July 25, 2025: “My Father Speaks to Me from the Dead,” Day Off, “Why I Swore Off Porn”

I’m not sure I’d want to speak with ghosts.  I think it would be either really terrifying, or really annoying.  There are always things left unsaid when a person passes—unspoken “goodbyes” or “I loves yous” or “Don’t forget to unplug the toasters.”  I’m just not sure I’d want to be the conduit for all those messages from the beyond.

Sharon Olds’ has a close encounter with her father’s ghost . . . 

My Father Speaks to Me from the Dead

by: Sharon Olds

I seem to have woken up in a pot-shed, 

on clay, on shards, the glitter paths 

of slugs kiss-crossing my body. I don't know 

where to start, with this grime on me. 

I take the spider glue-net, plug 

of the dead, out of my mouth, let's see 

if where I have been I can do this. 

I love your feet. I love your knees, 

I love your our my legs, they are so 

long because they are yours and mine 

both. I love your—what can I call it, 

between your legs, we never named it, the 

glint and purity of its curls. I love 

your rear end, I changed you once, 

washed the detritus off your tiny 

bottom, with my finger rubbed 

the oil on you; when I touched your little 

anus I crossed wires with God for a moment. 

I never hated your shit—that was 

your mother. I love your navel, thistle 

seed fossil, even though 

it's her print on you. Of course I love 

your breasts—did you see me looking up 

from within your daughter's face, as she nursed? 

I love your bony shoulders and you know I 

love your hair, thick and live 

as earth. And I never hated your face, 

I hated its eruptions. You know what I love? 

I love your brain, its halves and silvery 

folds, like a woman's labia. 

I love in you 

even what comes 

from deep in your mother—your heart, that hard worker, 

and your womb, it is a heaven to me, 

I lie on its gentle hills and gaze up 

at its rosy vault. 

I have been in a body without breath, 

I have been in the morgue, in fire, in the slagged 

chimney, in the air over the earth, 

and buried in the earth, and pulled down 

into the ocean—where I have been 

I understand this life, I am matter, 

your father, I made you, when I say now that I love you 

I mean look down at your hand, move it, 

that action is matter's love, for human 

love go elsewhere.

I have had dreams/visions, like Olds, of waking up in strange places and speaking with a long-dead loved one—most of the time, one of my sisters or my mother.  I’ve found those dreams both comforting and disturbing, depending on the loved one’s words.

I always feel surrounded by my dead.  In fact, I sometimes talk to them.  Not in the Whoopi Goldberg Ghost way.  I just have one-sided conversations with them when I’m struggling with a decision.  My mother and older sister were always sounding boards for me when I needed advice.  

I do believe in ghosts/spirits/souls.  From a Christian standpoint, I was brought up to believe we all have souls that survive our fleshly time on this planet.  From a Stephen King fanboy standpoint, I will never knowingly step foot in a haunted house.  From a metaphysical standpoint, I have experienced moments of intense connection with the spirit of a place/person.  (I defy anyone to visit the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and not feel the weight of all the lives that were lost there.)

The image of my dearly departeds constantly floating near me gives me pause.  Think about everything you do on a daily basis.  Would you want your mother or father to witness all the things you do in a 24-hour period?  As a teenage boy, I couldn’t imagine my maternal grandmother watching me at night in my bedroom.  The very thought was enough to make me celibate.

Nowadays, I’m comforted by the growing list of ghosts who surround me daily.  (As you get older, more and more ghosts join that throng.)  It’s like I have my own team of angelic lawyers to argue my case with the Almighty.  If I’m doing something that requires privacy, I figure my dead are smart enough to practice some otherworldly discretion.

