February 16: Faith and Trust, Averill Curdy, "The God of Inattention"

Yes, I continually struggle with faith and trust.  I think it's part of being a religious person.  You simply have dark moments of the soul, where God seems to turn His back on you.  Without faith, I would have given into despair a long, long time ago.

And then, the sun breaks through the clouds for a few minutes.  Sends you something beautiful.

Saint Marty lives for those moments.

The God of Inattention

by:  Averill Curdy

After the trumpets, after the incense   

There were nights insomnia fathered gods   

I then rejected as too angry or distracted,   

Or whose appetite for submission revealed   

Their own lack of faith.   Say our names,   

All synonyms for trust. Others spoke   

In sugared paradox:  To know is to know   

All. To not know all is not to know. To know   

All requires that you know very little,   

But to know that little you have to know   

All . And for a while, it's true,   

I burned in the dark fires of ambivalence,   

My attention consumed like oxygen.   

I'd wake up tired, as I had with the married man   

Whose strictures and caprice begat,   

And begat, and begat, and begat   

My love for him, harvesting the same      

Silence from my bed. Who listens   

To my penitential tune? Who accepts   

My petitions for convenient parking,   

For spring, for the self illuminated   

Across a kitchen table, for . . . for   

Fortitude? I've heard a voice, I'm sure,   

Advising me to drop this sentimental farce.   

Only to hold the smoke of their names   

Again in my mouth I'd resurrect   

The dead, or adopt the gods orphaned   

By atheists, except the gods they've made   

From disbelief no one's faith could tolerate.   

Refusing to make the same mistake   

Just once, I've cried out to the dark   

Many names, most given up as routinely   

As the secrets of friends. If you're a cup      

Will my lips profane your own? If a comb      

Will I feel your teeth against my neck?      

If a wall I will be darker than your shadow.   

And if a door I will unlatch you, letting in   

All the little foxes from the vineyard.

February 16: Iron Mallets, Feel Like a Vogon, National Emergency

Vogon lesson number two . . .

Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder.  They brought forth scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees of breathtaking slenderness and color which the Vogons cut down and burned the crabmeat with; elegant gazellelike creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on.  They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway.

Thus the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until the Vogons suddenly discovered the principles of interstellar travel.  Within a few short Vog years every last Vogon had migrated to the Megabrantis cluster, the political hub of the Galaxy, and now formed the immensely powerful backbone of the Galactic Civil Service.  They have attempted to acquire learning, they have attempted to acquire style and social grace, but in most respects the modern Vogon is little different from his primitive forebears.  Every year they import twenty-seven thousand scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs from their native planet and while away a happy drunken night smashing them to bits with iron mallets.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was thoroughly vile.  Also, he did not like hitchhikers.

Full confession:  sometimes I feel like a Vogon.  What I mean by that is that, sometimes, I feel like an irresponsible 20-year-old, lacking in style and social graces.  I run out of money the day that I get my paycheck.  I seem to collect past due notices.  Yet, I still go out to eat at McDonald's or buy a book on Amazon.  I can't seem to say "no" to my kids when they ask me to buy them something.

My dream would be to be able to have saved up enough money by this time to send both of my kids to college.  Have enough disposable income (whatever that is) to go on a nice vacation once a year without having to depend on the generosity of family members.  If my brakes go bad, I'd like to be able to get them fixed right away instead of letting them grind for weeks (sometimes months). 

I think I'm a hard worker.  Never shirk my responsibilities.  I have two jobs during the week.  On the weekend, I play the organ at church to earn more money.  Yet, I never seem to have any balances in my savings or checking accounts.  It's kind of depressing, working that much without ever getting ahead.  It makes me want to smash something with a Vogon iron mallet.

Yet, I have great kids.  Beautiful wife.  I have wonderful friends whom I cherish and love, as well.  I do cool things, like perform on radio shows.  People invite me places to read my poetry.  I'm sitting in a warm house right now.  There's food in the fridge, although things are lean this week.  We'll see how many groceries we're able to buy.  I'm better off than 99.999% of the people on this planet.  There's no national emergency in my house.

I am blessed.  More than I deserve.

Saint Marty just needs to remind himself of this fact every once in a while.

February 14: Should Never Have Survived, Valentine's Day, One Constant in My Life

Back to the Vogons, who are going to demolish the planet Earth . . .

