitude.

Poem for an Ordinary Day

     on which I Wasn't Exposed to Measles

     and Lilacs Are Beginning to Bloom

by: Martin Achatz

Nothing happened today.

The sun rose.  I ate breakfast.

My son went to school.  I went

to work, as did my wife.

Had a spinach salad for lunch,

topped with chicken breast and flax seeds.

Ate two Hershey bars for dessert.

Read about a measles case reported

in my county.  Immediately checked

my body for welts and rubeola.

Two birds shit on my freshly washed

car.  Found a joint in the backseat.

Probably my son's.  Smoked it.

Ate a hotdog for dinner, then took

my dog for a walk.  Ended up at a local

ice cream shop.  Ordered a vanilla malt.

Stood in my backyard for 20 minutes

surrounded by lungs of lilacs

inhaling, exhaling the dusky light.

Jesus, I wish every day could be like this.

May 26, 2025: "Topography," Memorial Day, "Taps"

Yes, it is Memorial Day in the United States.  Every year, on the last Monday of the month of May, we celebrate and honor members of the U.S. armed forces who sacrificed their lives to defend our nation.  This year, more than any other, it's even more important to remember the true meaning of this day--the preservation of freedom and democracy against tyranny, hatred, and authoritarianism.

Sharon Olds writes about the United States . . . 

Topography

by: Sharon Olds

After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
intricately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, Olds' poem is about sex.  It's not very subtle in that regard.  However, it's also about the freedom of speech (that's the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for all those MAGA readers who've never read the document upon which our entire country is based).  Olds can write a sex poem using the United States metaphorically and parodying the Pledge of Allegiance simply because it's her Constitutional right.

In other countries ruled by fascist dictators, poets have been thrown in jail for criticizing political leaders.  Stalin did it.  Putin is still doing it.  Fortunately, the Constitution prevents President 47 from doing it in the United States (for now).  All those brave members of the U.S. military who fought and died in armed conflicts did so in order to bear "true faith and allegiance to the Constitution" (that's in the oath all enlisted personnel take--check it out if you don't believe me).  They sacrificed their lives so Olds could exercise her Constitutional rights as a U.S. citizen.

I was raised to respect and honor all military veterans.  From a very young age, I knew that Memorial Day wasn't just about a three-day weekend and hotdogs and corn on the cob.  It's about who we are and what ideals we should all hold dear, regardless of political affiliation.  

I went to a Memorial Day parade with my family today.  Then, we attended a Veterans of Foreign Wars service at a local cemetery.  We placed flowers at the graves of relatives, including my father, who was a military veteran.

I am not a hater or war-monger or xenophobe.  I believe in the worth of everyone, no matter where you come from, what you believe, or who you love.  As a Christian, I was taught that all human beings are children of God.  Kindness and compassion should be the guiding force of everything we do.

If you don't agree with these ideals, you are NOT a true patriot and you are NOT a true Christian.  Sorry, not sorry.  Read the Constitution and the Bible.  It's pretty straightforward.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for Memorial Day based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem where the first word starts with "A" and the last word of the poem ends with "Z."  Somewhere in the poem mention the alphabet or alphabetical order.  Have the poem be about something that has nothing to do with the alphabet.  For extra credit, try to use a word that begins with each letter of the alphabet.

Taps

by: Martin Achatz

At my father's grave today,

a flag licks the bright

air as if whispering 

his name, mustering  him

to attention, him standing

straight as a cornstalk

as my mother's ashes

sigh beside him, tell

him to settle down,

relax until the angels

blow "Reveille" and all

the war dead fall in,

waiting to be counted

one last time before marching

off to that final reckoning, 

from Private Second Class

Achatz to Staff Sergeant Zamora.

May 25, 2025: "Looking at Them Asleep," Nephew, "Last Advice to the High School Graduate"

It is the time of year for change.  The trees are greening, and the lawn mowers are droning.  The days a stretching out, and fewer and fewer nights involve frost.  Pretty soon, the last bells of the schoolyear will be ringing, and kids will be set free for a few months to work at McDonald's, try to score beer outside party stores, and start preparing for college.  And it's time for parents to let go.

Sharon Olds writes about her kids . . . 

Looking at Them Asleep

by: Sharon Olds

When I come home late at night and go in to kiss them,
I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,
her mouth a little puffed, like one sated, but
slightly pouted like one who hasn't had enough,
her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the
iris around to face the back of her head,
the eyeball marble-naked under that
thick satisfied desiring lid,
she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion,
and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,
one knee up as if he is climbing
sharp stairs, up into the night,
and under his thin quivering eyelids you
know his eyes are wide open and
staring and glazed, the blue in them so
anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his
mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb
and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled
and pale, his fine fingers curved,
his hand open, and in the center of each hand
the dry dirty boyish palm
resting like a cookie. I look at him in his
quest, the thin muscles of his arms
passionate and tense, I look at her with her
face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,
content, content--and I know if I wake her she'll
smile and turn her face toward me though
half asleep and open her eyes and I
know if I wake him he'll jerk and say Don't and sit
up and stare about him in blue
unrecognition, oh my Lord how I
know these two. When love comes to me and says
What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.

Olds knows her kids, each and every hair on their heads and nail on their fingers.  That's what parents do.  They spend 17 or 18 or 19 years teaching their children how to fly, and then they open the window and watch them wing away.

