May 5: Painted with Roses, Arctic Aurora Borealis, Gregory Pardlo

I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest.  I'd half awaken.  He'd stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood.  Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk.  And some mornings I'd wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I'd been painted with roses.

This is the first paragraph of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  It's a pretty gruesome beginning, Dillard waking up in the morning covered in dried carnage.  Yet, there's something beautiful in it, too.  Her old tom paints her with bloody roses in the middle of the night.  As she washes herself, she muses that she could have been covered in the "rose of union, the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth.  The sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain."

I admire the way Dillard is able to take this grisly little scene and turn it into something profound.  I imagine her navigating her days, encountering something heartbreaking with every step.  Look, there's a seagull eviscerating a dead squirrel; think about the tenacity of the gull--running away, coming back, running away, coming back to the carcass until it is stripped clean.  Wow, how 'bout that frost on my windshield this morning, how it spreads across the glass like some arctic aurora borealis.

That's the way I'd like to live my life, with wonder all around me.  Black holes and anemones just a short jaunt away.  Maybe out in the backyard.  The problem is that I'm not paid to record the complexities of the universe in my journal.  I'm paid to enter names in a computer and collect money for things like cardiac ablations and stentings.  My wonder is limited to an hour in the morning and about three or four hours at night, if I can stay awake that long.

I think I need to prioritize my life a little differently.  Yes, it's important that I make enough money to pay my bills.  It's what I do with my "free" time that I need to rethink.  The best part of my day is typing a post for this blog.  It makes me feel . . . like I'm actually a writer, even if I'm not earning any money for these words I send out into the ether.  I can contemplate mystery for a little while each evening and pretend that someone cares about what I'm saying.

So, I need to write more.  Find a project that excites me.  Even if I write something that nobody else wants to read, I will still have written something.  (Being a poet, I'm used to writing stuff that nobody wants to read.)

And who knows?  Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year for his debut novel.  Maybe Saint Marty has a Pulitzer Prize in his future for his debut novel.  Or debut memoir.  Or debut Broadway musical.  Or second poetry collection (it worked for Gregory Pardlo).

It could happen...

Speaking of seeing things a little differently . . . .

May 23: Inner Workings of God, Brooding and Cheetos, Gregory Pardlo, "Pool Table," New Cartoon

Whatever had happened, it reinforced his feelings that a God existed . . . and yet?  Weighing the possible meaning of what he had experienced that Christmas season [he had his mystical vision], he believed that he had been privy to the inner workings of God.  He was not crazy and had not come easily to that conclusion, his route having been circuitous and riddled with doubts and terrifying thoughts . . . 

Ives struggles with his mystical vision of colored winds above Madison Avenue and the sun spinning in the heavens.  Sometimes he doubts he even experienced it.  He questions his sanity, searches for answers in books and religious tracts and spiritual presentations.  In the end, he comes to the belief that whatever he saw was a glimpse of the divine machinery of the universe.  A God's-eye-view of humanity.

As you can tell by last night's posts, I struggle a lot with doubts and fears and worries.  When I should feel confident and calm as a believer, I don't.  I take the other route.  I question, get angry, and doubt.  It's a matter of control.  I want to be in control of my life, to avoid dangers and catastrophes.  And God has this irritating habit of throwing deer in the path of my car (sometimes literally), just to remind me Who's in charge.

Somehow, I have survived every crisis in my life so far, not because of anything I've done.  I contemplated suicide one night, and I saw the morning.  I was at the brink of a divorce, and love reasserted itself.  My wife suffered a pulmonary embolism after our son's birth, and she survived.  I was forced out of a job I'd held for close to 15 years, and I found another job.

Yet, I still panic in the face of great adversity.  Instead of turning to prayer and meditation, I turn to brooding and Cheetos.  I have had over twelve hours to recover from yesterday evening's little surprise in the mail.  I have gained perspective.  Taken some deep breaths.

I still have a whopping bill to pay, but now it doesn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle.  It's a pretty steep climb, but, eventually, I will reach the summit.  I just needed to remind myself of the inner workings of God.

Saint Marty knows God's check is in the mail.  Metaphorically, of course.  Although he wouldn't turn down a little monetary miracle.

