December 7, 2025: “The Spouses Waking Up in the Hotel Mirror,” Almost Migraine, “Writing Life of Charles Dickens”

Being a poet and blogger is sort of like constantly looking at yourself and your life in a mirror, but not in an egotistical way.  You look to understand and interpret, maybe to find something beautiful.

I’ve been a writer my whole life.  I have a box of old diaries and journals under a bed.  They go all the way back to the fifth or sixth grade.  It was at that time that I decided I wanted to record my thoughts and feelings and experiences.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a short story about a family who finds an angel in the backyard; they tie the angel up and charge people money to see him.  I first read that story when I was in ten or eleven, right around the time I started my career as a diarist.  (By the way, I’ve never had the courage to go back and reread those old notebooks.  I’m afraid of what I’ll find out about myself.)

Sharon Olds spends some time gazing at herself in a mirror . . . 

The Spouses Waking Up in the Hotel Mirror

by: Sharon Olds

The man looked like himself, only more so,

his face lucent, his silence profound as if

inevitable, but the woman looked

like a different species from an hour before,

a sandhill crane or a heron, her eyes

skinned back, she looked insane with happiness.

After he got up, I looked at her,

lying on her back in the bed.

Her ribs and breasts and clavicles had

the molded look of a gladiator’s

torso-armor, formal bulge of the 

pectoral, forged nipple, her deltoid

heron-elongated,

I couldn’t get her provenance

but the pelvic bone was wildly curled,

wrung.  I could see she was a skeleton

in there, that hair on her body buoyant

though the woman was stopped completely, stilled as if

paralyzed.  I looked at her face,

bloom-darkened, it was a steady face,

I saw she was very good at staring

and could make up her mind to stare at me

until I would look away first.

I saw her bowled, suffused forehead,

her bony cheeks and jaws, I saw she could

watch her own house burn

without moving a muscle, I saw she could light

the pyre.  She looked very much like her father, that

capillary-rich face, and very

much like her mother, the curlicues

at the corners of the features.  She was very male

and very female.

very hermaphroditical,

I could see her in a temple, tying someone up

or being tied up or being made nothing

or making someone nothing,

I saw she was full of cruelty

and full of kindness, brimming with it—

I had known but not known this, that she was human,

she had it all inside her, all of it.

She saw me seeing that, she liked that I saw it.

A full life—I saw her living it,

and then I saw her think of someone who

ignores her rather as her father ignored her,

and the clear, intransigent white of her eyes

went murky grey, the sections of her face pulled

away from each other like the continents

before they tore apart, long before they drifted.

I saw that she had been beaten, I saw her

looking away like a begging dog,

I averted my eyes, and turned my head

as the beloved came back, and came over to her

and came down to me, I looked into his iris

like looking at a rainstorm by moonrise, or a still

winter lake, just as its cleavages

take, or into crystal, when crystal

is forming, wet as nectar or milk

or semen, the first skein from a boy’s heart.

Looking at yourself closely can be an unpleasant experience.  Olds sees the woman in the mirror not as a reflection of herself.  Rather, she’s able to step outside of her body and appraise herself honestly, without flinching, each hair and scar and blemish mapping her skin like roads and rivers.  The spouse in the poem ignores these imperfections.  He comes to her at the end, his irises looking like “a rainstorm by moonrise, or a still winter lake . . .”  To put it another way, he sees her true self.

So, now it’s my turn to look at myself in the mirror today.  I played keyboard for two church services this morning.  Then I attended the annual Tuba Christmas concert, live-streaming it for the library.  (If you’ve never read heard 30 tubas and euphoniums in one enclosed space playing Christmas carols, you don’t know what you’re missing.  Or maybe you do.)  Then, some shopping.  (I purchased two really ugly Christmas sweaters for myself.)  Finally, dinner (grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches with chicken noodle soup) and a Zoom poetry workshop (the best part of my day).

My whole weekend was like that—one thing after another thing after another thing.  I haven’t really had a whole lot of downtime.  When I got home from Tuba Christmas and shopping, I sat down on the couch to relax for a few minutes.  I turned on the TV, and suddenly my head started pounding and my vision blurred.  My first thought:  I’m having a stroke.  My second thought:  at least I won’t have to grade my students’ final papers.

I lay back on the couch and closed my eyes.  I could feel the room spinning behind my lids.  In the past, I have suffered from bouts of vertigo.  Only once have I experienced a migraine.  After about a half hour, I opened my eyes and got up to help my wife do the dinner dishes and pans.  I could still feel a dull throb in the back of my head, but the world wasn’t merry-go-rounding anymore.  My vision was clear.  

I think I was on the verge of a migraine.  So, I had an almost migraine, I guess.  When I described my symptoms to my wife, she said, “It was a migraine.  You’ve been so stressed.”

My wife was my mirror tonight.  After she made that comment, I thought about the last couple weeks—Thanksgiving, a blizzard, Christmas trees, grading, programs.  Plus all the normal holiday hubbub.  And 30 tubas and euphoniums.  She was right.  Stress + Tuba Christmas = Almost Migraine.

I’m doing better now.  The poetry workshop was the highlight of the weekend.  A couple hours writing with some really good friends was just the medicine I needed.  I’m not quite ready for a new week, but I’m not cemented to a couch with a pillow over my face to block out the light.

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

Write a poem in the form of a to-do list, preferably a to-do list of a famous literary figure.  What would Henry David Thoreau have on his to-do list?  How about Gustav Flaubert?  Perhaps Emily Dickinson’s to-do list would include practicing her scales, writing a letter, baking a ginger cake, ironing her white dress, identifying wildflowers, witnessing a funeral, and quarreling with her sisters or brother.  You will likely need to spend some time to get the order of your list just right, saving the best for last.  Your poem may be humorous or grave/poignant.

Writing Life of Charles Dickens

by: Martin Achatz

Writing 

is like

a long midnight walk

through London streets

when even pickpockets

have gone to bed

in some dark alley

Elizabeth Tower caped

in fog and frost

lost

save for the chimes

quarter past, half past,

quarter to it, the hour

itself—Ga-dooong!

pens lined above

a sheet of Foolscap

well filled with ink

black as a grave

a cup

of strong tea

steeped black

served with a lemon

wedge and biscuit

hawthorn

currant

oolong

a child’s cry 

for water 

after a nightmare,

to douse 

fear blazing 

in his chest

a sunrise

so dazzling

it hurts

to even 

step outside

December 6, 2025: “Cool Breeze,” Missing in Action, “Saturday Afternoon Poetry Reading by MFA Students”

Yes, I have been missing in action for quite some time.  I have no good excuse, aside from exhaustion and shortening days.  Around this time last year, I was sliding into a deep depression that lasted quite a few months.  So I have been keeping pretty close watch on my state of mind and mood.