My daughter will be leaving in July for medical school.  Haven't really wrapped my mind around that fast-approaching cleaving.  This weekend, my nephew graduated from high school.  I attended his ceremony on Friday, and this evening I went to his graduation party.  

It's an exciting time for young people--on the cusp of their first real tastes of adulthood.  I could see it in my nephew's eyes.  They were full of joy and excitement and hope.  That's the way it should be.  Same with my daughter.  Both of them are gazing into the future, while we parents are mourning the little boy who loved playing Angry Birds and the little girl who fell asleep to Frosty the Snowman every afternoon.  

I wish I had enough money to fund both my daughter's and nephew's educations.  I would at the drop of a hat.  (For my international disciples, I should explain that, in the United States, students have to pay to go to college.  I know, I know.  It's messed up.)  Unfortunately, poets don't make a whole lot of money, unless a Pulitzer Prize is involved, so the best I can do is offer love, support, and words.

I have no doubt my nephew and daughter are going to change the world.  They're kind and intelligent and funny.  As Olds says, I know this girl, this boy.  And I couldn't be prouder.

Saint Marty took a day off from The Daily Poet to rite this poem for his nephew . . . 

Last Advice to the
          High School Graduate

by: Martin Achatz

for Caden, May 23, 2025

I know you’re tired of all the advice:
live in the moment, choose kindness,
measure success by the number of people
who love you, follow the path that’s
overgrown and rocky. You’re weary
of all those clichés from us oldsters
who will gladly show you our scars,
name them like willful kids or
monuments on a Civil War battlefield.

Instead, I want to tell you this morning
I found a rabbit in my backyard. His black
eyes panicked, he dragged himself
over the grass, hind legs useless
as driftwood. Perhaps he was dropped
there by a hungry owl after biting
and clawing and screaming, his spine
splintered by the fist of the ground.
I wanted to help mend his broken body, 

watch him bound away into the lilac bushes.
Sometimes, though, beautiful things cannot
be fixed, and all we can do is give thanks
that we have hearts that can be broken
by suffering and tongues to sing something
sacred and tender about this fragile world
you now hold in the palm of your hand.

May 19, 2025: "Cambridge Elegy," Sal, "Opposites Attract"

Tonight, I screened the film Gladiator II at the library.  The entire time I watched it, I was thinking about my sister, Sally, who loved Gladiator, mainly because of Russell Crowe.  I'm not sure Sal would have enjoyed the sequel all that much, because of the serious lack of Russell Crowe in the movie.  But her spirit was certainly sitting right next to me the whole time, watching.

Sharon Olds writes an elegy for a lost young love . . . 

Cambridge Elegy

by: Sharon Olds

(for Henry Averell Gerry, 1941-60)

I scarcely know how to speak to you now,
you are so young now, closer to my daughter's age
than mine -- but I have been there and seen it, and must
tell you, as the seeing and hearing
spell the world into the deaf-mute's hand.
The dormer windows like the ears of a fox, like the
long row of teats on a pig, still
perk up over the Square, though they're digging up the
street now, as if digging a grave,
the shovels shrieking on stone like your car
sliding along on its roof after the crash.
How I wanted everyone to die I if you had to die,
how sealed into my own world I was,
deaf and blind. What can I tell you now,
now that I know so much and you are a
freshman, still, drinking a quart of orange juice and
playing three sets of tennis to cure a hangover, such an
ardent student of the grown-ups! I can tell you
we were right, our bodies were right, life was

really going to be that good, that
pleasurable in every cell.
Suddenly I remember the exact look of your body, but
better than the bright corners of your eyes, or the
light of your face, the rich Long Island

puppy-fat of your thighs, or the shined
chino of your pants bright in the corners of my eyes, I
remember your extraordinary act of courage in
loving me, something no one but the
blind and halt had done before. You were
fearless, you could drive after a sleepless night
just like a grown-up, and not be afraid, you could
fall asleep at the wheel easily and
never know it, each blond hair of your head--and they were
thickly laid--put out like a filament of light,
twenty years ago. The Charles still
slides by with that ease that made me bitter when I
wanted all things broken and rigid as the
bricks in the sidewalk or your love for me
stopped cell by cell in your young body.
Ave--I went ahead and had the children,
the life of ease and faithfulness, the
palm and the breast, every millimeter of delight in the body,
I took the road we stood on at the start together, I
took it all without you as if
in taking it after all I could most
honor you.

It's so difficult losing a person at a younger age.  It sounds as if Olds had made life plans with Henry Averell Gerry.  Those plans included marriage and children.  Olds saw those plans become reality, without Gerry's presence.  She writes the elegy to let him know she's done it--gone down "the road we stood on at the start together"--honoring his youth and potential.

My sister Sal was taken way too early by lymphoma of the brain.  I know she had plans.  She had retirement accounts, a nice camper, nieces and nephews she spoiled.  Always generous, Sal celebrated each Christmas and birthday as if it was going to be the last.  She gave of herself freely, without ever asking for repayment.  That's who she was.

But, of course, you can't have life without death.  Joy without grief.  Love without loss.  That's the way it works.  Everything is defined by its opposite.  You can't know if something tastes salty unless you taste sweet.  Summer can't really be enjoyed unless you know the ice of winter.  Abbott would have been nothing without Costello.  

