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.

May 14, 2025: "When," Rose, "Black Coffee and Burned Toast"

Tomorrow would have been my sister Rose's sixtieth birthday.  She's been gone for three years now.  Hard to believe.  I think of her quite a bit, not always with sadness--she had a bright, bright spirit.  When she's on my mind, it's hard not to smile.

Poetry allows you to transform difficult emotions and experiences into something beautiful.  You could be writing about the September 11 attacks and create something that takes your breath away.  Billy Collins did that with "The Names."  Or you could be writing about your dying father and create a gorgeous exhortation for him to live--Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night."    

Sharon Olds writes a beautifully scary poem about nuclear holocaust . . .

When

by: Sharon Olds

I wonder now, only when it will happen,
when the young mother will hear the
noise like somebody's pressure cooker
down the block, going off. She'll go out in the yard,
holding her small daughter in her arms,
and there, above the end of the street, in the
air above the line of the trees,
she will see it rising, lifting up
over our horizon, the upper rim of the
gold ball, large as a giant
planet starting to lift up over ours.
She will stand there in the yard holding her daughter,
looking at it rise and glow and blossom and rise,
and the child will open her arms to it,
it will look so beautiful.

I find the end of this poem incredibly moving--that image of the mother holding the daughter as a mushroom cloud blooms on the horizon.  It's right out of one of those disaster flicks from the 1980s.  (You know the ones I'm talking about--a meteor wipes out the planet, a luxury cruise ship capsizes, California breaks off and slips into the ocean after an earthquake.)  The tenderness of the moment in Olds' poem is heartbreaking.

I'm not going to get all maudlin about my sister in this post.  She's simply been on my mind a lot recently.  Yes, I'm still grieving for her, despite the time that's elapsed since her passing.  I'm not sure it's possible to get over losing a loved one.  For me, all it takes is drinking a can of Diet Coke, and my sister Rose is right there with me.

Tomorrow, I know the ghost of my sister will be following me all day.  She loved celebrating her birthday.  In fact, as soon as Christmas was over, Rose would start reminding us that her birthday was approaching.  (She didn't have a really great concept of time.)  Maybe I'll write something about ghosts--something to remind myself of Rose's smile or laugh.  Something beautiful

Saint Marty wrote a not-so-scary poem about his father tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about your father or a father figure in your life.  In the poem, mention the type of shoes he wore, what he ate for breakfast, and reference at least three fathers from television shows.  Write to find out where these three images will lead you and what story your poem wants to tell.

Black Coffee and Burned Toast

by: Martin Achatz

He had black coffee and burned toast

every morning like Communion

while he listened to Marty Robbins on WJPD,

his leather work boots laced on his feet,

breast pocket stuffed with pens.

Each time he swallowed a slug

of black liquid, his Adam's apple 

bobbed like a buoy in rough waters.

He wasn't Pa Ingalls wading

through chest-deep snowdrifts

to rescue me from a blizzard

or John Robinson in his metallic

jumpsuit aiming Jupiter II toward

Alpha Centauri to save me from aliens

with heads like inflated chimpanzees

or even Herman Munster driving me

in a hearse to get vanilla ice cream

on a hot July afternoon.  No,

my old man wasn't anything 

special in his jeans and khaki

shirts, just a guy you'd see

in line at McDonald's or pushing

a lawnmower on a Saturday

morning.  He couldn't recite

Shakespearean soliloquies or perform

Calculus problems in his head.

One time, he sat in the front row

at a poetry reading, fell asleep

while I recited my poems.  Later,

he told me he was just concentrating

on what I was saying, chewing

my words like Easter bread, Jesus'

face scorched into each bite and dripping

with tongues of melted butter.

May 13, 2025: "The Pope's Penis," Fearless, "Ornithology"

I admire Sharon Olds as an artist because she's fearless.  She tackles topics that upset people--from sexuality to violence to discrimination to corruption.  As I said in previous posts, that's one of jobs of a poet:  to speak truth, no matter what.