A lot has happened since my last post.  Just a quick recap:  I got a new car—another Subaru Impreza (an offer from the dealership I couldn’t pass on); Thanksgiving came and went with a raging blizzard that lasted about three days (and about 26 inches); my daughter turned 25 yesterday (hard to believe she’s that old and I haven’t aged at all); and the holiday season is upon us (theme for our front porch this year—A Bigfoot Christmas).

Perhaps the reason I tend to get a little (or a lot) blue this time of year is nostalgia—the sentimental longing for a period, place, or person with wistfully happy associations.  Of course, there’s no way of reclaiming the past, unless you’re Marty McFly or Bill and Ted.  

Sharon Olds gets nostalgic for an old lover . . . 

Cool Breeze

by: Sharon Olds

You talked to me a lot about your kid sister,

Rebecca, a.k.a. Reebabecka,

and you knew me as my sister’s kid sister,

fourteen, and a late bloomer, and homely,

you talked to me about your family,

and your dream of cutting an LP,

and the Juniors and Sophomores you were in love with, or who

were in love with you, or who maybe you had slept with—

they were White, as I was, but you called me Miss Shary

Cobb, Miss Cool Breeze Herself.

You didn’t mind I was in love with you,

you were Senior Class President.

And you would dance with me, astronomer

who pointed out to me the star

bright of the cervix, when we danced it became

exact to me, far inside me

in the night sky.  And you would park with me,

you would draw my hand gently across you, you had

mercy on me, and on yourself.  When you would

slide your hand up under my sweater,

my mouth would open, but I’d stop you, and you would

say, rather fondly, Protecting your sacred

virginity?  And I would say Yes,

I could always tell you the truth.

When the White cops broke up the dance in your neighborhood,

your friends worked to get us out the back

unseen, if the cops saw us together

they would hurt someone.  We crouched behind a hedge,

and I began to understand

you were less safe than me.  Squatting 

and whispering, I understood, as if 

the bending of our bodies was teaching me, 

that everyone was against you—the ones I had called

everyone, the White men

and the White women, the grown-ups, the. blind

and deaf.  And when you died, your LP cut,

and you had married the beauty from your neighborhood,

when you went off the coast road with your White

lover, into the wind off the ocean,

your Jag end over end, catching fire—

I knew that my hands were not free of your

blood, brother—Reebabecka’s brother.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into Olds’ poem, but I do feel a certain sense of nostalgia—the speaker yearning for Reebabecka’s brother and all that he meant.  Sex and race and class and mortality all rolled into one.  Olds, in some way, holds herself responsible for high school lover’s death (“my hands were not free of your / blood”).  

Today at the library, I hosted a reading of MFA poetry students from the local university.  There were about six of them.  All so young and full of hope.  I remember being like them when I was in graduate school—thinking I was going to get a job as a full-time professor, publish a few books, win the Pulitzer Prize, and be set for life.  That’s where they all are right now.  Ready to take on a world that isn’t always that nice to poets.

I found myself getting a little wistful as I sat listening to these grad students share their work.  At the end of my MFA program, my wife had just given birth to our daughter, and I thought I had the world in my hands.  Anything seemed possible.

Then everything came crashing down.  My wife started suffering from serious depressions (she cut her arms and breasts with scissors, leaving scars) and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  A year or so after that, she fell into a cycle of sexual addiction that almost ended our marriage several times.

In short, I really don’t feel nostalgic for all of that shit.  I wouldn’t want to go back to that period in my life for anything.  Except for this:  holding my infant daughter in my arms as she drifted off to sleep, or braiding her long hair after she took her baths.  I miss being everything to my kids—protector, friend, chauffeur, sage, comedian.  There was a time I walked on water as far as my son and daughter were concerned.

My daughter is in medical school now.  My son will be graduating high school this spring.  He’s already talking about moving out.  The future is bright for both of them.  Me?  I have more years behind now me than I have ahead of me.  That makes me a little sad.  (Just a little.  Don’t worry.)

I know I’m very blessed.  My kids are healthy and smart.  My wife has a job she loves, and she’s been doing well with her mental health and addiction issues.  We are more a team than we’ve ever been.  Blessing after blessing after blessing.

Ten years from now, I’m probably going to be nostalgic about tonight.

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

Try writing some haiku that resist being about apple blossoms, insects, or frogs.  Instead use the 5/7/5 syllables in a series of three-line poems that deal with subjects such as bad hair, infectious diseases, or people who’ve never heard of Rumi.

Saturday Afternoon Reading by MFA Poetry Students

by: Martin Achatz

they read earnestly 

shaping words into creatures

feral as blizzards

I sit in the back

listen as they free their tongues

birds, birds, everywhere

they are all so young

ferment full, ripe as apples

I eat and drink them

when I was their age

I swam in Superior

naked, skin on fire

I’m an old sonnet

iambic, without couplet

don’t volta me yet

November 16, 2025: “1954,” Tragedy and Loss, “All Breath”

It is the end of a long weekend.

I spent yesterday in Calumet, Michigan, leading a writing workshop, attending a catered dinner, doing a poetry reading.  I left home at around 7:30 a.m., finally got back around 11:30 p.m.  I’ve been in recovery mode today.

On my way to Calumet, I received a text message from my sister-in-law.  (Really, she’s like my little sister.  I’ve known her since she was since she was 11 or 12.  We’ve always had a close bond.)  She wanted to let me know that her mother-in-law, Ann—a lovely, courageous woman who’s been battling cancer for several years—died early Saturday morning.

It was news I’d been expecting, but it still caught me off guard.

Sharon Olds writes about a tragedy . . . 

1954

by: Sharon Olds

Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt
he had put on her face. And her training bra
scared me—the newspapers, morning and evening,
kept saying it, training bra,
as if the cups of it had been calling
the breasts up, he buried her in it,
perhaps he had never bothered to take it
off, and they found her underpants
in a garbage can. And I feared the word
eczema, like my acne and like
the X in the paper which marked her body,
as if he had killed her for not being flawless.
I feared his name, Burton Abbott,
the first name that was a last name,
as if he were not someone specific.
It was nothing one could learn from his face.
His face was dull and ordinary,
it took away what I’d thought I could count on
about evil. He looked thin and lonely,
it was horrifying, he looked almost humble.
I felt awe that dirt was so impersonal,
and pity for the training bra,
pity and terror of eczema.
And I could not sit on my mother’s electric
blanket anymore, I began to have 
a fear of electricity—
the good people, the parents, were going
to fry him to death. This was what
his parents had been telling us:
Burton Abbott, Burton Abbott,
death to the person, death to the home planet.
The worst thing would have been to think 

of her, of what it had been to be her, 

alive, to be walked, alive, into that cabin,
to look into those eyes, and see the human.

It’s a terrible poem about an unspeakable act—the murder of a young woman.  But Olds, as always, goes underneath the unspeakable to find the speakable, the human.  She imagines what the victim went through at the end, staring into the eyes of her killer.

