June 22, 2026: “The Attic,” Hard Topics, “Triggering”

My faithful disciples know that I pretty much write about anything.  Nothing is off limits.  The only subjects taboo for me are the ones I don’t own.  For example, I don’t write about other people’s medical issues or personal tragedies unless given permission by those people.  Even then, I change names and details to protect identities.  

Over the 17 years I’ve been writing these posts, I’ve blogged about sexual addiction, mental illness, suicide, grief, and physical abuse, among other topics.  My life is an open book.  If you really want to know who I am, just go back to the beginning of Saint Marty in 2010 and start reading.  After six-thousand or so posts, you’ll probably have a pretty good idea of who I am.  

Marie Howe tackles a difficult topic . . . 

The Attic

by: Marie Howe

Praise to my older brother, the seventeen-year-old boy, who lived 

in the attic with me an exiled prince grown hard in his confinement,

bitter, bent to his evening task building the imaginary building

on the drawing board they’d given him in school.  His tools gleam

under the desk lamp.  He is as hard as the pencil he holds,

drawing the line straight along the ruler.

Tower prince, young king, praise to the boy

who has willed his blood to cool and his heart to slow.  He’s building

a structure with so many doors it’s finally quiet,

so that when our father climbs heavily up the attic stairs, he doesn’t

at first hear him pass down the narrow hall.  My brother is rebuilding

the foundation.  He lifts the clear plastic of one page

to look more closely at the plumbing,

—he barely hears the springs of my bed when my father sits down—

he’s imagining where the boiler might go, because

where it is now isn’t working.  Not until I’ve slammed the door behind

the man stumbling down the stairs again

does my brother look up from where he’s working.  I know it hurts him

to rise, to knock on my door and come in.  And when he draws his skinny

arm around my shaking shoulders,

I don’t know if he knows he’s building a world where I can one day

love a man—he sits there without saying anything.

Praise him.

I know he can hardly bear to touch me.

This is what I would call a brave poem.  Howe is tackling the subject of sexual/physical abuse by a parent (at least that’s my take).  She isn’t trying to shock the reader; she stays away from explicit details.  Instead, Howe pays tribute to her 17-year-old brother, who provides the kind of love and support that will allow her to overcome, heal, and eventually forge healthy relationships with the men in her life.  That’s an amazing act of love.

Emily Dickinson advises to “[t]ell all the truth but tell it slant” in one of her poems.  I think that’s what Howe does in this poem.  When dealing with a difficult subject, it’s easier to approach it from the side versus head on.  Sort of like admiring a solar eclipse—you can’t look at it directly or it will inflict serious harm.  Poetry is all about slant telling.

Today, I have no monumental or earth-shattering truth to reveal.  I worked at the library all day, including a writing workshop in the evening.  That’s it.  I’ve been working through the idea for a novella, and I think I got a jumpstart on the opening paragraphs in the workshop.  That makes me feel like I actually accomplished something important.  

When I was working on my Bigfoot manuscript, I used to say that I was wrestling with Bigfoot when I started a new poem.  I can still use that metaphor, I think, event though I have no intention of ever writing another Bigfoot poem in my life.  (Sorry folks, no sequels coming your way.)

So, Saint Marty wrestled with Bigfoot tonight and came up with this . . . 

Triggering

by: Martin Achatz

“Never write a poem that ought to have a poem written about it . . .”

          — Richard Hugo

In grad school, I was told never to write

a poem with the words love and heart

in it.  I was also cautioned against bone

and soul, as if those innermost parts

of ourselves will wither in sunlight

to brown husks, flake into dust on the tongue

that speaks them.  I think a poet must

fall in love with someone or something

in order to write about her or him or it or them.

For instance, I fell in love with my toothpaste

this morning, its minty heart alive

against the bone of my teeth.  I’m not

sure if my soul has a scent, but it it does,

I’ll bet it’s Colgate fresh, scrubbed clean

of the plaque of loss and regret and anger.

Am I allowed to use those words, Mr. Hugo?

Or should I floss them from this poem’s gums

like a popcorn kernel or stubborn apple seed?

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.

June 20, 2026: “Buying the Baby,” Father’s Day Weekend, “Hard Work”

From a very young age, I was taught the value of hard work.  Even when my dad retired (after almost 50-plus years of cabling sewers, replacing water heaters, and installing furnaces), he still got up before 5 a.m., sipped his strong black coffee, and then headed out into the day for whatever task he had set for himself to accomplish.  Mowing the lawn or tinkering around in his warehouse or chopping wood at camp.  He never slowed down.  And he instilled that same work ethic in each of his kids.