I would never give up the time I had with Sal simply to avoid the pain of her loss.  Unfortunately, those two things go hand-in-hand.  There was always going to be grief, whether she died first or me.  The depth of love I felt for my sister is defined by sorrow I feel at her absence.  As I said, you can't have one without the other.

So, Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about attraction and opposition, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a pair of something (of a pair of people) in couplet form (a couplet is a two-line stanza).  Make sure each line in the couplet compliments the other in sound and image; for example, if your first line is about a bride maybe include an image of a groom in the second line or perhaps a veil and bouquet.  Make a list of pairs--Bert and Ernie, apples and oranges, his and hers--then write in couplets inspired by the couple you choose.

Opposites Attract

by: Martin Achatz

Mary Oliver knew this, paired joy

with grief in the same poem,

the way my dad paired 7-Up

with Seven Crown every night

and the moon sometimes sits

in the sky with morning sun,

because it's a matter of negative

calling to positive, magnetically,

Romeo betraying his family name

by falling for Juliet at first sight,

or Robert Redford jumping off

that cliff with Paul Newman.

Salt defines sugar.  Satan defines

God.  You can't have one without

the other.  Just ask the fish swimming

with birds in the reflected clouds.

May 18, 2025: “After 37 Years My Mother Apologizes for My Childhood,” Atonement, “Volcanology”

I think everyone spends their adult years recovering from their childhoods.  It’s easier for some, difficult for others.  Most of the time, it’s a mixed bag—good and bad vying for memory.  I’ve learned that forgiveness is a huge part of this process.

Sharon Olds writes about her childhood . . . 

After 37 Years My Mother

          Apologizes for My Childhood

by: Sharon Olds

When you tilted toward me, arms out
like someone trying to walk through a fire,
when you swayed toward me, crying out you were
sorry for what you had done to me, your
eyes filling with terrible liquid like
balls of mercury from a broken thermometer
skidding on the floor, when you quietly screamed
Where else could I turn? Who else did I have?, the
chopped crockery of your hands swinging toward me, the
water cracking from your eyes like moisture from
stones under heavy pressure, I could not
see what I would do with the rest of my life.
The sky seemed to be splintering, like a window
someone is bursting into or out of, your
tiny face glittered as if with
shattered crystal, with true regret, the
regret of the body. I could not see what my
days would be, with you sorry, with
you wishing you had not done it, the
sky falling around me, its shards
glistening in my eyes, your old, soft
body fallen against me in horror I
took you in my arms, I said It’s all right,
don’t cry, it’s all right, the air filled with
flying glass, I hardly knew what I
said or who I would be now that I had forgiven you.

Forgiving someone who hurt you as a child, without the ability to defend yourself, is incredibly painful.  I speak from experience.  While I’m not going to get into specifics, I want to say that individuals who harm young people are not irredeemable.  However, redemption comes at a cost—the need to face your mistakes and try to atone.

I know that sounds very Catholic.  However, I firmly believe that forgiveness without some act of penance is meaningless.  All abusers apologize to their victims after committing their abuse.  Perhaps the apology is, in  that moment, genuine, but if the abuser continues to abuse, that apology is also meaningless.

Don’t try to decode this post.  There are no hidden messages.  Family dysfunction occurs.  Frankly, I don’t know any “functional” family.  Humans are fallible.  They fuck up.  Mix in mental illness, and the result can be unbearable at times.

But, as a Christian, I also have to believe that everyone is worthy of being forgiven, depending on the actions they take to BE forgiven.  As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words.  If saying “I am sorry” isn’t backed up by acts of true love and kindness, then those three words are only that—words.  

Apologies are cheap, unless they are followed by grace and amends.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about dysfunction and love, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1980, Washington State’s Mount St. Helens erupted, sending ash in the air for miles.  Write a poem that compares a relationship, person, lover, family, job, or divorce to a volcano.  Learn about the differences in volcanoes, such as the slow moving lava of Hawaiian volcanoes to the almost atomic-blast ash clouds of Mount St. Helens.

Volcanology

by: Martin Achatz

It’s hard to love him

with his magma tongue

in the caldera of his mouth,

never sure when he will blot

out the sun, fill my lungs

with ash and vog until

breathing is just memory

and I lie down, maybe

hugging a pillow or dog,

let myself be consumed,

calcified, even the thoughts

inside my hollow skull,

echoing like ocean waves

in the ear of a conch:

He loves me, loves me not,

loves me, loves me not.

May 17, 2025: "Why My Mother Made Me," Hold On to Things, "Momento Mori"

What makes a person?  It's an interesting question.

Do past traumas?  Old relationships?  Physical challenges?  Movies?  Television shows?  Parents?  Teachers?  I guess it boils down to nature versus nurture.  Are we born with our personalities, or do our personalities develop over time?

Sharon Olds meditates on why she was born . . .  

Why My Mother Made Me

by: Sharon Olds

Maybe I am what she always wanted, 

my father as a woman, 

maybe I am what she wanted to be 

when she first saw him, tall and smart, 

standing there in the college yard with the 

hard male light of 1937 

shining on his slicked hair. She wanted that 

power. She wanted that size. She pulled and 

pulled through him as if he were silky 

bourbon taffy, she pulled and pulled and 

pulled through his body till she drew me out, 

sticky and gleaming, her life after her life. 