I think, in the face of tragedy and loss, we lose sight of the human.  Instead, we mythologize and canonize.  It happens all the time, and it’s natural, especially when it involves a loved one.  We lose sight of the whole person and focus, instead, on that person’s best qualities.  Again, as I said, it’s a natural part of the grieving process.

Ann was an incredibly loving, giving person.  In all the time I knew her, I never saw her without a smile on her face, even when she was facing her health crises.  She had a ready laugh and an even readier heart.  Love was her guiding force, always.  My family was graced by her and her husband’s generous spirits more times than I can count.

I write these things not to mythologize, as so often is the case when a person is taken at too young an age.  I write these things simply because they are true.  The world is a little dimmer tonight without Ann in it, and my heart breaks for her family, who I consider my family, too.

In honor of Ann, hug the people you cherish tonight.  Tell them how much they mean to you.  Don’t wait until it’s too late.  Ann never did.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight.  It’s about the sustaining power of breath, and it’s based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In an abecedarian poem, every line begins with A, B, C, D, etc.  Write a mini-abecedarian poem where each word in the poem is in alphabetical order.  For example, the first line of a mini-abecedarian poem could be:  Another big cactus dies entertainingly.  Forget giving.  Help invent .  . or Autumn birds can desire eggs from groceries . . .  See if you can write an entire poem this way.  Don’t worry too much about making sense, just see what new images or lines you can invent.

All Breath

by: Martin Achatz

All breath comes down easily,

falls, goes hushed into juniper,

knobcone, locust, makes nobody

opine past questions, read sunspots

to understand various worries, 

xenial yatter, zealotry.

November 11, 2025: “For and Against Knowledge,” Veterans Day, “Uncle Shorty Never Talked About Pearl Harbor”

We are surrounded by heroes every day.

There’s the kid who goes to school every day, despite the bully who shoves him to the pavement at recess.

There’s the father who works three jobs every day to make sure his family has food and warm winter jackets and a place to call home.

There’s the teacher who stands in front of her students every day because she believes in the future.

And there’s the homeless college student who sleeps in his car in a Walmart parking lot every night and never misses a single class.

All of these people are heroes in my book.

Sharon Olds writes about a lost hero . . . 

For and Against Knowledge

(for Christa MacAuliffe)

by: Sharon Olds

What happened to her? As long as it was she,
what did she see? Strapped in,
tilted back, so her back was toward
the planet she was leaving, feeling the Gs
press her with their enormous palm, did she
weep with excitement in the roar, and in
the lens of a tear glimpse for an instant
a disc of fire? If she were our daughter,
would I think about it, how she had died, was she
torn apart, was she burned—the way
I have wondered about the first seconds
of our girl’s life, when she was a cell a
cell had just entered, she hung in me
a ball of grey liquid, without nerves,
without eyes or memory, it was
she, I love her. So I want to slow it
down, and take each millisecond
up, take her, at each point,
in my mind’s arms—the first, final
shock hit, as if God touched
a thumb to her brain and it went out, like a mercy killing,
and then, when it was no longer she,
the flames came—as we burned my father
when he had left himself. Then the massive bloom un-
buckled and jumped, she was vaporized back
down to the level of the cell. And the spirit—
I have never understood the spirit,
all I know is the shape it takes,
the wavering flame of flesh. Those
who know about the spirit may tell you
where she is, and why. What I want
to do is find every cell,
slip it out of the fishes’ mouths,
ash in the tree, soot in our eyes
where she enters our lives, I want to play it
backwards, burning jigsaw puzzle
of flesh, suck in its million stars
to meet, in the sky, boiling metal
fly back
together, and cool.
Pull that rocket
back down
surely to earth, open the hatch
and draw them out like fresh-born creatures,
sort them out, family by family, go
away, disperse, do not meet here.

Most people of a certain age will remember the day the Challenger exploded.  Those astronauts riding the elevator up to the cockpit, Christa MacAuliffe among them.  The countdown and takeoff.  And then, 73 seconds later, the heartbreak.  Like the JFK assassination or Hiroshima bombing, it is a moment that changed the world forever.

Today, the United States celebrated Veterans Day.  Originally, November 11 was Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I; in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson made it a day of commemoration for all veterans of the Great War.  Then, in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill that officially turned November 11 into Veterans Day, honoring all who have served in the U.S. military, war or peacetime.

I spent this Veterans Day at the library for an annual employee inservice.  Lots of presentations and activities.  But, at the beginning of the day, the director of the library acknowledged employees who served in the military.  (There were two.)  

Most military veterans I know don’t really speak about their times in the service.  My dad never talked about his time in the army during the Korean War.  My Uncle Larry never discussed his military service in Korea either.  I’ve taught Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.  Several of them wrote about their experiences for assignments, but I can't recall a single conversation with any of them about their time in the military.

Heroes are quiet.  They don't do what they do for recognition or medals.  Usually, they feel uncomfortable in the spotlight.  If asked, they usually say something along the lines of "I was just doing my job" or "I was just doing what I had to do."  

So, today, I salute all military veterans and unsung heroes out there.  I am grateful for how they made/make this world a better place, day after day.

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

In honor of Veterans Day, write a poem to or about a veteran.  To avoid falling into cliche, write about a veteran doing something completely normal--grocery shopping or pumping gas.  Aim to show something about this veteran without mentioning war, guns, or a bombing.

Uncle Shorty Never Talked About Pearl Harbor

by: Martin Achatz

He talked about carrots he grew

in his garden every summer,

fat and sweet as apples, or

about his son with CP who

smoked cigarettes in a long

Cruella de Vil holder and stomped

his feet with laughter when

someone told him a dirty joke, or

about Aunt Tillie's lemon bars

she brought to every family

shindig involving food (and they

all involved food).  But when

I returned from Honolulu, mentioned

standing on the Arizona Memorial,

staring down at the wreckage below,

Uncle Shorty just nodded, looked off

at his rows of tomatoes and peppers,

his lips moving in silence, as if

saying the names of buddies he lost

December 7.  Pudge.  Junior.  Piehole.

Alfalfa. Sweeney.  Little John.

The green beans hadn't done well,

he noticed.  Not enough rain.

November 1, 2025: “The Prepositions,” All Saints’ Day, “Litany of Saints for Laundry Day”

Yes, it is the first day of November.  All Saints’ Day.  

In all the years that I’ve been a music minister (at Catholic, Methodist, and Lutheran churches), I don’t think I’ve ever played a service or Mass for All Saints’ Day, which is strange since my son was baptized on this feast.  That’s almost four decades of playing the pipe organ without having to deal with saintly litanies.  (At Catholic Easter Vigil Masses, the priest/cantor sings several litanies involving saints and angels and whatnot, and I have a confession:  I don’t like litanies or Gregorian chant all that much.  A little too medieval for me.)