One of my favorite poems by Olds is below.  The first time I encountered it back in the early 1990s, I was blown away.  My reaction can be summed up like this:  "Wait!  You can write about THAT?"  This little poem convinced me to become a poet, because it was so . . . out there and wonderful at the same time.

Sharon Olds give readers an encounter with . . . 

The Pope's Penis

by: Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate

clapper at the center of a bell.

It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a

halo of silver seaweed, the hair

swaying in the dimness and the heat--and at night,

while his eyes sleep, it stands up

in praise of God.

You may be offended by this poem.  That's okay.  If you don't like it, don't read it.  It's that simple.  You don't have to burn any books or go to some kind of meeting where you're crusading to rid the world of pornography.  Just politely close the book or log off this page and don't return to it.  Period.

Olds certainly is being humorous with her words here.  However, she's also providing commentary on how women have been subjugated by certain Christian denominations (including Catholicism).  And she's celebrating the sacredness of the body, in all of its uncontrollable splendor.  Even popes aren't immune to the physical cravings of the flesh.  Sharon Olds finds nothing shameful in sexuality.  In fact, I'd argue that she, in her own way, is saying that sexuality is one of God's gifts and should be exalted rather than relegated to the confessional.

That's my poetic sermon for today.  I'm climbing off my soapbox now.

I'm currently in between teaching semesters.  That gives me some time to breathe and relax and catch up on some much-needed sleep.  (In a week, I start teaching again until the end of June, so I'll be back to my neurotic self by Monday.)  I'm attempting to kickstart my writing, as well.  I've gotten lazy about sitting down with my journal and pen.  Not because I have nothing to say about life in the United States.  It's just this inability to know where to start.  

Do I focus on poetry, and ignore politics?  Do I pretend that the President 47 isn't accepting 400-million-dollar airplanes as a bribe from Qatar?  Do I tell cute stories about my puppy and ignore the Ice Agents arresting and deporting innocent people?  Don't get me started on tax cuts for billionaires.  

As a writer, I simply can't choose where to shine my spotlight.  It's exhausting.  When I sit down to work on a new poem, I have to give myself ten minutes to vent and bitch on the page.  Only after I've exorcised my anger and sadness can I begin to think in poetic terms.  Otherwise, all you'd probably be getting from me is one word repeated over and over and over and over.  (The word begins with an "f," ends with a "k," and isn't "folk" or "funk.")

All that being said, I don't have a lot on my mind at the moment.  Went out for drinks and KFC with some friends this evening.  I may have imbibed a little too much, as I can barely keep my eyes open.  

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

Sit in a comfy chair (with or without a glass of wine) and listen to jazz or classical music for fifteen to twenty minutes.  Have a notebook to jot down images or ideas that come to mind as you listen to the music.  Write a poem about something you thought of while you listened.  If you like, keep the music on while you write.

Ornithology

by: Martin Achatz

I don't practice poetry the way

I practiced scales on the piano

or parallel parking when I was

learning to drive--no tests to pass

or licenses to carry to prove

I know trochaic tetrameter, no, just

an impossible impulse to chase

words the way my Aussie chases

finches in my backyard, body

a rubber band, snout threshing

the air back, up, forth, down

until she catches something in her

eager jaws--maybe a feather small

as an eyelash--tosses it, shakes

her head, wrings every drop of flight

from its downy barb until death

arrives the way it did for Keats:

too soon, leaving behind flocks

of poems wheeling in the blue

lungs of heaven like hungry gulls.

May 12, 2025: “The Girl,” Authoritarianism, “Joseph McCarthy Remembers Blueberry Muffins”

CONTENT WARNING:  The Sharon Olds poem in this post contains images of sexual violence, rape, and murder.

Sometimes, writers write about things that are difficult.  There are some poems in my journal that will probably never see the light of day until after I’m gone from this realm.  Either their subject matters are too personal, or they contain information about loved ones that I simply can’t share.  

Sharon Olds is pretty fearless in her writing . . . 

