June 21, 2026: “Practicing,” Adulting, “Father’s Day, Rainy and Cool”

Adulting kinda sucks.

When you’re a kid, everything is new and exciting.  You can’t wait to be old enough to drive a car and get laid and earn money and buy booze.  All of adolescence is a rehearsal for adulthood, and, when you’re a kid, you’re convinced that with age comes limitless freedom and joy.  

Similarly, most adults I know yearn for the simplicity and security of childhood.  (I’m generalizing here.  I know not all childhoods are safe and uncomplicated, and I honor those kids who are forced at very young ages to deal with very grownup struggles.)  Stereotypically, we mythologize our childhoods.  We’re all cast members on The Brady Bunch.  

Marie Howe writes about the thrills of adolescence . . . 

Practicing

by: Marie Howe

I want to write a love poem for the girls I kissed in seventh grade,

a song for what we did on the floor in the basement

of somebody’s parents’ house, a hymn for what we didn’t say but thought:

That feels good or I like that, when we learned how to open each other’s

mouths how to move our tongues to make somebody moan.  We called it

practicing, and one was the boy, and we paired off—maybe six or eight girls,

and turned off the lights and kissed and kissed until we were stoned on kisses,

and lifted our nightgowns or let the straps drop, and, Now you be the boy:

concrete floor, sleeping bag, couch, playroom, game room, train room, laundry.

Linda’s basement was like a boat with booths and portholes

instead of windows.  Gloria’s father had a bar downstairs with stools that

spun, plush carpeting.  We kissed each other’s throats.

We sucked each other’s breasts, and we left marks, and never spoke of it

upstairs, outdoors, in daylight, not once.  We did it, and it was

practicing, and slept, sprawled so our legs still locked or crossed, a hand still

lost in someone’s hair . . . and we grew up and hardly mentioned who

the first kiss really was—a girl like us, still sticky with moisturizers we’d

shared in the bathroom.  I want to write a song

for that thick silence in the dark, and the first pure thrill of unreluctant

desire—just before we made ourselves stop.

Howe really captures that adolescent longing for adult experience in this poem.  Adolescent boys experiment with similar taboos, and, just like the girls in Howe’s poem, they don’t speak of these basement encounters in broad daylight.  It’s pretty common, although most guys will not admit it.  The stigma is just too strong.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my adolescence and childhood today.  I was a pretty easy kid, I think.  I never really gave my parents anything to worry about.  I didn’t smoke a joint until my junior year.  Didn’t get blackout drunk until I was a senior.  I only went on a few dates as a teenager, and the condom I carried around in my backpack never fulfilled its intended purpose during my high school career.  I thought I was going to live forever.

Now, I’ve had sex at least twice (as evidenced by my two kids).  I’ve also had a few careers—in healthcare and higher education and church music and event programming.  I know more than half of my life is behind me, and I’ve lost several family members and friends.  Mortality is very present in my day-to-day existence.  

Today was the first day of summer.  It was also Father’s Day.  I stopped by the cemetery this afternoon to visit my dad’s grave. It was raining pretty hard, but I stood there for a couple minutes, thinking about all the things I never said to my dad (and the things I DID say to him that I now regret).  As a kid, I thought I had all the time in the world.  Young people drench themselves in immortality the way they drench themselves in Axe body spray or Love’s Baby Soft.

I loved my dad, but he and I were very different people with very different values.  I can’t recall a single time that my dad said “I love you” to me.  Almost daily, however, I tell my son and daughter that I love them.  If the only memory they have of me when I’m gone is the fact that I said “I love you” way too my times, that’s enough.  I’ve done my job as their father.

Saint Marty wrote this poem about his dad for Father’s Day . . . 

Father’s Day, Rainy and Cool

by: Martin Achatz

I stand by my dad’s stone this afternoon

by myself, his Memorial Day flag now soaked,

deflated as a beached jellyfish.  The air

is stiff with the smell of worm and mud.

Most of my dad is here, although my sisters

have lockets of his ashes in their dresser drawers.

My son has an urn on his bookshelf.  I know

it contains the ashes of my dad’s pointer finger,

the one he always jabbed at my chest,

sinking his love into me like a rusty nail.

August 19, 2025: “First Formal,” Memorial Service, “Homeland”

Life is full of firsts and lasts.  First kiss.  Last day of school.  First time watching The Shining.  Last day of work.  First day of retirement.  That’s the way most human beings remember events in their lives, through firsts and lasts.

Sharon Olds writes about a first for her daughter . . . 