Sharon Olds comforts herself with a litany of prepositions . . . 

The Prepositions

by: Sharon Olds

When I started Junior High I thought
I’d probably be a Behavior Problem
all my life, John Muir Grammar 

the spawning grounds, the bad-seed bed, but
the first morning at Willard, the dawn 

of seventh grade, they handed me a list
of forty-five prepositions, to learn
by heart. I stood in the central courtyard,
enclosed garden that grew cement, 

my pupils followed the line of the arches
up and over, up and over, like
alpha waves, about, above,
across, along, among, around, an
odd calm began in me,
before, behind, below, beneath,
beside, between, I stood in that sandstone
square and started to tame. Down,
from, in, into, near, I was
located there, watching the Moorish half-
circles rise and fall. Off,
on, onto, out, outside, we
came from 6th grades all over the city 

to meet each other for the first time,
White tennis-club boys who did not
speak to me, White dorks 

who did, Black student-council guys who’d gaze 

above my head, and the Black
plump goof-off who walked past and
suddenly flicked my sweater-front, I thought to shame me.
Over, past, since, through,
that was the year my father came home in the
middle of the night with those thick earthworms 

of blood on his face, trilobites of
elegant gore, cornice and crisp
waist of the extinct form,
till, to, toward, under, the
lining of my uterus convoluted,
shapely and scarlet as the jointed leeches 

of wound clinging to my father’s face in that
mask, unlike, until, up, I’d
walk, day and night, into 

the Eden of the list, hortus enclosus where
everything had a place. I was in
relation to, upon, with, and when I
got to forty-five I could just start over, 

pull the hood of the list down over 

my brain again. It was the first rest

I had had from my mind. My eyes would run
slowly along the calm electro-
cardiogram of adobe cloister,
within, without, I’d repeat the prayer I’d
received, a place in the universe,
meaningless but a place, an exact location—
Telegraph, Woolsey, Colby, Russell—
Berkeley, 1956,
fourteen, the breaking of childhood, beginning of memory.

Litanies can provide some comfort, as Olds’ poem demonstrates.  They occupy the mind, provide a kind of stability.  Olds keeps returning to the list of prepositions because the real world (full of nipple-flicking boys and injured, alcoholic fathers) is so out of her control.  

As you know, I’m what is sometimes referred to as a “cradle Catholic”—that means I was born, baptized, and raised in the Catholic Church.  There have only been a few times in my life that I haven’t attended weekend Masses on a regular basis.  I think every young Catholic goes through that sort of rebellious stage where, instead of going to church on Sunday morning, you hit McDonald’s instead.  (That little rebellion ended for me when I started to get paid for playing the pipe organ on Saturday evenings.)  I’ve been doing my church musician thing for going on 40 years now.  

So, my weeks are full of teaching and library work, and my Saturdays and Sundays are full of organ and piano benches at one Catholic parish (on rare occasions two), two Lutheran parishes, and one Methodist parish (very infrequently).  If you’re wondering when I get a day off, the answer is pretty simple:  I don’t.  Planning any kind of time off for me is like planning the invasion of Normandy.

Today, I was able to pull off something pretty special.  In the middle of working and teaching and music ministering, I planned a surprise 30th anniversary party for my wife.  My biggest surprise for her:  our daughter drove up from medical school to attend.  While my wife and I attended our regular Saturday Mass, our kids and friends gathered at a local restaurant, decorated its back room, and waited for us to walk through the door.

To say that my wife was taken aback is an understatement.  She had no idea what was happening.  I could see it on her face as our litany of friends and relatives all shouted “Surprise!”  And when she realized that our daughter was sitting at the head table, she just about lost it.  

Everyone we loved was there.  We ate and talked and laughed and reminisced.  In a year that has been dominated by President 47 dismantling democracy and taking food and healthcare away from American citizens, tonight was balm for my heart and soul.

After the dinner, our daughter and her significant other came to our house to play games and visit.  It was such a good day and night.  (I didn’t even mind going to the laundromat today, and I hate doing laundry.)

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

Write a poem that includes visits from three saints.  You can research saints on the Internet and choose your favorite, or make a list of your obsessions and create a saint from that.  Write a poem to the Saint of Poets, the Saint of Birds, or make up your own saint.  The Saint of the Internet, perhaps?  The Saint of Broken Violins?  Feel free to use one or more real or invented saints in your poem.

Litany of Saints for Laundry Day

by: Martin Achatz

I wake on dirty clothes day 

     to first snow on the grass,

     a breath of white that will

     be gone as soon as the sun

     opens its morning eye.

Our Lady of Termination Dust, pray for us.

I stare at autumn gold 

     on the hillside across 

     from King Koin Laundry

     this first day of November.

Saint Maidenhair, pray for us.

I scribble these words, my first

     lines while the colds

     spin cycle, tumbling

     like teens in a Buick’s backseat.

Saint Coitus, pray for us.

I think of you, my first (and only)

     love at home, waiting

     for me to return with

     baskets of bread-warm clothes.

God of Bounce Dryer Sheets, remind us

     we were all once fresh and clean. 

October 31, 2025: “Leaving the Island,” All Hallow’s Eve, “My Teenage Son Carves a Pumpkin”

Yes, it is All Hallow’s Eve.  

All the little ghosts and goblins and Supermans are at home, sifting through their chocolaty loot.  I used to do that every year—dividing my Halloween candy into three categories:  1) all chocolate products not containing coconut; 2) Starburst types of sweets (including Laffy Taffy); and 3) Smarties and Lemonheads.  It is the start of candy season.

Sharon Olds writes about a scary encounter with between a father and son . . . 

Leaving the Island

by: Sharon Olds

On the ferry, on the last morning of summer,

a father at the snack counter low in the boat

gets breakfast for the others.  Here, let me drink some of

Mom’s coffee, so it won’t be so full

for you to carry, he says to his son,

a boy of ten or eleven.  The boat

lies lower and lower in the water as the last

cars drive on, tilts its massive

grey floor like the flat world.  Then the

screaming starts, I carry four things,

and I only give you one, and you drop it,

what are you, a baby? a high, male

shrieking, and it doesn’t stop, Are you two?

Are you a baby? I give you one thing,

no one in the room seems to move for a second,

a steaming pool spreading on the floor, little

sea with its own waves, the boy

at the shore of it.  Can’t you do anything

right? Are you two? Are you two? the piercing

cry of the father.  Go away,

go up to your mother, get out of here— 

the purser swabbing the floor, the boy

not moving from where the first word touched him,

and I could not quite walk past him, I paused

and said I spilled my coffee on the deck, last trip,

it happens to us all.  He turned to me,

his lips everted so the gums gleamed,

he hissed a guttural hiss, and in

a voice like Gollum’s or the Exorcist girl’s when she

made the stream of vomit and beamed it

eight feet straight into the minister’s mouth

he said Shut up, shut up, shut up, as if

protecting his father, peeling from himself

a thin wing of hate, and wrapping it

tightly around father and son, shielding them.