On this Father’s Day weekend, I find myself thinking about my dad a lot.  How he forced me to do things I hated, like going on plumbing jobs when I was a kid; mowing the lawn to his exact specifications (not an easy feat); and attending catechism and Mass with the Society of St. Pius X (a Catholic sect that rejected the reforms introduced by the Vatican II and insisted on Latin liturgy).  Simply put, I didn’t see eye-to-eye with my dad on a lot of things, emotionally, spiritually, socially, or politically.  But I loved him, even though our relationship was complicated.

Marie Howe writes about attending Catholic school . . . 

Buying the Baby

by: Marie Howe

In those days you could buy a pagan baby for five dollars,

the whole class saved up.  And when you bought it

you could name it Joseph, Mary, or Theresa, thee class took a vote.

But on the day I brought in the five dollars

my grandmother had given me for my birthday something happened

—fire drill?  An assassination?  And if it was announced 

Marie Howe has, all by herself, bought a baby in India and gets to name it,

it was overshadowed and forgotten

And if I tried to picture my baby, the CARE package

carried to her hut and placed before her, as her sisters and brothers watched,

that image dissolved into the long shining hall to the girls’ lavatory.

Even in my own room, waiting for Roy Orbison to sing “Only the Lonely”

so I could sleep, I couldn’t conjure that baby up.

The five dollars I gave her would never reach her.  I knew that,

because I wanted my class to think me good for giving it.

Spiritual Pride the nuns called it, a Sin of Intention,

sister to the Sin of Omission, which was 

the price for what you hadn’t done but thought.

Sometimes I prayed so hard for God to materialize at the foot of my bed

it would start to happen,

then I’d beg it to stop, and it would.

I don’t have much memory of those catechism classes I attended as a kid.  Vaguely, I recall buying cows and sheep and chickens for remote African villages.  I also have a memory of learning the Lord’s Prayer in Latin when I was in second or third grade and a priest forcing me to recite it for a group of snickering high schoolers.  However, I have no recollection of buying a pagan baby for five bucks.

But I worked hard at being the perfect Catholic schoolboy.  I went to confession every Sunday, even though second graders don’t really commit a lot of serious sins.  The one sin I committed over and over was this:  I hated attending the Latin Mass.  I admitted this fact to the priest every week in that stuffy little room, and I listened to his admonitions and accepted my penance.  Every week.  Truly, though, I was pretty unrepentant.  To this day, I’m not a fan of Latin liturgy or Gregorian chant or hymns based on Gregorian chants.  Yes, I know I’m going to hell.

So, I didn’t inherit my dad’s penchant for ancient rituals in dead languages.  However, I watched him work from dawn to dusk every day.  To relax at night, he drank 7 and 7s.  A lot of them.  (He eventually gave this practice up after he realized he had a big problem with alcohol.  He never attended an AA meeting or worked any twelve step program.  He just went cold turkey one day and never looked back.)  Because of my dad’s addiction, I’m very cognizant of my own consumption of alcohol and other substances.  I think that’s the reason I waited until I was a high school senior before I indulged in my first puking blackout.  

But, because of the work ethic I inherited from my parents, I was salutatorian of my high school class and received a full-ride scholarship to college, from which I graduated summa cum laude.  Then I went on to graduate school and earned two advanced degrees.  Currently, I hold down five jobs (teaching at a university, programming at a library, and playing keyboard/pipe organ at three different churches).  I’m not a lazy person, and I have my dad and mom to thank for that.

At the laundromat this afternoon, Saint Marty wrote a poem . . . 

Hard Work

by: Martin Achatz

After a morning bagging up dog crap,

stray branches, a desiccated mouse carcass

(probably dropped by a barred owl), then pushing

a mower for a couple more hours under 

a punishing sun, avoiding fat toads in the grass 

after a night of heavy rain, I sit on my living 

room couch in front of a fan, chew an ice cube

in the window-shaded dark, and lick sweat

from my upper lip as I contemplate the real 

hard work ahead of me:  this poem 

with its concrete nouns, feral verbs, Homeric

mystery.  In a few minutes, I’ll launch myself

toward the shores of Troy, ready to war

five, ten, twenty years for a single line of verse

so beautiful and perfect it would make Paris 

forget the golden apple of Helen’s body.