Maybe I am the way I am 

because she wanted exactly that, 

wanted there to be a woman 

a lot like her, but who would not hold back, so she 

pressed herself, hard, against him, 

pressed and pressed the clear soft 

ball of herself like a stick of beaten cream 

against his stained sour steel grater 

until I came out the other side of his body, 

a tall woman, stained, sour, sharp, 

but with milk at the center of my nature. 

I lie here now as I once lay 

in the crook of her arm, her creature, 

and I feel her looking down into me the way 

the maker of a sword gazes at his face 

in the steel of the blade.

We all hold onto things--trinkets from the past that seem too important simply to throw away.  I still have a People Magazine from the week River Phoenix died.  I've been keeping diaries and journals since I was in middle school.  I have boxes and boxes of them.  I've been posting on this blog for close to 15 years now.  Well over 5,000 posts.

My poems and posts and stories and journals are my my mementos.  They remind me of who I am, where I come from.  And now this post will be another of those reminders.  Twenty years from now, I may reread these words and not remember a single thing about their composition.  Or I may remember everything.

What I want to remember about today:  my wife and I watched an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tonight.  Being happy.  Feeling blessed.  Not wanting the night to end.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about all those things that remind us of life . . . and death, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Find an index card and turn it vertically.  Write a poem about something that doesn't last long.  Writing on an index card vertically will result in much shorter lines--see how this added structure changes how you normally write.  For extra credit, turn the index card over and write horizontally about something that lasts a long time.

Memento Mori

by: Martin Achatz

My sister's hospital badge,

from when she was still saving

people's lives.  A polaroid

of a cocker spaniel, blue ball

in his jaws, as if he's waiting

for me to toss it one last time.

My grandfather's wedding ring,

worn smooth as an old tooth.

My grandma didn't want it, 

told me it belonged to his first

wife, as if love was a well

that could run dry.  We all keep

tokens like these in dresser

drawers, closet boxes.  I bet

Mary Todd kept the silver

half-dollars from Lincoln's

eyelids.  Maybe she worried 

them all day until her fingers 

burned, slept with them 

under her cool pillow at night 

until she couldn't remember

the sound of his voice or 

the smell of his 

whiskered cheeks.

May 16, 2025: "Alcatraz," Trapped in the Past, "To That Girl in High School"

It's easy to get trapped in the past, especially if that past contains any kind of trauma or difficulty. I've worked for years with therapists to overcome some of my life experiences. Talking and writing about these experiences throws open the closet door and lets the skeletons hidden inside start dancing.

Sharon Olds deals with some childhood trauma . . . 

Alcatraz

by: Sharon Olds

When I was a girl, I knew I was a man
because they might send me to Alcatraz
and only men went to Alcatraz.
Every time we drove to the city 

I'd see it there, white as a white
shark in the shark-rich Bay, the bars like
milk-white ribs. I knew I had pushed my
parents too far, my inner badness had
spread like ink and taken me over, I could
not control my terrible thoughts,
terrible looks, and they had often said
that they would send me there--maybe the very next
time I spilled my milk.  Ala
Cazam, the aluminum doors would slam, I'd be
there where I belonged, a girl-faced man in the
prison no one had escaped from. I did not
fear the other prisoners,
I knew who they were, men like me who had
spilled their milk one time too many,
not been able to curb their thoughts—
what I feared was the horror of the circles: circle of
sky around the earth, circle of
land around the Bay, circle of
water around the island, circle of
sharks around the shore, circle of
outer walls, inner walls,
steel girders, chrome bars,
circle of my cell around me, and there at the
center, the glass of milk AND the guard's
eyes upon me as I reached out for it.

Now, going to prison for spilling a glass of milk seems a little drastic.  However, that was Sharon Olds' fear as a young girl, and this poem is all about little childhood wounds.  I know I can trace quite a few of my own adult phobias back to things that happened to me as a kid.  (Everybody goes through heartbreaks in high schooler--I think it's part of every curriculum.)

I'm not going to belabor any point tonight.  I'm too tired.  It's been a long week.  Yes, I could write about some of my past traumas, but it's Friday night.  I want to relax and sleep well.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about a high school heartbreak, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Think about all the people in your life that you liked, but never really got a chance to know.  This could be because they died or perhaps you just had a brief friendship before you had to move away.  Maybe you switched jobs or your relationship was cut short for another reason.  Write a poem where you address this person.  Share with her/him images of your favorite things and things s/he never knew that were important to you.  Be specific.  If you love flatbread from Spain or love dinner-plate dahlias, mention it.  Tell them what you remember of them.  You can write this poem in the form of a letter, postcard, or just address the poem to them:  "Dear __________, You never saw my garden . . ."

To That Girl in High School

by: Martin Achatz

Every night I went to bed

jealous of the moonlight

for turning your body into

a bright, perfect pearl.

May 15, 2025: "I Go Back to May 1937," Ghosts, "Ten Letter Fragments to Emily Dickinson"

There are moments when I wish I could time travel.  Both of my kids are older now.  This July, my 24-year-old daughter will be moving downstate to start medical school.  In a week's time, my 16-year-old son will end his junior year of high school (plus he's got a semester of college under his belt, as well).  Yes, I've been thinking about my early fatherhood days--holding them in my arms and whispering in their tiny ears, "Nothing's going to hurt you while I'm around."  I would step into the DeLorean just to have those moments back.