It’s amazing what kids will do to protect or defend their parents, even mothers or fathers who are physically or emotionally abusive.  It’s almost as if the boy in Olds’ poem doesn’t know what to do when the speaker says something kind to him.  He interprets the speaker’s words as a criticism of the father and thus goes into full defense mode:  Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Tonight, all the parents were bundled up while their little Elmos and witches and dinosaurs went begging for candy door-to-door.  I didn’t hear an angry word or criticism, except the occasional “What do you say?” when I handed out the Twix bars, followed by a sheepish “Thank you!”  

Holidays, even ones steeped in blood and ghosts and serial killers, seem to bring out the best in people.  And, really, Halloween started as a time to honor and remember the dearly departed, at a time when, supposedly, the veil between the here and hereafter is the thinnest.  That’s why All Hallow’s Eve is followed by All Saints’ Day and then All Souls’ Day.

My kids have outgrown trick-or-treating.  This year is literally the first time my wife and I haven’t trooped around the neighborhood with one or both of them.  Instead, we stood outside with our bowl of booty, became that old couple who fawns over all the cute little goblins coming to our front step.

My son?  He invited a friend (who happens to be a girl) over for the evening.  They had pizza and did whatever teenagers these days do to entertain themselves.  (I remember what I did at my son’s age on Halloween, so I’m hoping he’s being a little more responsible.)  He carved our pumpkin this afternoon, so he did his filial duty.  So I don’t begrudge him his hormonally charged night.

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

Write a poem about a specific moment that could happen on Halloween.  It could be about stealing a pumpkin, walking through a graveyard, or giving out candy to trick-or-treaters.  Pay attention to specific details, sounds, or sights that might be present on this holiday.

My Teenage Son Carves a Pumpkin

by: Martin Achatz

He doesn’t want to do it, hates

the viscera inside with its

almost human membranes,

cold as December.  But he does it

because he wants to spend

this All Hallow’s Eve with a girl,

watch Jason hunt horny teens

or Regan baptize Father Merrin

with split pea, hoping the girl

clings to him the way pollen

clings to a bee’s leg.  His pumpkin

sits now on the front stoop,

mouth big as a super moon, 

eyes just tiny stars, candle

inside—a flickering tonsil—

while he and the girl carve

each other in the dark upstairs,

bodies blazing like Druid bonfires.

October 30, 2025: “What Is the Earth?”, Wife’s Birthday, “Maple Leaf Love Poem”

It is the birthday of my beautiful partner of 30-plus years.  

Most of my faithful disciples know that my wife and I have had our fair share of struggles during our time together.  As with most marriages, ours has had its ups and downs.  The ups have been tsunami-sized, and the downs have been Grand Canyon-sized.  Yet, we’re still standing, as the Elton John song goes.  We have found homes in each other.

Sharon Olds writes about homelessness and homes . . . 

What Is the Earth?

by: Sharon Olds

The earth is a homeless person. Or
the earth’s home is the atmosphere.
Or the atmosphere is the earth’s clothing,
layers of it, the earth wears all of it,
the earth is a homeless person.
Or the atmosphere is the earth’s cocoon,
which it spun itself, the earth is a larvum.
Or the atmosphere is the earth’s skin—
earth, and atmosphere, one
homeless one. Or its orbit is the earth’s
home, or the path of the orbit just
a path, the earth a homeless person.
Or the gutter of the earth’s orbit is a circle
of hell, the circle of the homeless. But the earth
has a place, around the fire, the hearth
of our star, the earth is at home, the earth
is home to the homeless. For food, and warmth,
and shelter, and health, they have earth and fire
and air and water, for home they have
the elements they are made of, as if
each homeless one were an earth, made
of milk and grain, like Ceres, and one
could eat oneself--as if the home
were a god, who could eat the earth, a god
of homelessness.

We haven’t treated our earth home very well, despite the MAGA climate-change deniers’ screaming and whining.  In fact, I would say that we’ve fucked up our home pretty good.  If we’re not careful, we’re all going to end up homeless (or our children and grandchildren are).  

Olds constantly defines and redefines home and homelessness in this poem.  My definition of home:  any place/person that/who accepts you unconditionally and lovingly.

I’ve lived in the same house for almost 30 years now.  It’s home.  I’ve lived in the same city for most of my life (except for a brief sojourn downstate for graduate school).  Home, too.  I’ve taught at the same college, attended the same church, broke bread with the same friends.  Home, home, and home.  And, of course, I’ve been married to the same woman for 30 years.  Home, with a capital “H.”

As I said at the beginning of this post, my wife celebrated her birthday today.  It’s the 35th time since we first met that I’ve seen her blow out her birthday candles.  She truly is the person who knows me best—understands my sometimes mercurial disposition.  I don’t have to be anybody but myself when I’m around her.  That is one of the greatest blessings a person can ask for.

I took my wife out to her favorite restaurant tonight, where she ordered her favorite meal:  seafood risotto.  I’m still on a liquid diet because I had a tooth removed yesterday, so I ended up drinking most of my dinner:  two tall gin and tonics.  Good gin.  Top-shelf all the way.  

When we got back home, we sang to her and had pieces of Dairy Queen ice cream cake.  Then, I pretty much passed out on the couch.  Chalk it up to the booze and all the papers I graded this week.  I woke just a few minutes ago.  It’s almost midnight, and I decided to finish writing this post.

I am Home with a capital “H” right now.  My wife just gave me a kiss goodnight, and I wished her happy birthday one last time.  She is in bed, and I’m on my way to dreamland soon.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about home and love for tonight, based on the following prompt from October 28 of The Daily Poet:

Go outside and find a leaf on the ground.  Or find a few of them.  Imagine writing a love letter, goodbye letter, or note to a friend on that leaf.  What would you write?  If you could only write one word on that leaf to hand to them, what would it be?  Write a poem about what you imagined.

Maple Leaf Love Poem

by: Martin Achatz

for Beth, October 30, 2025

I

watch

you kick

up          piles of golden          light

as we walk on this late October eve

when the moon is already tap, tap,

tapping our shoulders, begging

to                    be admired like a contestant                    in

a                    celestial beauty pageant.                   Your

breath                    fogs the air as the                    maple

leaves rise, applaud, their veined palms tender as

a grandmother’s.  I want to reach out, hold you the way

these leaves have held the sky since spring, as if they are cupping

the          last drops of water on a parched, parched          earth,

maybe in the entire parched Milky Way,

and I

(oh yes!)

I

I

I

am drowning with thirst.

October 26, 2025: “After Punishment Was Done with Me,” Painting Class, “A Perfect Place to Find Hope”

My wife and I have experienced an empty nest this weekend.  