First Formal

by: Sharon Olds

She rises up above the strapless, her dewy
flesh like a soul half out of a body.
It makes me remember her one week old,
mollescent, elegant, startled, alone.
She stands still, as if, if she moved,
her body might pour up out of the bodice,
she keeps her steady gaze raised
when she walks, she looks exactly forward,
led by some radar of the strapless, or with
a cup runneth over held perfectly level, her
almost seasick beauty shimmering
a little. She looks brave, shoulders
made of some extra-visible element,
or as if some of her cells, tonight,
were faceted like a fly’s eye, and her
skin was seeing us see it. She looks
hatched this moment, and yet weary—she would lie
in her crib, so slight, looking worn out from her journey,
and gaze at the world and at us in dubious willingness.

I’m not quite sure which is harder to endure—firsts or lasts.  Olds’ daughter is obviously uncomfortable in her dress, going to her first formal dance.  Formals are the first time young people get their brushes with adulthood.  The difficulty is that, when you’re 13- or 14-years-old, you really are a child still.  You’re not prepared for all the pitfalls of being in charge of yourself.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, young people usually first experience loss when a beloved pet dies. Suddenly, mortality becomes a very real thing and, unfortunately, never goes away.  Even when you’re a grownup (twenty-something, thirty-something, on up), I don’t think you ever lose sight of that first experience of death.  I’ve lost some people in my life in the last ten years or so, and I can vouch for the fact that every death feels like a first.

I attended a memorial service this morning for the father of a close friend.  It’s been a year since his father passed, but the pain was obviously still fresh.  My friend’s father was also one of my profs when I was an undergraduate and graduate student.  He was the first person at the university who encouraged me as a writer during a conference in his office.  Before that conversation, I was on a clear trajectory for a job as a computer programmer.  When I left his office that day, I was carrying an application for grad school in my hands.  The rest, as they say, is history.

From all that was said today about Ron (my friend’s father) this morning, I know he had a similar impact on many of the people in attendance at the memorial service.  He had the heart of a servant, caring for his terminally ill first wife, encouraging his students to work harder and better, and finding happiness in old-time country music and dancing.  I can say, without a doubt, he is the reason I became a published author.  Because he said I was good at it and could do it.

It was the first time anyone expressed that kind of confidence in my artistic abilities.  Before that conversation with Ron, I pretty much was told by close family members to get my plumbing license or learn how to program computers, to have “something to fall back on” if the writing didn’t pay off.

I went to graduate school.  Taught college classes.  Wrote short stories and essays and poems.  Served as U.P. Poet Laureate.  Got married.  Raised a family.  So much of what defines me as a person is because Ron told me that afternoon that I was a writer.  A first for me.

Today, we said a last goodbye to this selfless, giving man.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for his friend’s father today, based on the following prompt from August 18 of The Daily Poet:

Stand up and take three steps in any direction.  Look around and note three different items, the color of the wall (or whatever is in front of you), and note what is above you.  Imagine that you have just arrived at this place from another country and are homesick.  Write a poem that includes what you see, how you feel, and what you miss about your home country,

Homeland

by: Martin Achatz

for Ron Johnson

1.

I grew up in a house of plumbers—
my dad, three brothers, a sister
shared stories at dinner about
clogged sewers and frozen water
pipes while we forked hotdogs
and meatloaf onto our plates. I learned
how to solder when I was nine,
snake cables into plugged toilets
by the time I was eleven, replace
leaky faucets before I blew out candles
on my thirteenth birthday. Dad put it
this way: You got shit in your veins, son.
I always felt like a displaced person,
refugee child from some war-
torn land where soldiers forced
me to bleed radiators and dig
drainage ditches at rifle-point.

2.
I remember a typewriter sitting
on the desk and shelves stacked
with the likes of Anton Chekhov
and Larry McMurtry. I also remember
the view from the window: the campus
crowded with snowdrifts, students
blown along like winter surf. And I
remember the professor with his
mustache, crooked smile, brown
cardigan, how he handed me
my short story from EN 500,
leaned back in his chair, nodded
at me the way my dad nodded
when I handed him a crescent
wrench before he even asked for it.
You’ve got writing in your veins, son,
the professor said. I’m not sure
he actually said son, but that’s how
I remember it, this moment,
this invitation, this welcome. It was
as if he had just booked me passage
on a freighter steaming across the cold,
cold sea toward some distant place
I didn’t know I belonged.

February 19, 2024: "Relinquishment," Surrender, "Remingt n"

Eventually, all parents have to surrender their children to the world.  That's part of the deal.  They enter your life, squirming and red-faced and fragile.  You spend 17 or 18 or 19 years teaching them the ins and outs of living in this messed up universe.  Then, you release them, hold your breath, and hope.

