February 18: Funeral Hangover, Rough Draft, "Mom Gets Emergency C-Section Because Twins Were Fighting Inside Her Womb"

Well, I have had a few hours of sleep.  I'm still feeling really tired.  I've been telling people that I'm suffering from a funeral hangover.  All the emotions.  All the visitors and friends and family.  All the funeral home and church doings.  Now, all the leftovers and thank you notes.

I have taken two more days off work.  Right now, that doesn't seem like enough.  I've sort of been ambushed by sadness at various times throughout today.  My father was 90 years old.  He hadn't been doing well for a while.  I pretty much thought that I was prepared for this loss.  Yet, sitting in church this morning, listening to the hymns, I found myself overwhelmed.

I told myself that I wasn't going to write another blog post about the loss of my father today.  I'm not the kind of person who wallows.  After a loss, I try to reassemble the pieces of my life and move on.  That's more my style.  I want normal back.

So, my normal today is correcting quizzes, answering emails, reading a good book, watching the Winter Olympics, and maybe having a mug (or two) of special hot chocolate.  My daughter and her boyfriend are sitting on the couch, watching TV.  My son is taking a bath.  Tomorrow, my kids will go to school (if the weather doesn't turn sour); my wife will go to work; and I will teach tomorrow night.  Normal Monday.

Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations.  I mean, a death has a way of rewriting your life.  I guess I'm in the middle of a rough draft right now.  Not too sure about what my final draft is going to look like. 

Saint Marty has a poem for you tonight.  Rough or final draft?  You be the judge.

Mom Gets Emergency C-Section

Because Twins Were Fighting

Inside Her Womb *

by:  Martin Achatz

Love and hate come from the same egg,

conceived in moans and sweat,

split like wildfire by a dirt road

or the sky by a tongue of lightning.

They taste the same, sweet honey

with black sting, a slow tequila

burn in the belly, swelling, blind

as midnight surf, inevitable as death.

Love calls to hate with blood, plosive

heart driving jealous hunger into DNA

like a suicide bomber, dancing

on cartilage and bone in temple

thunder, arms growing fists,

lungs swimming with salt, promised

sobs.  Locked in a struggle as urgent

as sex, love and hate join, part, divide,

multiply, kick, and caress until

gestate violence rolls the mother

land, tears chromosomes and cells,

a civil war genetic in terror,

ancient as desert sand, as salmon

charging silver to the spawn,

that place of froth and foam

where mud and rib first coupled

and murder crawled from the sea,

naked and roaring for the black

heavens to open and rain

a rapture of fingers and light.

* title taken from Weekly World News

June 16: 2% Inspiration, Adonis, "Song"

I am working on a sonnet right now.  I've been working on it for a couple of weeks.  It's been a difficult task for me for some reason.  I haven't felt particularly inspired.  But, if I always waited to be inspired in order to write something, I would probably never compose another poem or story or essay.

Poetry, for me, is about 2% inspiration and 98% hard work.  I've had my short moment of inspiration, so now I'm in the work-your-ass-off phase.  I need to have the poem done by the end of the weekend.  That's when the editor needs to submit it to the publisher.  Tomorrow night, I plan to have a finished rough draft.  Saturday, a revised draft.  Sunday, final draft.

That's my plan, anyway.

Saint Marty may need a little more inspiration tonight.  There's some Bailey's Irish Cream in the cupboard.

Song

by:  Adonis

Bells on our eyelashes

and the death throes of words,

and I among fields of speech,

a knight on a horse made of dirt.

My lungs are my poetry, my eyes a book,

and I, under the skin of words,

on the beaming banks of foam,

a poet who sang and died

leaving this singed elegy

before the faces of poets,

for birds at the edge of sky.