Pool Table

by:  Gregory Pardlo

It belongs to the guy who used to cut
our lawn and has become by now my math tutor,
my sitter, my ersatz uncle--I call him Chief.
A sometime grad student and sometime sub
at Levitt Junior High.  He seems to be polishing it, flaring
the angles of his stroke.  He webs the table with his
mind's dotted lines.  Beneath the Old Milwaukee
Tiffany Lamp it smells of Thai stick and talcum.
Its felt as green as fresco hills spins English clean off the cue.
He strings together combinations hinged and whimsical
like flinty syllables playing with emphasis and breath
as he lectures me on the errorless vectors, velocity.
The spheres vanish like field mice as he runs the table
then lances one of the smoke rings shimmying like jellyfish
toward the dropped ceiling's popcorn panels
in his father's basement.  He hikes himself up on
the rail, and sparks the dimming ember of his spliff
while I corral a spectrum in the field
of my embrace, arrange a bouquet of solids, stripes, each
numbered iris for Chief again to scatter the fragments
before my eyes like asteroids in an arcade game.
He claps a cloud of powder while he calls the four cross-
side, and then he calls me Grasshopper, tells me soon
I'm going to grasp all this like a pebble from his hand.

Confessions of Saint Marty

May 22: My Kids, Gregory Pardlo, "Problema 3"

I have been thinking about my kids and kids in general this evening.  About how much parents sacrifice for their children.  My wife and I don't buy presents for each other for any occasion.  Birthdays.  Christmases.  Mother's Days.  Father's Days.  Anniversaries.  We save our money for dance lessons.  Video games.  Slumber parties.  Plush toys.  Class trips.

I'm not complaining.  It's what parents do.  Right now, we're trying to figure out if we can afford our annual fall trip to the Kalahari Resort in the Dells.  Plus all the other normal adult expenses.  Mortgage.  Car payments.  Utilities.

Parenting is not easy.

I'm not going to be able to give my kids much of a summer this year.  My daughter will go to Bible camp.  My wife's church will help us with that.  My son will be happy if he can just go swimming every once in a while.  My one week of vacation in August will not involve any trips or shopping or movies.  That's a done deal.

One of the reasons I love Gregory Pardlo's collection Digest is that he writes about the struggles of parenting.  He is in the trenches with me.

At this moment, Saint Marty's hardest job is being a father.

Problema 3

by:  Gregory Pardlo

The Fulton St. Foodtown is playing Motown and I'm surprised
at how quickly my daughter picks up the tune.  And soon
the two of us, plowing rows of goods steeped in fructose
under light thick as corn oil, are singing Baby,
I need your lovin', unconscious of the lyrics' foreboding.
My happy child riding high in the shopping cart as if she's
cruising the polished aisles on a tractor laden with imperishable
foodstuffs.  Her cornball father enthusiastically prompting
with spins and flourishes and the double-barrel fingers
of the gunslinger's pose.  But we hear it as we round the rice
and Goya aisle, that other music, the familiar exchange of anger,
the war drums of parents and child.  The boy wants, what, to be
carried? to eat the snacks right from his mother's basket?
What does it matter, he is making a scene.  With no self-interest
beyond the pleasure of replacing wonder with wonder, my daughter
asks me to name the boy's offense.  I offer to buy her ice cream.
How can I admit recognizing the portrait of fear the mother's face
performs, the inherited terror of non-conformity frosted with the fear
of being thought disrespected by, or lacking the will to discipline,
one's child?  How can I account for both the cultural and the inter-
cultural?  The boy's cries rising like hosannas as the mother's purse
falls from her shoulder.  Her missed step from the ledge
 of one of her stilted heels, passion loosed with each displaced
hairpin.  His little jacket bunched at the collar where she has worked
the marionette.  Later, when I'm placing groceries on the conveyor
belt and it is clear I've forgotten the ice cream, my daughter
tries her hand at this new algorithm of love, each word
punctuated by her little fist:  boy, she commands, didn't I tell you?

