May 18, 2025: “After 37 Years My Mother Apologizes for My Childhood,” Atonement, “Volcanology”

I think everyone spends their adult years recovering from their childhoods.  It’s easier for some, difficult for others.  Most of the time, it’s a mixed bag—good and bad vying for memory.  I’ve learned that forgiveness is a huge part of this process.

Sharon Olds writes about her childhood . . . 

After 37 Years My Mother

          Apologizes for My Childhood

by: Sharon Olds

When you tilted toward me, arms out
like someone trying to walk through a fire,
when you swayed toward me, crying out you were
sorry for what you had done to me, your
eyes filling with terrible liquid like
balls of mercury from a broken thermometer
skidding on the floor, when you quietly screamed
Where else could I turn? Who else did I have?, the
chopped crockery of your hands swinging toward me, the
water cracking from your eyes like moisture from
stones under heavy pressure, I could not
see what I would do with the rest of my life.
The sky seemed to be splintering, like a window
someone is bursting into or out of, your
tiny face glittered as if with
shattered crystal, with true regret, the
regret of the body. I could not see what my
days would be, with you sorry, with
you wishing you had not done it, the
sky falling around me, its shards
glistening in my eyes, your old, soft
body fallen against me in horror I
took you in my arms, I said It’s all right,
don’t cry, it’s all right, the air filled with
flying glass, I hardly knew what I
said or who I would be now that I had forgiven you.

Forgiving someone who hurt you as a child, without the ability to defend yourself, is incredibly painful.  I speak from experience.  While I’m not going to get into specifics, I want to say that individuals who harm young people are not irredeemable.  However, redemption comes at a cost—the need to face your mistakes and try to atone.

I know that sounds very Catholic.  However, I firmly believe that forgiveness without some act of penance is meaningless.  All abusers apologize to their victims after committing their abuse.  Perhaps the apology is, in  that moment, genuine, but if the abuser continues to abuse, that apology is also meaningless.

Don’t try to decode this post.  There are no hidden messages.  Family dysfunction occurs.  Frankly, I don’t know any “functional” family.  Humans are fallible.  They fuck up.  Mix in mental illness, and the result can be unbearable at times.

But, as a Christian, I also have to believe that everyone is worthy of being forgiven, depending on the actions they take to BE forgiven.  As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words.  If saying “I am sorry” isn’t backed up by acts of true love and kindness, then those three words are only that—words.  

Apologies are cheap, unless they are followed by grace and amends.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about dysfunction and love, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1980, Washington State’s Mount St. Helens erupted, sending ash in the air for miles.  Write a poem that compares a relationship, person, lover, family, job, or divorce to a volcano.  Learn about the differences in volcanoes, such as the slow moving lava of Hawaiian volcanoes to the almost atomic-blast ash clouds of Mount St. Helens.

Volcanology

by: Martin Achatz

It’s hard to love him

with his magma tongue

in the caldera of his mouth,

never sure when he will blot

out the sun, fill my lungs

with ash and vog until

breathing is just memory

and I lie down, maybe

hugging a pillow or dog,

let myself be consumed,

calcified, even the thoughts

inside my hollow skull,

echoing like ocean waves

in the ear of a conch:

He loves me, loves me not,

loves me, loves me not.

May 17, 2025: "Why My Mother Made Me," Hold On to Things, "Momento Mori"

What makes a person?  It's an interesting question.

Do past traumas?  Old relationships?  Physical challenges?  Movies?  Television shows?  Parents?  Teachers?  I guess it boils down to nature versus nurture.  Are we born with our personalities, or do our personalities develop over time?

Sharon Olds meditates on why she was born . . .  

Why My Mother Made Me

by: Sharon Olds

Maybe I am what she always wanted, 

my father as a woman, 

maybe I am what she wanted to be 

when she first saw him, tall and smart, 

standing there in the college yard with the 

hard male light of 1937 

shining on his slicked hair. She wanted that 

power. She wanted that size. She pulled and 

pulled through him as if he were silky 

bourbon taffy, she pulled and pulled and 

pulled through his body till she drew me out, 

sticky and gleaming, her life after her life. 