June 18, 2026: “Sixth Grade,” Regrets, “Imaginary Family Tree”

We all have experiences in the past that cause us shame, especially when we get older.  It’s inevitable.  I could provide a laundry list of my personal regrets and hurts.  Chances not taken.  Cruelties inflicted.  Things not said.  It’s not healthy to obsess over these moments, but I do, late at night, when I can’t fall asleep.

Marie Howe writes about a childhood trauma . . . 

Sixth Grade

by: Marie Howe

The afternoon the neighborhood boys tied me and Mary Lou Maher

to Donny Ralph’s father’s garage doors, spread-eagled,

it was the summer they chased us almost every day.

Careening across the lawns they’’d mowed for money,

on bikes they threw down, they’d catch us, lie on top of us,

then get up and walk away.

That afternoon Donny’s mom wasn’t home.

His nine sisters and brothers gone—even Gramps, who lived with them,

gone somewhere—the backyard empty, the big house quiet.

A gang of boys.  They pulled the heavy garage doors down,

and tied us to them with clothesline,

and Donny got the deer’s leg severed from the buck his dad had killed

the year before, dried up and still fur-covered, and sort of

poked it at us, dancing around the blacktop in his sneakers, laughing.

Then somebody took it from Donny and did it.

And then somebody else, and somebody after him.

Then Donny pulled up Mary Lou’s dress and held it up,

and she began to cry, and I became a boy again, and shouted Stop.,

and they wouldn’t.

Then a girl-boy, calling out to Charlie my best friend’s brother,

who wouldn’t look

Charlie! to my brother’s friend who knew me

Stop them.  And he wouldn’t.

And then more softly, and looking directly at him, I said, Charlie.

And he said Stop.  And they said What?  And he said Stop it.

And they did, quickly untying the ropes, weirdly quiet,

Mary Lou weeping.  And Charlie?  Already gone.

Certain experiences stay with you like scars throughout your life.  Some are collective traumas—the JFK assassination, Challenger explosion, 9-11 attacks.  Others are more personal—physical abuse, schoolyard bullying, high school heartbreak.  What Howe describes here is a childhood trauma that haunts her into adulthood.  

As I said above, I have tons of regrets and hurts.  I never told my dad I loved him.  Ever.  My mother spent the final two or three years of her life in a nursing home, and I can count on one hand the number of times I visited her.  I was a chubby kid who played piano, wrote poems, and went to see the original Star Wars 27 times in the theater.  I pretty much had a target on my back all through middle school.  Faithful disciples of this blog know all about the struggles that addictions have inflicted on my marriage and family.  (I still go to therapy over these.)

I believe that most poetry comes from places of pain.  Old wounds that haven’t healed.  There’s something exquisitely beautiful about sorrow and grief.  Because you can’t experience either of those emotional states without also experiencing great joy and love.  Only the people we love and trust the most can inflict trauma in our lives.  I can vouch for that statement.  (Sorry, but I am not going to drag those skeletons out of my closet for this post.  Suffice to say, I have childhood traumas that shaped me into the person I am today.)

If I could go back in time to change my past and avoid those childhood traumas, would I?  I don’t think so.  Those wounds run deep, and I think they’ve made me a kinder, gentler individual than I would have been otherwise.  More empathetic and understanding.  Plus, I get a hell of a lot of poems out of that material.

I don’t think pain is intrinsically negative or positive.  It’s what we do with that pain that matters.  My childhood pain made me a better father, I think.  The marital struggles I endured taught me a great deal about trust and love and respect.  Made me a better partner.  You get the idea.  Trauma can destroy or shape you.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about generational trauma for this evening . . . 

Imaginary Family Tree

by: Martin Achatz

My dad jogged behind that limo in Dallas,

kept a white shirt rusted with Kennedy’s blood

in the bedroom closet until the day he died.

My mother marched on Washington in 1963,

stood under Lincoln’s marble gaze

while Martin climbed that mountaintop

and dreamed in front of her.

My great grandma sewed suffragette sashes

for Susan B. Anthony, slept next to her

at night, voting yes! and yes! again 

with lips and fingers in the dark.

My great great great grandpa stood by Grant

in the courthouse, watched a war end

so quietly he could hear flies buzzing

on Lee’s Confederate gray gelding outside.

Me?  I’ll bequeath my Nobel Prize diploma

to my kids.  It’s hanging above my desk 

at the moment, looking a lot like a Valentine

my daughter made me in kindergarten,

a flock of crayon hearts slapping my eyes.