Sharon Olds has a time travel moment . . . 

I Go Back to May 1937

by: Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

I think everybody has experiences they would like to change.  Car accidents avoided.  College classes passed.  High school crushes fucked.  Family traumas healed.  Regrets are as plentiful as dandelions in June.

Me?  Today, I wish I could see my sister Rose one last time.  Today would have been her birthday.  (You already know this fact if you read last night's post.)  I don't think I left things unsaid to her.  It was impossible to leave her presence without saying "I love you" and giving her a hug.  

The morning Rose died is kind of a blur.  She hadn't been doing well for quite some time.  In and out of the hospital the last year of her life.  Her lungs were awful, and she kept getting bronchitis and pneumonia and double pneumonia.  In fact, one of the things that lead to her death was a pneumothorax.  

Yet, when she breathed her last breath (right after my daughter arrived to say goodbye to her), I almost didn't believe she'd died.  She didn't struggle at the end.  Her chest wasn't heaving.  No rattle in her throat.  She simply inhaled quietly and exhaled quietly, and that was it.  So peaceful.

It's also the 139th anniversary of Emily Dickinson's death.  So, even poetically, I'm being haunted by the past.  I'm surrounded by ghosts today.

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

On this day in 1886, Emily Dickinson died at the age of fifty-five.  Imagine Emily Dickinson sitting next to you right now, dressed in white, and holding a book of poems.  She reads quietly at your side.  Write a poem about this scene or imagine you are writing a letter to Emily Dickinson.  What do you want to tell her?

Ten Letter Fragments to Emily Dickinson

by: Martin Achatz

1.

Did you really hear a fly

when you died--battering

the window pane

like a horse trapped 

in its stall while

the barn's burning down?

2.

Was white really

your favorite color,

or were you a moth

in a former life?

3.

I like being alone, too,

because I'm nobody

and don't care who

you are.

4.

I prefer "Stairway to Heaven"

over "Amazing Grace."

5.

Blind dates aren't

perfect, but a little

carriage ride never

killed anyone.

6.

"Hope" doesn't have feathers,

can't be trained to sit

on your shoulder, eat

crackers, whisper in your ear

the winning lottery numbers.

7.

Can you love the wrong

person?  That's like asking

peepers whether they

really want to sing arias

to warm May mud.

8.

I'm going to tell

all the truth here:

that narrow fellow

you saw in the grass

was me.

9.

This morning, I felt

as if the top of my head

was taken off.  It wasn't

poetry.  It was the fifth

of gin I drank last night.

10.

I dwell in possibility,

too, because poets

think there's beauty

in everything, even

if it takes bloodhounds

to hunt it down.

May 14, 2025: "When," Rose, "Black Coffee and Burned Toast"

Tomorrow would have been my sister Rose's sixtieth birthday.  She's been gone for three years now.  Hard to believe.  I think of her quite a bit, not always with sadness--she had a bright, bright spirit.  When she's on my mind, it's hard not to smile.

Poetry allows you to transform difficult emotions and experiences into something beautiful.  You could be writing about the September 11 attacks and create something that takes your breath away.  Billy Collins did that with "The Names."  Or you could be writing about your dying father and create a gorgeous exhortation for him to live--Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night."    

Sharon Olds writes a beautifully scary poem about nuclear holocaust . . .

When

by: Sharon Olds

I wonder now, only when it will happen,
when the young mother will hear the
noise like somebody's pressure cooker
down the block, going off. She'll go out in the yard,
holding her small daughter in her arms,
and there, above the end of the street, in the
air above the line of the trees,
she will see it rising, lifting up
over our horizon, the upper rim of the
gold ball, large as a giant
planet starting to lift up over ours.
She will stand there in the yard holding her daughter,
looking at it rise and glow and blossom and rise,
and the child will open her arms to it,
it will look so beautiful.

I find the end of this poem incredibly moving--that image of the mother holding the daughter as a mushroom cloud blooms on the horizon.  It's right out of one of those disaster flicks from the 1980s.  (You know the ones I'm talking about--a meteor wipes out the planet, a luxury cruise ship capsizes, California breaks off and slips into the ocean after an earthquake.)  The tenderness of the moment in Olds' poem is heartbreaking.

I'm not going to get all maudlin about my sister in this post.  She's simply been on my mind a lot recently.  Yes, I'm still grieving for her, despite the time that's elapsed since her passing.  I'm not sure it's possible to get over losing a loved one.  For me, all it takes is drinking a can of Diet Coke, and my sister Rose is right there with me.

Tomorrow, I know the ghost of my sister will be following me all day.  She loved celebrating her birthday.  In fact, as soon as Christmas was over, Rose would start reminding us that her birthday was approaching.  (She didn't have a really great concept of time.)  Maybe I'll write something about ghosts--something to remind myself of Rose's smile or laugh.  Something beautiful

Saint Marty wrote a not-so-scary poem about his father tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about your father or a father figure in your life.  In the poem, mention the type of shoes he wore, what he ate for breakfast, and reference at least three fathers from television shows.  Write to find out where these three images will lead you and what story your poem wants to tell.