As most of my faithful disciples know, my daughter now lives downstate to attend medical school.  My son left on Friday with two friends to drive to Detroit to see a J.I.D concert.  As I type these words, he is currently at the venue and is probably out of his mind with excitement.  (On a side note, he’s been inflicting J.I.D songs on my wife and me for about a month now as we drive him to and from school.  I expect it to get worse when he returns.)

Therefore, my wife and I have been alone in our house for three days now.  It has been eerily quiet, and, even though we didn’t express it aloud, I know that we’ve both missed my son screaming at his computer gaming friends all weekend.  Or coming downstairs from his bedroom to antagonize our puppy for a little while.

Sharon Olds writes about being abused as a child . . . 

After Punishment Was Done with Me

by: Sharon Olds

After punishment was done with me,
after I would put my clothes back on, I’d go
back to my room, close the door,
and wander around, ending up
on the floor sometimes, always, near the baseboard,
where the vertical fall of the wall meets
the level rule of the floor—I would put
my face near that angle, and look at the dust
and anything caught in the dust. I would see
the wedding swags of old-lady-hair—
pelmets carved on cenotaph granite—and
cocoons of slough like tiny Kotexes
wound and wound in toilet paper,
I would see the anonymous crowds of grit, as if
looking down into Piazza Navona
from a mile above Il Duce, I would see
a larval casing waisted in gold
thin as the poorest gold wedding band,
and a wasp’s dried thorax and legs wound love-ring
with a pubic hair of my mother’s, I would see
the coral-maroon of the ladybug’s back
marked with its two, night genes,
I would see a fly curled up, dried,
its wings like the rabbit’s ears, or the deer’s.
I would lie quiet and look at them,
it was so peaceful there with them,
I was not at all afraid of them,
and my sadness for them didn’t matter.
I would look at each piece of lint
and half imagine being it,
I would feel that I was looking at
the universe from a great distance.

Sometimes I’d pick up a Dresden fly
and gaze at it closely, sometimes I’d idly play
house with the miniature world, weddings and
funerals with barbed body parts,
awful births, but I did not want
to disarrange that unerring deadness
like a kind of goodness, corner of wetless
grey waste, nothing the human
would go for. Without desire or rage
I would watch that dust celestium as the pain
on my matter died and turned to spirit
and wandered the cloud world of home,
the ashes of the earth.

I don’t believe in corporal punishment.  Never have.  Hitting children to make them behave doesn’t work.  It just scares the shit out of them, or, as in Olds' case, turns them into a poet.

As parents, I have pretty much always been the disciplinarian.  When a bad guy was needed, I was the bad guy.  It wasn't a role I relished.  It's a lot easier simply to give into children's demands than to say "no" and endure temper tantrums.  Our kids quickly learned that Mommy was a soft touch.  (Mommy is also the one who can talk Dad out of throwing children off cliffs.)

So, what did the disciplinarian and the soft touch do on their first empty nest weekend?  We attended a painting class at a local Lutheran church.  An entire hall full of wannabe Bob Rosses spent a couple hours painting scenes of the northern lights.  I didn't think I was going to enjoy myself that much, but my wife really wanted to do it.

Confession:  I really had a good time.  I've been a Bob Ross fan since my high school days, so painting happy little trees and making happy little accidents was something I've been training for my whole life.  

Now, I'm not going to turn into Grandpa Moses when I retire.  The painting I created today may be the only one I ever do.  One of a kind--step right up and make me an offer!  However, I loved getting out of my comfort zone and trying something new.  

When my son returns tomorrow, he's probably going to make fun of my painting.  That's okay.  Teenagers are supposed to be embarrassed by their parents.  It's in the owner's manual.  And perhaps I've found a new, non-violent way to punish my son:  make him paint with me.

Saint Marty wrote a poem based on a painter, based on a poetry prompt from October 25 in The Daily Poet:

Today is the birthday of Pablo Picasso, born in 1881.  To celebrate Picasso's abstract artwork, write a poem about something abstract (love, kindness, hared, soul, afterlife, etc.) using very concrete images, visual elements, and colors.  Or ask yourself:  If your poem were a Picasso painting, what would it look like?

A Perfect Place to Find Hope

by: Martin Achatz

It's difficult to find hope these days,

you have to look hard, be poet-

attentive all the time for those tiny

miracles that make the heart melt

like cotton candy on your tongue.

I will tell you I found hope

on a walk with my dog today

in the snorts she make as she mined

a pile of gold maple leaves with 

her snout.  And I should mention

the blue of the sky--it took me back

to a bay on Oahu where I couldn't 

tell where ocean ended and heaven

began.  Oh, and that autumn smell

of everything returning to soil,

a funk of leaf rot and wood smoke 

and sweet exhaust from a neighbor's

dryer vent.  I was there, this thing

precious as clean water.  I stood

there, let myself become a part

of it, because hope isn't just a thing

with feathers.  It is a fulcrum

that can lever the world toward joy.

October 22, 2025: “That Day,” Poetry Workshop, “Louis F. Taccolini Hand-Carved Birds Collection”

It’s been an exhausting day for reasons I can’t really write about.  Let’s just say that a close friend is dealing with something very serious, and it’s breaking my heart.

Sharon Olds writes about a lot of heartbreaking experiences all the time.  Painful things.  Perhaps that’s why I’ve always gravitated to her as a poet.  She’s fearless in her work.  Today’s poem is no different . . . 

That Day

by: Sharon Olds

None of the pain was sharp.  The sash

was pliant, its cotton blunt, like a bandage

it held my wrist to the chair.  And the fierce

glazed string of the woven seat

printed me in deep pink, but I was

used to that, that matter could mark us

and its marks dissolve.  That day, no one touched me,

it was a formal day, the nerves lay easy

in their planched grooves.  The hunger grew, but

quietly, edgeless, a suckling in my stomach

doubling, it was a calm day

unfolding to its laws.  Only the pleasure had been

sharp—the tilt of the squat bottle

over their bed, the way the ink

lowered itself, onto the spread, I had

felt its midnight, genie shape

leave my chest, pouring forth, and it was

India ink, the kind that does not come out,

I sat attached to the chair like Daphne

halfway out of the wood, and I read that blot.

I read it all day, like a Nancy Drew I was

in—they had said You won’t be fed

till you say you’re sorry.  I was strangely happy, I would

never say I was sorry, I had left

that life behind.  So it didn’t surprise me when she

came in slowly, holding a bowl that

held what swayed and steamed, she sat and

spoon-fed me, in silence, hot

alphabet soup.  Sharp pleasure

of my wing-tip hands hung down beside me

slack as I ate, sharp pleasure of the

legible school of edible letters flowed 

in, over my taste-buds, B,

O, F, K, G, 

I mashed the crescent moon of the C,

caressed the E, reading with my tongue

that boiled Braille—and she was almost kneeling to me

and I wasn’t sorry.  She was feeding the one

who wasn’t sorry, the way you lay food

at the foot of an image.  I sate there, tied,

taking in her offering

and wildly reading as I ate, S S F

T, L W B B P Q

R, she dipped into my mouth the mild

discordant fuel—she wanted me to thrive, and decipher.