Sharon Olds on releasing her daughter . . . 

Relinquishment

by: Sharon Olds

On a black night in early March,

the fire hot, my daughter says

Wrap me up in something.  I get the old

gray quilt, gleaming like a sloughed

insect casing, and wrap it around and 

around her narrow nine-year-old body,

hollow and flexible.  Cover my face,

she hisses in excitement.  I cover her face

and fall back from the narrow, silver

shape on the carpet.

                                  How finally

she is getting away--an Egyptian child

bound in gauze, set in a boat

on a black night in early March

and pushed out on the water, given

over to the gods of the next world

who will find her

or not find her.

This need to let children go is not easy, as Olds poem hints at.  It's full of uncertainty.  Maybe the gods will find the children, look after them.  Maybe they won't.  They'll end up, bound in gauze, floating forever in the water of a black night.

My daughter will be heading out into the black night in August, headed off to medical school.  My son, 16 years old and invincible, is already talking about moving out, getting an apartment with a friend.  I've tried to give them both tools and wisdom to cope with an increasingly unkind, divided world.  My wife and I have done our best, raising them to be loving and empathetic citizens of the universe. 

Will our son and daughter succeed in life?  I can't predict that, as much as I wish I could.  I performed in a show tonight at the library where I work.  It's a variety show featuring music, poems, storytelling, and special guests.  Think clearance A Prairie Home Companion.  The theme of the evening was "Crossroads"--those times in life when you're faced with tough decisions.  Kindergarten.  High school graduation.  Marriage.  Children.  Jobs.  Mortality.  

So, necessarily, I thought a lot about choices all day long.  I hope I've made good choices for my kids, gone down the right paths these past 25 or so years.  I guess I'll never know for sure.  I do know, however, that my daughter and son are loving, caring individuals.  They want to make the world a better place.  Even if I've fucked up every once in a while (which I have), my kids remind me that perhaps I didn't fuck up too badly.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about a birthday present he received from his daughter.  The poem was based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1878, Thomas Edison received a patent for the phonograph.  Write a poem about a once-common household item that is now obsolete.  Examples:  transistor radio, cassette recorder, 8-track player, modem, oscilloscope, typewriter, Polaroid instant camera, Walkman.

Remingt n

by: Martin Achatz

My daughter b ught it f r me

f r Father's Day when she was

 nly 15, this typewriter  lder

than my dad.  I imagined

Hemingway p unding  ut The Sun

Als  Rises in Paris  n it, each w rd

a bullet fr m his fingers.  The letter

" " d esn't w rk, leaves h les

in the lines I type, as if the paper was

used as target practice f r

a BB gun.  I remember h w pr ud

my daughter was when she unveiled

her present, h w I cried when

her face unfurled like a m rning

gl ry.  She typed a message t  me:

"I l ve y u, Daddy."

"I l ve y u, 2!" I typed back,

all the missing   's  lining up

like a w lf m aning at

a beaver m  n.

February 7: Mortality, Arthur Rimbaud, "Being Beauteous"

I can't say much about this poem, except that it moves me deeply.  Maybe because of my father's situation.  Maybe because I'm tired.  Maybe because I've been thinking about mortality a lot.

Saint Marty is feeling a little fractured tonight.

Being Beauteous

by:  Arthur Rimbaud

Against a fall of snow, a Being Beauiful, and very tall.
Whistlings of death and circles of faint music
Make this adored body, swelling and trembling
Like a specter, rise...
Black and scarlet gashes burst in the gleaming flesh.
The true colors of life grow dark,
Shimmering and sperate
In the scaffolding, around the Vision.

Shiverings mutter and rise,
And the furious taste of these effects is charged
With deadly whistlings and the raucous music
That the world, far behind us, hurls at our mother of beauty...
She retreats, she rises up...
Oh! Our bones have put on new flesh, for love.

Oh ash-white face

Oh tousled hair

O crystal arms!

On this cannot I mean to destroy myself
In a swirling of trees and soft air!

December 12: Mortality, Anointing of the Sick, "Extreme Unction"

Last night's trip to the hospital has got me thinking about mortality again.  How my father never seemed like he was prone to the aches and scourges of everyday people.  I've seen him cut his hand open on a piece of sheet metal, duct tape the wound close, and then continue working.

Last weekend, our parish priest stopped by my dad's house for a visit.  Near the end, Father Larry asked my dad if he wanted to be anointed.  My dad agreed, so Father Larry brought out his oils and performed a ritual that used to be called extreme unction.  It is now referred to as anointing of the sick.