Black Coffee and Burned Toast

by: Martin Achatz

He had black coffee and burned toast

every morning like Communion

while he listened to Marty Robbins on WJPD,

his leather work boots laced on his feet,

breast pocket stuffed with pens.

Each time he swallowed a slug

of black liquid, his Adam's apple 

bobbed like a buoy in rough waters.

He wasn't Pa Ingalls wading

through chest-deep snowdrifts

to rescue me from a blizzard

or John Robinson in his metallic

jumpsuit aiming Jupiter II toward

Alpha Centauri to save me from aliens

with heads like inflated chimpanzees

or even Herman Munster driving me

in a hearse to get vanilla ice cream

on a hot July afternoon.  No,

my old man wasn't anything 

special in his jeans and khaki

shirts, just a guy you'd see

in line at McDonald's or pushing

a lawnmower on a Saturday

morning.  He couldn't recite

Shakespearean soliloquies or perform

Calculus problems in his head.

One time, he sat in the front row

at a poetry reading, fell asleep

while I recited my poems.  Later,

he told me he was just concentrating

on what I was saying, chewing

my words like Easter bread, Jesus'

face scorched into each bite and dripping

with tongues of melted butter.

May 13, 2025: "The Pope's Penis," Fearless, "Ornithology"

I admire Sharon Olds as an artist because she's fearless.  She tackles topics that upset people--from sexuality to violence to discrimination to corruption.  As I said in previous posts, that's one of jobs of a poet:  to speak truth, no matter what.

One of my favorite poems by Olds is below.  The first time I encountered it back in the early 1990s, I was blown away.  My reaction can be summed up like this:  "Wait!  You can write about THAT?"  This little poem convinced me to become a poet, because it was so . . . out there and wonderful at the same time.

Sharon Olds give readers an encounter with . . . 

The Pope's Penis

by: Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate

clapper at the center of a bell.

It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a

halo of silver seaweed, the hair

swaying in the dimness and the heat--and at night,

while his eyes sleep, it stands up

in praise of God.

You may be offended by this poem.  That's okay.  If you don't like it, don't read it.  It's that simple.  You don't have to burn any books or go to some kind of meeting where you're crusading to rid the world of pornography.  Just politely close the book or log off this page and don't return to it.  Period.

Olds certainly is being humorous with her words here.  However, she's also providing commentary on how women have been subjugated by certain Christian denominations (including Catholicism).  And she's celebrating the sacredness of the body, in all of its uncontrollable splendor.  Even popes aren't immune to the physical cravings of the flesh.  Sharon Olds finds nothing shameful in sexuality.  In fact, I'd argue that she, in her own way, is saying that sexuality is one of God's gifts and should be exalted rather than relegated to the confessional.

That's my poetic sermon for today.  I'm climbing off my soapbox now.

I'm currently in between teaching semesters.  That gives me some time to breathe and relax and catch up on some much-needed sleep.  (In a week, I start teaching again until the end of June, so I'll be back to my neurotic self by Monday.)  I'm attempting to kickstart my writing, as well.  I've gotten lazy about sitting down with my journal and pen.  Not because I have nothing to say about life in the United States.  It's just this inability to know where to start.  

Do I focus on poetry, and ignore politics?  Do I pretend that the President 47 isn't accepting 400-million-dollar airplanes as a bribe from Qatar?  Do I tell cute stories about my puppy and ignore the Ice Agents arresting and deporting innocent people?  Don't get me started on tax cuts for billionaires.  

As a writer, I simply can't choose where to shine my spotlight.  It's exhausting.  When I sit down to work on a new poem, I have to give myself ten minutes to vent and bitch on the page.  Only after I've exorcised my anger and sadness can I begin to think in poetic terms.  Otherwise, all you'd probably be getting from me is one word repeated over and over and over and over.  (The word begins with an "f," ends with a "k," and isn't "folk" or "funk.")

All that being said, I don't have a lot on my mind at the moment.  Went out for drinks and KFC with some friends this evening.  I may have imbibed a little too much, as I can barely keep my eyes open.  

Saint Marty did write a poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Sit in a comfy chair (with or without a glass of wine) and listen to jazz or classical music for fifteen to twenty minutes.  Have a notebook to jot down images or ideas that come to mind as you listen to the music.  Write a poem about something you thought of while you listened.  If you like, keep the music on while you write.

Ornithology

by: Martin Achatz

I don't practice poetry the way

I practiced scales on the piano

or parallel parking when I was

learning to drive--no tests to pass

or licenses to carry to prove

I know trochaic tetrameter, no, just

an impossible impulse to chase

words the way my Aussie chases

finches in my backyard, body

a rubber band, snout threshing

the air back, up, forth, down

until she catches something in her

eager jaws--maybe a feather small

as an eyelash--tosses it, shakes

her head, wrings every drop of flight

from its downy barb until death

arrives the way it did for Keats:

too soon, leaving behind flocks

of poems wheeling in the blue

lungs of heaven like hungry gulls.

May 12, 2025: “The Girl,” Authoritarianism, “Joseph McCarthy Remembers Blueberry Muffins”

CONTENT WARNING:  The Sharon Olds poem in this post contains images of sexual violence, rape, and murder.

Sometimes, writers write about things that are difficult.  There are some poems in my journal that will probably never see the light of day until after I’m gone from this realm.  Either their subject matters are too personal, or they contain information about loved ones that I simply can’t share.  