So, basically Olds is writing about child abuse here.  Tying a young girl to a chair, starving her.  Perhaps, back in the day, this kind of discipline was considered alright.  Nowadays, it would end up with Child Protective Services getting involved.   It’s a brave poem based on childhood trauma.

I spent most of today with a poet named Keith Taylor—a wonderful writer who led a poetry workshop this afternoon and read in the evening at the library.  I think I first met Keith over ten years ago at another poetry reading.  Since that time, we’ve kept in touch via Facebook and email.  I hosted him the first year of the Great Lakes Poetry Festival (five years ago) that I helped plan.  

Keith’s events were welcome distractions from my good friend’s problems for a little while.  (Worry is kind of a useless emotion.  It doesn’t accomplish anything.  I have no control over what’s going to happen, so worrying about it only increases my anxiety and blood pressure.  Better to take things as they come.). Anyway, I was able to spend a few hours writing with Keith, and then I got to listen to him read his gorgeous poems after dinner.  

So, tonight, I’d like to end with some gratitudes:

• I’m grateful that my friend has been able to find necessary help.  My last conversation with him, he sounded exhausted but not as panicked.  A blessing for that help and his peace of mind,
• I’m also grateful for my friend, Keith, and his company today.  He’s a wonderful, giving man, and it was a blessing to be with him today.
• Finally, I’m grateful for the new poem I wrote in Keith’s workshop.  The birth of a new poem into the world is always a blessing.

Saint Marty is going to watch something mindless now—maybe a cooking show—and then go to bed.  It’s been a really long day.

Louis F. Taccolini Hand-Carved Birds Collection,

Peter White Public Library

 

for Keith Taylor, October 22, 2025

by: Martin Achatz

 

They sit outside this library meeting room named

after a man who pioneered outdoor photography

for the likes of National Geographic, the carved

feathers delicate as birch bark.  As with any living

or once-living thing, they are imperfect as stones

on the shores of Lake Superior.  Gloriously imperfect.

Leonard Cohen imperfect—a voice cut by razors

wrapped around words that split my heart open.

The man who took logs and made this flock could

be a god.  Think about it.  In Genesis, Yahweh

speaks nothing into something, into light and earth

and mud and fur and thigh and love.  This log god,

though, he did something more miraculous:

he made trees fly.

October 20, 2025: “19,” Young and Stupid, “A Beautiful Day in the Dewey Decimal Neighborhood”

I don’t envy kids growing up in our current times.  

When I was in high school, Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, but I was too self-absorbed to worry about the damage he was doing to the American people with his policies and agenda.  Instead, like all teenagers, I was focused on, among other things, ogling the perfect ass of my crush; trying to score beer or weed on the weekends with my friends; getting good grades to get into college; and recovering from Darth being Luke’s dad,  (Okay, that last one may just have been me, but you get the idea.)

Now, kids have a lot more to deal with:  climate change (yes, it IS real), pandemics, authoritarianism, poverty, AI, hunger, and scoring tickets to the Eras Tour.  The world has always been a complicated place to navigate as a young person, and it just seems that modern complications are increasing exponentially.

Sharon Olds writes about the complications of being young . . . 

19

by: Sharon Olds

When we took the acid, his wife was off

with someone else, there was a hole in their bedroom

wall where the Steuben wedding owl

had flown from one room right through into another,

I was in love with his best friend, who had

gone into a monastery

after he’d deflowered me, so we

knew each other:  when his finished, under

my palm, I could feel the circular ribs of his

penis; I finished with my legs wrapped around his

leg, even with my toes pointed, my

feet reached only halfway down

his calf, later I was lying on the bathroom

floor, looking up at him, naked, he was

6’6”, a decathlete,

my eyes followed the inner line of his

leg, up, up, up,

up, up, up, up.

Weeks later, he would pull a wall-phone

out of a wall, he would cross the divider

in his Mustang at 2 a.m. with me and go

sixty against traffic, crying, I could

hardly hear what he said about the barbed

wire and his father and his balls—but that

acid night, we stayed up all night, I was

not in love with him, so his beauty made me

happy; we chattered, we chatted naked, he

told me everything he liked

about my body—and he liked everything—

even the tiny gooseflesh bumps

around my hard nipples,

he said the way to make love to me

would be from behind, with that sheer angle, his

forefinger drew it, gently, the extreme

hairpin curve of the skinny buttocks,

he said it the way I thought an older

cousin in a dream might give advice

to a younger cousin, his fingertip

barely missing my—whatever, in love, one would

call the asshole—he regarded me with a 

savoring kindness, from a cleft of sweet lust in the 

human he actually looked at me

and thought how I best should be fucked.  Oooh.

Oooh.  It meant there was something to be done with me,

something exactly right, he looked at me

and saw it,

willing to not be the one

who did it—all night, he desired me and

protected me, he gazed at my body and un-

saw my parents’ loathing, pore by

pore on my skin he closed that couple’s eyes.

A lot goes on in this poem,  The speaker is 19, having sex with a married man she doesn’t love.  And she’s on acid.  Back in the 1960s, when Olds was young, everything was sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  The only thing that’s missing from the poem is the Grateful Dead or Janis Joplin.  At the end, the speaker alludes to her parents’ “loathing” on and in her body.  Ultimately, that’s what growing up is all about—escaping and/or fixing the mistakes your parents might have made.

I was pretty lucky as a young person.  My parents had already raised eight other kids.  I was number nine, and, for the most part, I didn’t give them too much to worry about.  (Perhaps I was just better at hiding my youthful indiscretions.). Anyway, they didn’t concern themselves with me or put many restrictions on me.  If I was heading out the door on a Friday night to spend time with friends, my mom and dad never asked me where I was going or what time I’d be back.

Did I behave myself?  Most of the time.  Did I engage in activities that would have given my parents more gray hairs?  Most definitely.  But I survived, as do most young people making stupid decisions.  These days, kids have many more ways to be stupid.  Hence, I’m glad I came of age in the 1980s.

So, we’ve all been young and stupid at some point in our lives.  That’s part of growing up.  You learn the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, and you try to make decisions based on that knowledge.

Parents fuck up, too, and, usually, grown-up bad decisions have longer and more harmful consequences.  Grownups can start wars, create recessions, politicize science, ban books.  Then it falls on the upcoming generation to sweep up the mess the previous generation has left behind.  It’s like a cook making a shambles of the kitchen preparing dinner and then leaving the dishes in the sink for somebody else to wash.  It ruins the meal.