Maybe I am the way I am 

because she wanted exactly that, 

wanted there to be a woman 

a lot like her, but who would not hold back, so she 

pressed herself, hard, against him, 

pressed and pressed the clear soft 

ball of herself like a stick of beaten cream 

against his stained sour steel grater 

until I came out the other side of his body, 

a tall woman, stained, sour, sharp, 

but with milk at the center of my nature. 

I lie here now as I once lay 

in the crook of her arm, her creature, 

and I feel her looking down into me the way 

the maker of a sword gazes at his face 

in the steel of the blade.

We all hold onto things--trinkets from the past that seem too important simply to throw away.  I still have a People Magazine from the week River Phoenix died.  I've been keeping diaries and journals since I was in middle school.  I have boxes and boxes of them.  I've been posting on this blog for close to 15 years now.  Well over 5,000 posts.

My poems and posts and stories and journals are my my mementos.  They remind me of who I am, where I come from.  And now this post will be another of those reminders.  Twenty years from now, I may reread these words and not remember a single thing about their composition.  Or I may remember everything.

What I want to remember about today:  my wife and I an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tonight.  Being happy.  Feeling blessed.  Not wanting the night to end.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about all those things that remind us of life . . . and death, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Find an index card and turn it vertically.  Write a poem about something that doesn't last long.  Writing on an index card vertically will result in much shorter lines--see how this added structure changes how you normally write.  For extra credit, turn the index card over and write horizontally about something that lasts a long time.

Memento Mori

by: Martin Achatz

My sister's hospital badge,

from when she was still saving

people's lives.  A polaroid

of a cocker spaniel, blue ball

in his jaws, as if he's waiting

for me to toss it one last time.

My grandfather's wedding ring,

worn smooth as an old tooth.

My grandma didn't want it, 

told me it belonged to his first

wife, as if love was a well

that could run dry.  We all keep

tokens like these in dresser

drawers, closet boxes.  I bet

Mary Todd kept the silver

half-dollars from Lincoln's

eyelids.  Maybe she worried 

them all day until her fingers 

burned, slept with them 

under her cool pillow at night 

until she couldn't remember

the sound of his voice or 

the smell of his 

whiskered cheeks.

May 16, 2025: "Alcatraz," Trapped in the Past, "To That Girl in High School"

It's easy to get trapped in the past, especially if that past contains any kind of trauma or difficulty. I've worked for years with therapists to overcome some of my life experiences. Talking and writing about these experiences throws open the closet door and lets the skeletons hidden inside start dancing.

Sharon Olds deals with some childhood trauma . . . 

Alcatraz

by: Sharon Olds

When I was a girl, I knew I was a man
because they might send me to Alcatraz
and only men went to Alcatraz.
Every time we drove to the city 

I'd see it there, white as a white
shark in the shark-rich Bay, the bars like
milk-white ribs. I knew I had pushed my
parents too far, my inner badness had
spread like ink and taken me over, I could
not control my terrible thoughts,
terrible looks, and they had often said
that they would send me there--maybe the very next
time I spilled my milk.  Ala
Cazam, the aluminum doors would slam, I'd be
there where I belonged, a girl-faced man in the
prison no one had escaped from. I did not
fear the other prisoners,
I knew who they were, men like me who had
spilled their milk one time too many,
not been able to curb their thoughts—
what I feared was the horror of the circles: circle of
sky around the earth, circle of
land around the Bay, circle of
water around the island, circle of
sharks around the shore, circle of
outer walls, inner walls,
steel girders, chrome bars,
circle of my cell around me, and there at the
center, the glass of milk AND the guard's
eyes upon me as I reached out for it.

Now, going to prison for spilling a glass of milk seems a little drastic.  However, that was Sharon Olds' fear as a young girl, and this poem is all about little childhood wounds.  I know I can trace quite a few of my own adult phobias back to things that happened to me as a kid.  (Everybody goes through heartbreaks in high schooler--I think it's part of every curriculum.)