Sharon Olds is pretty fearless in her writing . . . 

The Girl

by: Sharon Olds

They chased her and her friend through the woods

and caught them in a waste clearing, broken

random bracken, a couple of old mattresses,

as if the place had been prepared.

The thin one with straight hair

started raping her best friend,

and the curly one stood above her,

thrust his thumbs back inside her jaws, she was twelve,

stuck his penis in her mouth and throat

faster and faster and faster.

Then the straight-haired one stood up—

they lay like pulled-up roots at his feet,

naked twelve-year-old girls—he said

Now you’re going to know what it’s like

to be shot five times and slaughtered like a pig,

and they switched mattresses,

the blond was raping and stabbing her friend,

the straight-haired one sticking inside her

in one place and then another,

the point of his gun pressed deep into her waist,

she felt a little click in her spine and a 

sting like 7-Up in her head, and then he

pulled the tree-branch across her throat

and everything went dark,

the gym went dark, and her mother’s kitchen,

even the globes of light on the rounded

lips of her mother’s nesting bowls went dark.

When she woke up, she was lying on the cold

copper-smelling earth, the mattress was pulled up

over her like a blanket, she saw

the dead body of her best friend

and she began to run,

she came to the edge of the woods and she stepped

out from the trees, like a wound debriding,

she walked across the field to the tracks

and said to the railway brakeman Please, sir.  Please, sir.

At the trial she had to say everything—

her elder sister helped her with the words—

she had to sit in the room with them

and point to them.  Now she goes to parties

but does not smoke, she is a cheerleader,

she throws her body up in the air

and kicks her legs and comes home and does the dishes

and her homework, she has to work hard in math,

the sky over the roof of her bed

filled with white planets.  Every night

she prays for the soul of her best friend and

then thanks God for life.  She knows

what all of us want never to know

and she does a cartwheel, the splits, she shakes the

shredded pom-poms in her fists.

It’s a traumatic poem, full of ugliness and cruelty.  Yet, there’s also something hopeful in it—the girl survives, brings justice against the attackers.  She doesn’t forget her dead friend, but she’s also full of gratitude for the fact that she survived.  She is alive despite the violence committed against her.

Thank God, most people never have to experience that kind of violence.  However, each day the United States seems to be creeping closer and closer to authoritarianism.  Judges and mayors are being hauled off to jail simply for criticizing President 47’s policies.  (Last time I checked, it’s still legal not to agree with an elected official thanks to this little document called the Constitution.)

Now I’m seeing rumors of President 47 suspending habeas corpus, which guarantees that anyone detained by the government has the right to challenge their confinement in a court of law.  If habeas corpus goes the way of the passenger pigeon, then you/me/anyone can get thrown into prison and left to rot simply for saying something negative about Agent Orange.  For all I know, the FBI already has a file started on me.

Yet, I’m not going to shy away from being critical of a federal government hell-bent on destroying democracy.  Truth is truth, and I will speak it regardless of what kind of MAGA Kool-Aid you may have swallowed.  The truth came out during Watergate, and President Nixon had to resign.  The truth came out during the Army-McCarthy hearings, and Joseph McCarthy ended up being censured by the Senate (and losing most of his political clout).  

Truth is power, and that’s why schools and universities and libraries and museums and journalists are currently under attack in the United States.  An uneducated public is easier to control and manipulate.  Think about it.  Joseph McCarthy had the country believing the Lucille Ball was a communist.  President 47 calls the January 6 insurrectionists “heroes,” and suddenly we’re giving taxpayer money to the family of an insurrectionist who was killed by Capitol Police during the attempted coup.  

The only people who should be afraid of the truth are those who are propagating the lies.  That’s it.  I’m pretty safe, I think, because there’s no way President 47 reads or understands poetry.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about a not-very-nice guy, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem where a famous person from the past visits you in the present.  What message does s/he bring to you?  What does s/he want to tell you?  Write a series of questions for this person and imagine the person answering them.  Write down everything s/he says.  Use the best answers and lines from this exercise to write a poem about a topic this person brings to mind.  After you complete your draft, research this person and find an actual quote to use as an epigraph or weave into the poem.

Joseph McCarthy Remembers Blueberry Muffins

by: Martin Achatz

“I will not get into a pissing contest with that skunk.”

          — Dwight D. Eisenhower, talking about Joseph McCarthy

You have to love your enemies,

he says, just like Jesus.  He sits

on his front porch, remembers how

skunks jumped in fields when

he pumped bullets into their asses,

how satisfying the smell was

as it settled on him like Hail Marys

after a great confession.  They were

everywhere, in basements, under

porches, behind outhouses, inside

corn cribs.  Sneaky bastards.  His eyes

get all misty as he recalls Old Lady

Schmidt bringing him warm blueberry

muffins one afternoon after he wiped

out a stench of seven from her farm.

She shook my hand, thanked me.

He wags his head, spits.

Christ, the blueberries were big

as horseflies that summer.

May 11, 2025: “The Food-Thief,” Mother’s Day, “Fortune Telling”

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone!

Now that the craziness of the beginning of 2025 has subsided a little, I’m going to try to post at least once a day.  If you can’t tell, I’m experiencing a little guilt for being such a slacker blogger saint.  I have no legitimate excuse aside from the fact that I was busy and tired and overwhelmed (by life, teaching, politics, you-name-it).  