When I was a kid, if you received this sacrament, it meant that you were on your way out.  It was reserved for the nearly dead and dying.  It was also called last rites.  Now, however, it's performed as a ritual of healing.

Of course, having grown up with the idea of last rites, it's difficult to shake the image of the Grim Reaper knocking on the door as the priest administers the oils.

It may not surprise you to know that Saint Marty once wrote a poem on the subject.

Extreme Unction

by:  Martin Achatz


Swaddled by AIDS in hospital bed.
Unlimbed by bombs in Afghanistan.
Unhinged by helix in mind.
Stunned by stroke, macheted by Hutu.
Unbreasted by cancer, unvoiced by dictator.
Addicted by birth, unmemoried by age.
Jack Kennedy at Parkland Memorial,
wide-eyed on the stretcher,
Jackie staring into his wrecked face.
Twenty six at Sandy Hook,
taken on a sunny December morning
just before Christmas break.
My father sits with them all,

The wounded, ruined, helpless,
waits for the priest’s  prayer and oil.
To the man in black, he whispers,
This is for my wife, accepts it,
carries it home on his foreheard,
cupped in his palms, like winter
run-off.  He gives it to my mother,
pours it over her feet, legs, hands, head.
He hopes she will jump out of her chair
and start cooking him liver and onions
the way she did when they were first
married, standing in front of the stove,
singing a Doris Day song, hair wrapped
in a blue kerchief, hips swaying,
looking as if she will live forever.

Please vote for me:

Voting for 2017-2019 Poet Laureate of the U. P.  

November 19: Turkey Trot, Richard Blanco, "Unspoken Elegy for Tia Cucha"

This coming Thursday, I am going to run a 5K Turkey Trot.  It's sort of become a tradition for me.  Every Thanksgiving morning, I get in my car, travel 20 or so miles, and participate in this race that benefits a local high school orchestra.

When I first started doing this over ten years ago, I used to run the 10K race.  Did it for close to six or seven years.  Then, one year, I injured myself in the summer, and all I could manage was the 5K that year.  I haven't run the longer race ever since, although I keep promising myself that I will.

I think it has something to do with getting older.  I know I am in no shape to run ten kilometers.  I'm barely in shape to run five.  I may end up walking a good portion of the course this year.  Just haven't been running much.  I'm getting older.

My father's recent fall at home has put me in a reflective mood.  Mortality has been looming large in my thoughts.  I'm not getting maudlin about it.  I'm just realizing that I'm not longer in my twenties anymore, when running a 10K would have not even caused a cramp in my side.  Nope.  This Thursday, I will count myself lucky if I cross the finish line without a limp.

Richard Blanco understands this grappling with aging relatives.  My dad will always be the guy who can tear a Detroit phone book in half with his bare hands, even if he can't walk across the living room right now without getting winded.

And Saint Marty will always be able to run a 10K without breaking a sweat.

Unspoken Elegy for Tia Cucha

by:  Richard Blanco

I arrive with a box of pastelitos,
a dozen red carnations, and a handful
of memories at her door: the half-moons
of her French manicures, how she spoke
blowing out cigarette smoke, her words
leaving her mouth as ghosts, the music
of her nicknames: Cucha, Cuchita, Pucha.
I kiss her hello and she slaps me hard
across my arm: ¡Cabrón! Too handsome
to visit your Tía, eh? She laughs, pulls me
inside her efficiency, a place I thought
I had forgotten, comes back to life
with wafts of Jean Naté and Pine Sol,
the same calendar from Farmacia León
with scenes of Old Havana on the wall,
the same peppermints in a crystal dish.
And her, wearing a papery housecoat,
sneakers with panty hose, like she wore
those summer mornings she'd walk me
down to the beach along First Street,
past the washed-out pinks and blues
of the Art Deco hotels like old toys.
The retirees lined across the verandas
like seagulls peering into the horizon,
the mango popsicles from the bodeguita
and the pier she told me was once
a bridge to Cuba- have all vanished.

I ask how she's feeling, but we agree
not to talk about that today, though
we both know why I have come
to see her: in a few months, maybe
weeks, her lungs will fill up again,
her heart will stop for good. She too
will vanish, except what I remember
of her, this afternoon: sharing a pastelito,
over a café she sweetens with Equal
at her dinette table crowded with boxes
of low-salt saltines and fibery cereals.
Under the watch of Holy Jesus' heart
burning on the wall, we gossip about
the secret crush she had on my father
once, she counts exactly how many
years and months since she left Cuba
and her mother forever. We complain
about the wars, disease, fires blazing
on the midday news as she dunks
the flowers in a tumbler- a dozen red
suns burst in the sapphire sky framed
in the window, sitting by the table.