I'm not going to belabor any point tonight.  I'm too tired.  It's been a long week.  Yes, I could write about some of my past traumas, but it's Friday night.  I want to relax and sleep well.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about a high school heartbreak, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Think about all the people in your life that you liked, but never really got a chance to know.  This could be because they died or perhaps you just had a brief friendship before you had to move away.  Maybe you switched jobs or your relationship was cut short for another reason.  Write a poem where you address this person.  Share with her/him images of your favorite things and things s/he never knew that were important to you.  Be specific.  If you love flatbread from Spain or love dinner-plate dahlias, mention it.  Tell them what you remember of them.  You can write this poem in the form of a letter, postcard, or just address the poem to them:  "Dear __________, You never saw my garden . . ."

To That Girl in High School

by: Martin Achatz

Every night I went to bed

jealous of the moonlight

for turning your body into

a bright, perfect pearl.

May 15, 2025: "I Go Back to May 1937," Ghosts, "Ten Letter Fragments to Emily Dickinson"

There are moments when I wish I could time travel.  Both of my kids are older now.  This July, my 24-year-old daughter will be moving downstate to start medical school.  In a week's time, my 16-year-old son will end his junior year of high school (plus he's got a semester of college under his belt, as well).  Yes, I've been thinking about my early fatherhood days--holding them in my arms and whispering in their tiny ears, "Nothing's going to hurt you while I'm around."  I would step into the DeLorean just to have those moments back.

Sharon Olds has a time travel moment . . . 

I Go Back to May 1937

by: Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

I think everybody has experiences they would like to change.  Car accidents avoided.  College classes passed.  High school crushes fucked.  Family traumas healed.  Regrets are as plentiful as dandelions in June.

Me?  Today, I wish I could see my sister Rose one last time.  Today would have been her birthday.  (You already know this fact if you read last night's post.)  I don't think I left things unsaid to her.  It was impossible to leave her presence without saying "I love you" and giving her a hug.  

The morning Rose died is kind of a blur.  She hadn't been doing well for quite some time.  In and out of the hospital the last year of her life.  Her lungs were awful, and she kept getting bronchitis and pneumonia and double pneumonia.  In fact, one of the things that lead to her death was a pneumothorax.  

Yet, when she breathed her last breath (right after my daughter arrived to say goodbye to her), I almost didn't believe she'd died.  She didn't struggle at the end.  Her chest wasn't heaving.  No rattle in her throat.  She simply inhaled quietly and exhaled quietly, and that was it.  So peaceful.

It's also the 139th anniversary of Emily Dickinson's death.  So, even poetically, I'm being haunted by the past.  I'm surrounded by ghosts today.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1886, Emily Dickinson died at the age of fifty-five.  Imagine Emily Dickinson sitting next to you right now, dressed in white, and holding a book of poems.  She reads quietly at your side.  Write a poem about this scene or imagine you are writing a letter to Emily Dickinson.  What do you want to tell her?

Ten Letter Fragments to Emily Dickinson

by: Martin Achatz

1.

Did you really hear a fly

when you died--battering

the window pane

like a horse trapped 

in its stall while

the barn's burning down?

2.

Was white really

your favorite color,

or were you a moth

in a former life?

3.

I like being alone, too,

because I'm nobody

and don't care who

you are.

4.

I prefer "Stairway to Heaven"

over "Amazing Grace."

5.

Blind dates aren't

perfect, but a little

carriage ride never

killed anyone.

6.

"Hope" doesn't have feathers,

can't be trained to sit

on your shoulder, eat

crackers, whisper in your ear

the winning lottery numbers.

7.

Can you love the wrong

person?  That's like asking

peepers whether they

really want to sing arias

to warm May mud.

8.

I'm going to tell

all the truth here:

that narrow fellow

you saw in the grass

was me.

9.

This morning, I felt

as if the top of my head

was taken off.  It wasn't

poetry.  It was the fifth

of gin I drank last night.

10.

I dwell in possibility,

too, because poets

think there's beauty

in everything, even

if it takes bloodhounds

to hunt it down.