Every young person has hopes and dreams.  Ever since I was in grade school, I wanted to be a published author.  It was always my primary ambition.  Here I am, decades later, and I’ve published two full-length poetry collections, with a third on the way.  Plus, I’ve served as U.P. Poet Laureate for two terms AND been named Writer of the Year by the City of Marquette.  I made my dreams a reality.  Not many people can make that assertion.

Yet, what is happening now in the world is a direct result of decisions made by my parents’ generation and the generations before them.  We’re talking about climate change, nuclear proliferation, poverty, food instability, skyrocketing healthcare costs.  My generation inherited these problems and has gone on to make them worse.  Now, it’s up to my kids and their friends to clean up the kitchen.

I wish I could say that the world is a better place now than when I was younger, but I know it isn’t.  I wish that I was a bestselling, Nobel Prize-winning poet.  But I’m not.  I’m a husband and father first.  Then a poet and friend.  Finally, I’m a person of faith and (I hope) integrity and love.  If anyone ever writes a biography of me, that’s how I want to be remembered.

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

Write a poem of exactly 100 words on the library’s Dewey Decimal System or on its creator, Melvil Dewey.  Feel free to use titles of books, alliteration, and/or alphabetization throughout your poem.  You may have to do some research online or at your library to find the right details for your poem.

A Beautiful Day in the Dewey Decimal Neighborhood

by: Martin Achatz

I met Bob by a weedy fork near 921 FRO

while Bill sipped bourbon, scribbled long

sentences on the porch of 921 FAU.  Em watched

from her 921 DIC bedroom window,

her moth white gown buttoned to her neck.

Across the street, Chloe saged 921 MOR

to rid its tar paper walls of spite, and Rock-Tree

Boy stood in font of Rainy Mountain to watch

the sun climb over 921 MOM.  Peacocks screamed

at dawn, waking everyone at the 921 OCO farm,

the Polish farmhand already milking cows

as Poopsik chased swallowtails through

921 NAB fields of bee balm.

October 19, 2025: “Dear Heart,” Protest, “No Kings Day Canticle”

Greetings, faithful disciples!

It has been quite the weekend.  One of the largest, one-day protests in U.S. history occurred yesterday—No Kings.  Of course, those in power are trying to turn it into some kind of January 6-like insurrection.  It wasn’t.  We gathered, held signs, chanted slogans, sang, danced, high-fived inflatable unicorns.

Of course, the question is:  will it make a difference?

My answer is:  I don’t know.

However, simply sitting back and letting the United States of America become the Third Reich Part Two isn’t an option for any clear-thinking, intelligent citizen.  We must stand up, speak out, regardless of the consequences.  The U.S. Constitution gives us that right, until the justices of the Supreme Court decide to turn that document into a roll of Charmin.

But I can’t tell you how or if this will all end.  I just watched a video about the Doomsday Clock.  Now, this little symbol has been in existence since about 1940, and it represents the “estimated likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe.”  Currently, that clock now stands at 89 seconds to midnight (due to ongoing threats from nuclear weapons, climate change, bio weapons, and technologies like AI).  That means that the world is less than 90 geologic seconds away from total annihilation.  

And what happens when civilization as we know it ends?  Well, if history is any indication, something new will be born.

Sharon Olds writes about rebirth . . . 

Dear Heart,

by: Sharon Olds

How did you know to turn me over,

then, when I couldn’t know to take

the moment to turn and start to begin

to finish, I was out there, far ahead

of my body, far ahead of the earth,

ahead of the moon—like someone on the other

side of the moon, stepped off, facing space, I was

floating out there, splayed, facing

away, fucked, fucked, my face

glistening and distorted pressed against the inner

caul of the world.  I was almost beyond

pleasure, in a region of icy, absolute

sensing, my open mouth and love-slimed

cheeks stretching the membrane the way

the face of the almost born can appear, still

veiled in its casing, just inside

the oval portal, pausing, about

to split its glistering mask—you eased me

back, drew me back into the human

night, you turned me and the howling slowed, and at the

crux of our joining, flower heads grew

fast-motion against you, swelled and burst without

tearing—ruinless death, each

sepal, each petal, came to the naught

of earth, our portion, in ecstasy, ash

to fire to ash, dust to bloom to dust.

It’s a very dense poem.  I remember reading and rereading it several times when I first encountered it in graduate school.  Sure, it’s about the pleasure of sex and the speaker’s need to be drawn back from the ether of ecstasy.  But, mostly, the poem is about love and desire and bodily autonomy.  Being in control (or not in control) of your own happiness and pleasure.

Of course, we know that female autonomy is not a high priority for the current people in power in Washington, D.C.  So, we have protests and marches and petitions and, eventually (hopefully?), elections.  That’s what yesterday was all about.  Taking power away from leaders whose only aim is protecting the ultra-wealthy and disenfranchising as many of the poor/middle class as possible.

I’m not trying to convert anyone here.  If you’re Republican and you’re happy, clap your hands, as the old children’s song goes.  And if you’re Democrat and you’re pissed off, clap your hands.  I have friends on both sides of the political spectrum.  I don’t care, as long as their beliefs don’t start infringing on my rights.

If you’re a MAGA Republican, go paint your bedroom walls with swastikas.  If you’re a Bernie Sanders democratic socialist, let me know where to sign up for universal healthcare.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem about yesterday’s protests, based on the following prompt from October 18 of The Daily Poet:

In 1892, New York and Chicago were connected for the first time by a long-distance telephone line.  For this poem, we’re going to do a poetic play on the kids’ “Telephone Game” where you whisper something to one person in a circle and watch it change as it moves from child to child.  Write a first line to a poem about anything you like.  Now take this line and morph it a bit; that line will become the first line of your second stanza.  For example, if you wrote,” I dream in color about cantaloupes,” your next line might be, “I dream in color, but can’t elope.”  Now take that new second line and morph it a bit more.  This will be the first line of your third stanza.  Continue to do this two more times, so you have five similar (but different!) lines, write a poem where each of these lines begins each of your five stanzas.

No Kings Day Canticle

by:  Martin Achatz

We line the highway with signs and unicorns,

raise our arms, shout as if we’re being called

at a tent revival to accept Jesus as our savior,

because this is what democracy looks like, crowded

with wheelchairs, dancing frogs, strollers, and drag queens.

We find the highway with signs and unique horns,

set up camp, listen to Pete Seegers enjoin

us about overcoming hand-in-hand,

Dylans growl about blowing winds, Guthries 

walking that ribbon, that golden valley.

Be kind, the skyway pines and forlorns

on this bright day when freedom fills

the air like the smell of popcorn

at a movie theater, making us all

hungry for its buttery promise.

Be mindful of why they whine, scorn

our flags and chants, the torches we

hold high as Emma Lazarus did

for the exhausted, the penniless who

crossed the sea to these stolen lands.

We blind fools cry and mourn

for the good old days when racism

hid under sheets, behind badges.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s the problem:

we never threw out our whips and chains.