I live with a lot of guilt.  I grew up Catholic—it sort of comes with the territory.  The smallest mistake or oversight can send me into a tailspin of penance and apology.  My mother never really exploited my natural tendency to self-flagellate, except when it would teach me a lesson of some sort.  Punishment from Mom came in the form of disappointment—I never wanted to hear her say, “I’m disappointed in you.”

Sharon Olds writes about punishment and mercy . . . 

The Food-Thief

by: Sharon Olds

(Uganda, drought) 

They drive him along the road in the steady 

conscious way they drove their cattle 

when they had cattle, when they had homes and 

living children. They drive him with pliant 

peeled sticks, snapped from trees 

whose bark cannot be eaten—snapped, 

not cut, no one has a knife, and the trees that can be 

eaten have been eaten leaf and trunk and the 

roots pulled from the ground and eaten. 

They drive him and beat him, a loose circle of 

thin men with sapling sticks, 

driving him along slowly, slowly 

beating him to death. He turns to them 

with all the eloquence of the body, the 

wrist turned out and the vein up his forearm 

running like a root just under the surface, the 

wounds on his head ripe and wet as a 

loam furrow cut back and cut back at 

plough-time to farrow a trench for the seed, his 

eye pleading, the white a dark

occluded white like cloud-cover on the 

morning of a day of heavy rain. 

His lips are open to his brothers as the body of a 

woman might be open, as the earth itself was 

split and folded back and wet and 

seedy to them once, the lines on his lips 

fine as the thousand tributaries of a 

root-hair, a river, he is asking them for life 

with his whole body, and they are driving his body 

all the way down the road because 

they know the life he is asking for—

it is their life.

It’s a horrible little narrative that Olds relates—a man being tortured to death because he was hungry and stole food.  A Victor Hugo kind of tale.  Most of us, if we were starving, would probably steal a loaf of bread or a chicken nugget.  And most of us, if one of our loved ones was starving, would probably kill for a loaf of bread or chicken nugget, especially if the loved one is a child.  I know I would, and I can safely say that my mother would have, too.

Most mothers I know are pretty altruistic.  They would do anything to protect their babies from harm, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual.  It’s written in the fine print when you sign up to be a parent.  Sacrifice simply comes with the job description.  

My mom would do anything for us kids.  She raised nine of us to the best of her abilities, and those abilities were pretty badass.  She made sure my sister, Rose, who was born with Down Syndrome, was never left behind when it came to anything, including education.  When doctors and principals told my mom that Rose would never walk or talk on her own, let alone learn to read and do math, Mom’s response was pretty much, “Oh, yeah?”  Rose not only learned to walk and talk, but also how to play basketball and write long, handwritten letters to family and friends.  

I miss my mother daily.  I know that’s something everyone who’s lost their mothers says, but it’s not a cliché for me.  When I encounter a problem, it’s my mom’s no-nonsense, common sense voice that I hear in my head, guiding my actions.  Her bullshit detector never failed.  Did she make mistakes?  Sure.  Nobody’s perfect.  However, she never hurt anyone intentionally, and that’s an example I try to emulate every day of my life.

If you spoke with any of my siblings, they would all tell you that I was a typical spoiled, youngest child, and that would be an accurate statement.  I got away with a lot of shit, BECAUSE I was the youngest,  Curfews were loosely enforced, and, as long as I keep my grades up, I could pretty much do what I wanted.  (I graduated as salutatorian of my class, so grades were never an issue.). I never had to beg for my mother’s mercy

My mother would have hated this post.  She never liked being the center of attention.  (Is that a mother thing, too?)  I couldn’t buy her mushy Mother’s Day cards emblazoned with roses or hearts or rainbows.  She liked to laugh, and making her laugh was something I loved to do.

So, for my mother:  Motherhood is like a fairy tale, but in reverse.  You start out in a beautiful ball gown and end up in stained rags cleaning up after little people.

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

Write a poem where you pretend you can see into the future.  It can be serious, funny, dark, or light in tone.  Who’s the president in 2032?  What does communicating look like?  Where are people wearing?  What color is the sky?  What does the ocean taste like?  Allow yourself to play with your future scenario and be specific and detailed.  Do you need a crystal ball to see the future?  Tea leaves?

Fortune Telling

by: Martin Achatz

If she still had lips, would she

tell my daughter to go to church

more or my son to get his hair cut?

If she still had eyes, would she 

notice I’ve gained weight or

the atlas of lines around my mouth?

If she still had a nose, would she

smell the carnations and daisies

my kids place on her headstone,

the way she buried her face in

her coffee cup every morning?

If she still had breasts, would she

feel them hard and full of milk

to feed my brothers and sisters and me

who could never get enough of her?

If she still had hands, would she

have a rosary threaded between

her fingers, shelling prayers

like peanuts all day long?

If she still had a body, would she

sit in her recliner, rock it gently

with her toes as she listens

for her husband’s boots

stomping off snow on the front step?

You see, all I have left are these

pieces, like an old photograph

torn up because someone blinked

or wasn’t looking at the camera.

I puzzle them together now

like tea leaves at the cup’s bottom,

settled into a fingerprint of all the lies

I told her as a kid, all my little betrayals

she forgave before I was even born.