February 6: Sweet Dreams, Tyrannosaurus Poem, Lenten Promise, Confessions of Saint Marty

Finally I saw some very small children playing with a striped orange kitten, and overheard their mysterious conversation, which has since been ringing in my brain like a gong.  The kitten ran into a garden, and the girl called after it, "Sweet Dreams!  Sweet Dreams!  Where are you?"  And the boy said to her crossly, "Don't call Sweet Dreams 'you'!"

Annie Dillard describes the conversation she overhears between the little boy and girl as "mysterious."  There is something profound in the little boy's admonition, "Don't call Sweet Dreams you!"  Sweet Dreams is Sweet Dreams, not "it" or "he" or "she" or "you."  Certainly, the little girl did not mean to demean the little kitten in any way, but the little boy (perhaps because he's been called "you" in not so kind terms, as in "You better clean your damn room!" or "You are a pain in the ass!") attaches something negative, even threatening, to his friend's words.

Kids are a mystery, in what they say, the way they view the world.  My son can play outside for hours by himself.  When he returns, he's full of stories about fishing and aliens and zombies.  Last Sunday, when he came inside, he held out his hand to me.  I extended my palm to him.  He dropped a dollar bill into my hand.  "I found it," he said.  My daughter, when she was five, did the same thing, except she dropped a dead bird into my outstretched hand.

I've always believed that kids are born poets, seeing things that adults simply overlook or ignore.  There's a natural wonder in young people that, over time, is lost or forgotten.  Adult wants and needs and worries overtake things like zombies and aliens and dead birds.  Sweet Dreams isn't a kitten for an adult; it's a phrase you say to a child heading off to bed--as in, "Good night!  Sweet dreams!"

Every time I sit down to write a poem, I feel like I'm chasing my younger self, trying to recapture a wonder-filled way of looking at the universe.  When I was a kid, I had no problem in believing that I was going to be Charles Dickens or Sherlock Holmes.  It wasn't a huge leap of faith.  Now, I have difficulty believing in anything beyond the confines of my limited life and work.  I read stories of people who discover the bones of a tyrannosaurus in their backyard or an original Picasso in their attic, and the stories seem like fairy tales.  I have no room for wonder or mystery in my day-to-day existence.

Of course, I experience moments of inspiration.  In church.  In the classroom sometimes.  When I'm listening to certain music.  I feel my heart lifting, cracking open a little bit, letting escape a little bit of the child I used to be.  Lent starts this Wednesday, and I have been casting around for something I can do for those 47 days that will lend meaning to the Easter season.

In the past, I have done things like writing a poem a day (pure insanity) to praying for people who've hurt me (headache inducing, but rewarding).  I don't want to commit to anything that is doomed to failure (writing a novel or memoir in 47 days).  Maybe another poetic exercise of a smaller scale.  Something that tries to recapture that sense of child-like wonder and awe.  On every Sunday in Lent, I will write a poem about something strange, weird even.  Something that makes me feel like a kid again.  A tyrannosaurus poem.  A Picasso poem.

That is Saint Marty's Lenten promise.  Amen.

Confessions of Saint Marty

August 18 Make-Up: Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon, Sweet Dreams

This Classic Saint Marty comes from March 19, 2010.  It's one of my favorite posts I've ever written.  Don't read it just before you go to sleep.  It might give you  nightmares.

Saint Marty needs to take a shower now and go to bed.  Sweet dreams.

March 19:  Saint Alexander


Saint John Vianney, d. 1859

Last night was Manly Man Poetry Night with my pastor friend. We went to Big Boy again and had onion rings and Diet Pepsi. Just to shake things up, we also ordered deep-fried mozzarella cheese sticks. I am a fairly anal retentive person, so I'd been working on a poem for most of the day. It came from a poetry exercise out of the same book as last week, The Practice of Poetry, and was, oddly enough, suggested by the same poet, Lee Upton. This exercise was titled "Tabloid Tone Exercise," and the challenge was to take a headline from a supermarket tabloid and write a serious poem based on the headline.


Saint Catherine Laboure, d. 1876

I decided to kill two birds with one stone and combine my poem somehow with the day's saint, Alexander, a third century bishop and martyr. Alexander spent a lot of time in prison and exile. He was condemned to execution eventually for being a Christian, but the wild animals that were supposed to tear him to pieces wouldn't cooperate. The book says, "they refused to attack him." Instead, he was thrown back into prison, where he died around 250 A.D.