I have employed every one of these styles

May 21: Directionally Challenged, Gregory Pardlo, "Boethius"

I am directionally challenged.  Always have been.  If I have to travel some place new, I print out maps (I don't have an iPhone, so Siri is not a friend of mine).  One of my biggest fears in life is getting lost.  I hate not knowing how to get where I need to go.

I've gotten lost driving to my sister-in-law's house, and I've been there many, many times.  I've gotten lost on Oahu, trying to get back to my hotel in Waikiki.  In Walt Disney World.  In California and Wisconsin.  In Detroit.

It's a terrible affliction.  I have literally gotten lost in hotels and shopping malls.  If I had an iPhone, it wouldn't matter.  I don't know how to get Siri to work.  I'm a little technologically challenged, as well.

So, basically, Saint Marty is doomed to wander the world, hopelessly lost.  Or stay in his house, watching reruns of Mike & Molly.

Boethius:  The creator moves the slowest bodies and halts those that are too fast, brings back to the right path those which have strayed.

by:  Gregory Pardlo

Even Virgin Mary couldn't compete with the miracles
performed on dashboards by GPS devices that summon
the heavens for guidance instead of forgiveness.  Instead of
blessing we want clairvoyance and the dust bursts of angels
and demons appearing on our shoulders, though we know
they may only goad us into leading some high- or low-speed
chase while America tunes in at home, their eyes in the skies.
Used to be the battle of getting there was indeed a tortoise and
hare propositions full of K-turns in strangers' driveways, but our
omniscient technology has made speed obsolete.  Who needs to
hurry when we have a hivemind of newfeeds, can discern death's
thumbprint in the marrow of a bone and engineer children who
are elegant and fleet?  In the end, James Dean couldn't outrun
a glacier.  Just as the slowest floes preyed timelessly on dinosaurs
and shat their bones, our rockets now fold the speckled
firmament to take orbit on the shoulders of eternity where they
may fill the creator's ears with our mortal doubts and provocations.

The TV show based on my life...

May 20: Dreams, Gregory Pardlo, "Raisin"

Tonight, I've been thinking a lot about dreams.  It seems like my whole life I've been a dreamer.  If it weren't for my dreams, I don't think I'd be able to get out of bed and go to work every day.  I feel a little like a sell-out in the medical office.  I don't believe that I'm helping people.  I feel like I'm helping a huge healthcare organization take advantage of sick people.

Dreams.  I believe that my life can be better.  That there's something better around the corner.  Maybe down the hill.  Across the river.  Through the desert.  And over the mountain.

Saint Marty is ready to go the distance.

Raisin

by:  Gregory Pardlo

I dragged my twelve-year-old cousin
to see the Broadway production of A Raisin
in the Sun because the hip-hop mogul
and rapping bachelor, Diddy, played
the starring role.  An aspiring rapper gave
my cousin his last name and the occasional child
support so I thought the boy would geek to see a pop
hero in the flesh as Walter Lee.  My wife was newly
pregnant, and I was rehearsing, like Diddy
swapping fictions, surrendering his manicured
thug persona for a more domestic performance.
My cousin mostly yawned throughout the play.
Except the moment Walter Lee's tween son stiffened
on stage, as if rapt by the sound of a roulette ball.
Scene:  No one breathes as Walter Lee vacillates,
uncertain of obsequity or indignation after Lindner offers
to buy the family out of the house they've purchased
in the all-white suburb.  Walter might kneel to accept,
but he senses the tension in his son's gaze.  I was thinking,
for real though, what would Diddy do?  "Get rich
die trying," 50 Cent would tell us.  But my father would
sing like Ricky Scaggs, "Don't get above your raisin',"
when as a kid I vowed to be a bigger man than him.
That oppressive fruit dropped heavy as a medicine
ball in my lap meant to check my ego, and I imagined
generations wimpling in succession like the conga
marching raisins that sang Marvin's hit song.  Silly,
I know.  Outside the theater, my cousin told me
when Diddy was two, they found his hustler dad
draping a steering wheel in Central Park,
a bullet in his head.  I shared what I knew of dreams
deferred and Marvin Gaye.  (When asked if he loved
his son, Marvin Sr. answered, "Let's just say I didn't
dislike him.")  Beneath the billing of many billion
diodes I walked beside the boy through Times Square
as if anticipating a magic curtain that would rise,
but only one of us would get to take a bow.