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other Vogons.  His highly domed nose rose high above a small piggy forehead.  His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to play the game of Vogon Civil Service politics, and play it well, and waterproof enough for him to survive indefinitely at sea depths of down to a thousand feet with no ill effects.

Not that he ever went swimming of course.  His busy schedule would not allow it.  He was the way he was because billions of years ago when the Vogons had first crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of Vogsphere, and had lain panting and heaving on the planet's virgin shores . . . when the first rays of the bright young Vogsol sun had shone across them that morning, it was as if the forces of evolution had simply given up on them there and then, had turned aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and unfortunate mistake.  They never evolved again:  they should never have survived.  

The fact that they did is some kind of tribute to the thick-willed slug-brained stubbornness of these creatures.  Evolution? they said to themselves, Who needs it?, and what nature refused to do for them they simply did without until such time as they were able to rectify the gross anatomical inconveniences with surgery.

Okay, the Vogons sound like creatures only a mother could love, and my bet is that the Vogons eat their mothers (or vice versa).  In any case, love is probably a foreign concept to these aliens.  It has not been part of their evolutionary process.

Happy Valentine's Day to all my devoted disciples.  (That number is probably about two or three, my wife not among them.  She's around me all the time, listens to all my fears and insecurities every day.  She doesn't need to read about them, too.  She is an incredibly patient woman.  She has to be in order to stay married to me.

For example, tonight, I'm doing a poetry thing.  My wife isn't coming with me.  I'm attending with a really good friend.  My friend and I made these plans about a week ago.  Her husband is going to be cross country skiing.  My wife was supposed to be taking my son to his dance class.  Turns out that my son isn't going to dance.  So, that left me with a dilemma:  to cancel or not to cancel.

My wife, being the understanding a loving person that she is, told me to go to the poetry thing, even though it's Valentine's Day.  I have asked her several times again over the last week if she wanted me to cancel the plans with my friend.  Each time, my wife has told me that I should go be a poet tonight.  I'm not sure if she is saying this out of love or out of wanting to get rid of me for a few hours.  Either way, I will be celebrating Valentine's Day with my friend, reading love poetry at an open mic.  If it counts for anything, the poems I'll be reading are about my wife.

My wife and I can't really afford to go out to eat or anything, and we gave up buying Valentine's Day presents for each other several years ago.  We do exchange cards.  I think, in some way, my wife letting me go to this reading is her Valentine's Day present to me, because she knows how important poetry is in my life.

My wife and I have had many ups and downs in our relationship.  Our love hasn't always been easy.  It is a continually evolving thing.  However, I still find her sexy and attractive after almost 30 years of being together--in one year we'll be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary.  She knows me better than anyone else.  I think I can say the same for her.  We are best friends, with some benefits thrown in when the kids are asleep or not home.

She is the one constant in my life, and I would be lost without her.)

That was an incredibly long parenthetical passage, but I think it really captures my feelings this Valentine's Day.

Saint Marty wishes everyone reading this post great love and great chocolate tonight.

February 14: Embarrass My Kids, Sex Poetry, "Radio Jazz in the Morning"

And, just because it's Valentine's Day, I'm going to embarrass my kids.  Because that's one of the pleasures of being a parent.

I don't write many poems that are very sexual.  (I was going to use the word "explicitly," but the poem below is not graphically sexual.  It's an extended metaphor that riffs on sex.)  Sex poetry is just not my thing.  Music is, though.  So is my wife.

Therefore, Saint Marty gives you some . . .

Radio Jazz in the Morning

by:  Martin Achatz

Guitar lifts, runs, falls, trips over
My naked body, taps along arm,
Reaches down back, into vertebrae,
Makes juices flow and jump, my horn
Riff the air, sway, heavy now, light now,
My mind still with my wife in bed,
Her curves, hot breath, parted lips,
Ready for the jazz of fingers, bebop
Of hands on her skin, rhythm, bass
On breast, thigh, nipple, neck,
Mardi Gras of body on body, tongue
On her reed, slick music in mouth,
Passed from my tenor to her alto,
Her trumpet to my trombone,
Until we're jamming, unable to tell
Me from her, her from me, our voices
Rising, like Jesus on Easter morning,
Filling the world with sound, sweet sound,
Louie, Ella, Duke, Charlie, yeah, Bird,
Chasing Bird all the way to paradise.  Yeah.