Saint Maria Mazzarello, d. 1881

The headline I chose from the Weekly World News ( I used to have a subscription) was "Ancient Bones Tell Frightening Story: Skull Speaks." If you didn't guess by the picture of Catherine of Bologna a few days ago, I'm of a morbid inclination, and this headline appealed to me on a few levels.


Saint Bernadette Soubirous, d. 1879

One of my fascinations with saints is the age-old tradition of relics. When holy men or women died in the past, their remains, in part or whole, were much sought after. Often, a saint's head ended up in one place while a saint's body ended up somewhere else. (It sounds gross, but stay with me.) Eventually, a classification for these relics developed. A first class relic is "a part of the saint (bone, hair, etc.) and the instruments of Christ's passion." A second class relic is "something owned by the saint or instruments of torture used against a martyr." A third class relic is "something that has been touched to a 1st or 2nd class relic. You can make your own 3rd class relic by touching an object to a 1st or 2nd class relic, including the tomb of a saint." (You're probably seeing where I'm headed with the poem by now.)


Blessed Imelda Lambertini, d. 1333

A church in Pittsburgh houses the largest collection of relics outside of the Vatican (some 4,000 to 5,000 items, including a full skeleton , a few skulls, and some teeth.) The relics were gathered by a priest, Suibertus Mollinger, who himself is on the road to sainthood, I believe. He was the pastor of Most Holy Name of Jesus Parish. Father Mollinger paid for the building of the original Saint Anthony's Chapel to display the collection himself. Eventually, additions were made to the building, which was officially dedicated on June 13, 1892.


Saint Vincent de Paul, d. 1660

That's the source material for the poem in today's post. Except for the details about the life of Saint Alexander, the rest of the poem is fictionalized-Father Cassius, Sacred Heart Parish, the eyes of Vincent de Paul, talking skull, and all. If the poem offends you, I'm sorry. That's not my intent. Please read on in the spirit in which I wrote the following lines, with sick curiosity, a little reverence, and a lot of good humor. I present to you my contribution to this week's Manly Man Poetry Night:

Ancient Bones Tell Frightening Story: Skull Speaks

Father Cassius owned 1,012 relics,
Had a museum built at Sacred Heart Parish,
A marble hall to contain his ossuaries,
Tabernacles, monstrances, chalices,
Shoe boxes, cigar boxes, hat boxes.
Each held a relic from some holy body,
A fragment of sacred muscle, a chip
Of benevolent bone. He had the braid
Belonging to Mary-Magdalene Martinengo,
Long and dark as a Lenten novena;
Fidelis of Sigmaringen's pink tongue,
Gleaming with miraculous spit;
Ethelwald's ring of shriveled foreskin,
Reputed to cure urinary tract infections;
The big toe of Teresa of Avila, used
To dispel both headaches and athlete's foot;
Roch, AKA Rocco, represented by semen
On a robe which opened closed wombs,
Warded off impure thoughts and dreams;
Sharbel Makhluf's left lung, floating,
Delicate as an angel fish, in a glass bowl;
Vincent de Paul's donated eyes,
Prunes on a silver plate, serving the cause
Of glaucoma and cataracts in the poor;
The left breast of Veronica of Guiliani,
Supple and full as a cow's udder,
Invoked in time of drought, famine;
The pubic curls of Monegundis, folded
In tissue, saved for the balding world;
High up, in a box labeled "Alex,"
A skull, dark as polished onyx,
Slept on a bed of cotton and straw.
Some nights, as votive candles licked
The walls at vespers "amen,"
Father Cassius heard the skull
Open its tongueless jaws, sing
A psalm of prison and death,
Exile and chains, of Jerusalem,
Wild boars, panthers tamed,
The banishment of soul from skin.
The skull would wail, grind
Fractured teeth, weep
For its missing neck, vertebrae,
Scapula, ribs, ulna, femur,
Coccyx. The skull would mourn
Until lauds pink light in the sky,
Wanting to be complete, whole, one,
Like the body of Christ
Three days after the cross.



Confessions of Saint Marty