A Diddy in the Sun

May 19: Jehovah's Witness, Gregory Pardlo, "Problemata"

For a few years now, I have a woman who shows up at my front door every once in a while, usually on a Saturday or Sunday.  She's middle-aged, a grandmotherly type.  She always asks after my son and daughter, comments when she sees them about how they need to stop growing so fast.  She stands on the steps of my house, Bible in hand, ready to hand me some tracts.  She's a Jehovah's Witness.

My wife doesn't understand why I have continued talking to this woman for so long.  After one of the visits, my wife will say something like, "You're just leading her on.  You should tell her you're not interested."

I can't do that.  I enjoy the brief pleasantries that I exchange with this woman.  Plus, I admire her strength of faith.  I don't get in my car and go door-to-door in my neighborhood, telling people about Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  This woman opens herself up to hostility and derision for the sake of her beliefs.  That is something to admire.

So, I will continue to talk to this woman when she appears at my door.  I will take her Bible tracts.  I will listen as she tells me about our fallen world and how I can be saved.

Saint Marty will take as much saving as he can.

a section from Problemata

by:  Gregory Pardlo

Consider the dear evangelists who canvas our homes
Saturday mornings, who share their pamphlets and good
words, their domestic concerns swelling with their
longing for the fellowship of us.  Spinoza gives us
this reason not to opt off of their call lists:  The good
which a man desires for himself and loves, he will love
more constantly if he sees that others love it also;
he will therefore endeavor that others should love it also.
Be tolerant of their attention, their pursuit of agape,
a planet-sized chip they bear on their shoulders
from house to house, door to door, welcome
or not, blessing whatever they find inside.

One way to discourage Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons

May 18: Poet of the Week, Gregory Pardlo, "Problema 4"

For the past few years, I haven't liked the books that have won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (with the exception of Sharon Olds' Stag's Leap).  I didn't even bother ordering last year's winner.  However, because of the poetry workshop I taught this past winter, I did order Gregory Pardlo's Digest, which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize.

I opened the book and started reading it.  I was fully prepared to hate it.  In fact, I will venture to say that I was predisposed to hate it.  That's how unimpressed I have been with the poetry Pulitzers recently.  After reading the first poem, I didn't hate it.  After the second poem, I was pleasantly surprised.  By the third poem, I found myself really liking Pardlo.

In short, Gregory Pardlo won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and now he is Saint Marty's Poet of the Week.

Problema 4

by:  Gregory Pardlo

At thirteen I asked my father for a tattoo.
I might as well have asked for a bar mitzvah.
He said I had no right to alter the body
he gave me.  Aping what little Marx I learned
from the sisters down the street who wore torn
black stockings with Doc Martens, I said
I was a man because I could claim my body
and the value of its labor.  This meant I could
adorn it or dispose of it as I chose.  Tattoos,
my father said, are like children:  have one,
you'll want another.  I knew there was a connection
between the decorated body and reproduction.
This is why I wanted a tattoo.  Yet I reasoned,
not in so many words, his analogy only held
in the case of possession, i. e., I possess my body,
but can not possess my children.  His laughter
was my first lesson in the human Ponzi
scheme of paternalism, the self-electing
indenture to the promise of material inheritance,
men claiming a hollow authority because,
simply, their fathers had claimed
a hollow authority.  Knowing I had little
idea as to what my proposed tattoo might
resemble, my father sent me to my room
to sketch it using the pastels he had given me
for Christmas.  Based on his critique, he said,
he would consider my request.  But he had
already taken the shine from my swagger.
How can I beautify what I do not possess
and call it anything but graffiti?  Chris Rock says
my first job is to keep my daughter
off the pole.  Whether or not I agree with him,
I get his point.  As a father myself
I now see every mutinous claim of independence
as the first steps toward my sweet pea's
falling in with a bad crowd.  Richard Pryor
says we are bound to fuck up our kids
one way or another.  My father would
split the difference:  I made you, he'd say,
I can un-make you, and make another one
just like you.

Maybe they got it right this time...