I took the day off work, so I’ve had a lot of time to write and think today, which can be both good and bad.  I worked on my poetry manuscript, and I practiced church music for this weekend.  At the entrance to one of the churches, there’s a lovely flower garden with statues of angels and Jesus and Mary.  The temperature was close to 90 degrees, and blooms were vibrant and fragrant.  I stood outside for several minutes, just inhaling and thinking how much my mother would have loved the scene.  It almost felt like her ghost was standing right beside me, admiring the orange and while petals.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem about good and bad choices, based on the following two prompts from The Daily Poet:

July 24:  Write a poem in which the title begins with “Why.”  Examples:  “Why I’d Like to Meet My Maker,” “Why I Would Never Dye My Hair.”  In her poem “Why She Would Take Off Her Shoes Before Jumping From the Golden Gate Bridge,” Annette Spaulding-Convy writes:  Maybe the water / / is a temple and She doesn’t want / / to bring the road’s dirt / / inside.  Push to move past expected responses to strange and imaginative ones.  For extra credit, compose your poem in couplets.

July 25:  Write a poem wherein you swear off something or someone.  Examples:  caffeine, booze, porn, Sex in the City reruns, a toxic boyfriend or girlfriend, a drug-addicted child.  Tell us specifically (with concrete images) why you are saying goodbye to a bad habit or toxic alliance, then show us how your decision will change your life for the better.

Why I Swore Off Porn

by: Martin Achatz

It was challenging in high school, like getting

someone to buy me beer from White’s Liquor Pantry.

The girls always looked sad, as if

Charlotte hadn’t saved Wilbur in the end.

And the guys always looked like Darren Vanhoff

who tried to drown me in swim class.

There were too many grammar errors—

modifiers dangling in inappropriate places.

Princess Leia, in her metal bikini, strangled

Jabba the Hutt with her BDSM chains.

They’re aren’t many good words that rhyme

with it:  corn, shorn, mourn, forlorn, 

and Gorn, that lizard man Captain Kirk

fought in between getting it on with all

those alien pole dancers in sequins, 

trying to save their worlds from oblivion.

Everyone in the pictures and videos have

mothers, fathers, little brothers, maybe goldfish.

Hi, my name is Martin, and my turn-ons are someone

washing my dinner dishes, afternoon naps, salted caramels.

July 15: Until I Am Dead, Metaphysical, Human Connection

Santiago is alone . . . 

But you haven't got the boy, he thought. You have only yourself and you had better work back to the last line now, in the dark or not in the dark, and cut it away and hook up the two reserve coils.

So he did it. It was difficult in the dark and once the fish made a surge that pulled him down on his face and made a cut below his eye. The blood ran down his cheek a little way. But it coagulated and dried before it reached his chin and he worked his way back to the bow and rested against the wood. He adjusted the sack and carefully worked the line so that it came across a new part of his shoulders and, holding it anchored with his shoulders, he carefully felt the pull of the fish and then felt with his hand the progress of the skiff through the water.

I wonder what he made that lurch for, he thought. The wire must have slipped on the great hill of his back. Certainly his back cannot feel as badly as mine does. But he cannot pull this skiff forever, no matter how great he is. Now everything is cleared away that might make trouble and I have a big reserve of line; all that a man can ask.

"Fish," he said softly, aloud, "I'll stay with you until I am dead."

There are times when a person really feels isolated.  For Santiago, it happens in these four paragraphs.  For a while, he's been aware of his physical isolation:  floating by himself in a boat in the middle of the sea with no land in sight.  Yet, feeling alone is more than just the lack of proximity to other people.  Santiago's isolation is metaphysical.

You can be in a crowded party with throngs of drunken friends and be alone.  Or in bed with your sleeping partner.  You can be alone in a family of nine siblings.  I've stood at a podium in a classroom, lectured for three hours with 35 pairs of eyes watching somewhat attentively, and felt completely alone.  

Real human connection is a shared feeling of hope or despair or joy or anger.  It's knowing that another soul somewhere out there understands exactly what you are going through.  That may sound corny.  Perhaps it is.  But, if you've experienced true aloneness, you understand what I'm talking about.  

This week, I was listening to music at a concert and found myself blinking away tears.  I had to pull my car over to the side of the road on my way home from work one night because the sky reminded me of the day my sister died.  This morning, I was reading a book at 2 a.m. because the author is an old friend from college, and I could hear his voice in the words on the page.

That's where I am right now.  Have been since last Sunday.  Drifting in my little boat.  No land in sight.  Trying to feel connected.

Saint Marty's blessing for today:  a short visit with his daughter, who kissed his cheek before she left, whispered in his ear, "I love you, Daddy."