The Girl

by: Sharon Olds

They chased her and her friend through the woods

and caught them in a waste clearing, broken

random bracken, a couple of old mattresses,

as if the place had been prepared.

The thin one with straight hair

started raping her best friend,

and the curly one stood above her,

thrust his thumbs back inside her jaws, she was twelve,

stuck his penis in her mouth and throat

faster and faster and faster.

Then the straight-haired one stood up—

they lay like pulled-up roots at his feet,

naked twelve-year-old girls—he said

Now you’re going to know what it’s like

to be shot five times and slaughtered like a pig,

and they switched mattresses,

the blond was raping and stabbing her friend,

the straight-haired one sticking inside her

in one place and then another,

the point of his gun pressed deep into her waist,

she felt a little click in her spine and a 

sting like 7-Up in her head, and then he

pulled the tree-branch across her throat

and everything went dark,

the gym went dark, and her mother’s kitchen,

even the globes of light on the rounded

lips of her mother’s nesting bowls went dark.

When she woke up, she was lying on the cold

copper-smelling earth, the mattress was pulled up

over her like a blanket, she saw

the dead body of her best friend

and she began to run,

she came to the edge of the woods and she stepped

out from the trees, like a wound debriding,

she walked across the field to the tracks

and said to the railway brakeman Please, sir.  Please, sir.

At the trial she had to say everything—

her elder sister helped her with the words—

she had to sit in the room with them

and point to them.  Now she goes to parties

but does not smoke, she is a cheerleader,

she throws her body up in the air

and kicks her legs and comes home and does the dishes

and her homework, she has to work hard in math,

the sky over the roof of her bed

filled with white planets.  Every night

she prays for the soul of her best friend and

then thanks God for life.  She knows

what all of us want never to know

and she does a cartwheel, the splits, she shakes the

shredded pom-poms in her fists.

It’s a traumatic poem, full of ugliness and cruelty.  Yet, there’s also something hopeful in it—the girl survives, brings justice against the attackers.  She doesn’t forget her dead friend, but she’s also full of gratitude for the fact that she survived.  She is alive despite the violence committed against her.

Thank God, most people never have to experience that kind of violence.  However, each day the United States seems to be creeping closer and closer to authoritarianism.  Judges and mayors are being hauled off to jail simply for criticizing President 47’s policies.  (Last time I checked, it’s still legal not to agree with an elected official thanks to this little document called the Constitution.)

Now I’m seeing rumors of President 47 suspending habeas corpus, which guarantees that anyone detained by the government has the right to challenge their confinement in a court of law.  If habeas corpus goes the way of the passenger pigeon, then you/me/anyone can get thrown into prison and left to rot simply for saying something negative about Agent Orange.  For all I know, the FBI already has a file started on me.

Yet, I’m not going to shy away from being critical of a federal government hell-bent on destroying democracy.  Truth is truth, and I will speak it regardless of what kind of MAGA Kool-Aid you may have swallowed.  The truth came out during Watergate, and President Nixon had to resign.  The truth came out during the Army-McCarthy hearings, and Joseph McCarthy ended up being censured by the Senate (and losing most of his political clout).  

Truth is power, and that’s why schools and universities and libraries and museums and journalists are currently under attack in the United States.  An uneducated public is easier to control and manipulate.  Think about it.  Joseph McCarthy had the country believing the Lucille Ball was a communist.  President 47 calls the January 6 insurrectionists “heroes,” and suddenly we’re giving taxpayer money to the family of an insurrectionist who was killed by Capitol Police during the attempted coup.  

The only people who should be afraid of the truth are those who are propagating the lies.  That’s it.  I’m pretty safe, I think, because there’s no way President 47 reads or understands poetry.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about a not-very-nice guy, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem where a famous person from the past visits you in the present.  What message does s/he bring to you?  What does s/he want to tell you?  Write a series of questions for this person and imagine the person answering them.  Write down everything s/he says.  Use the best answers and lines from this exercise to write a poem about a topic this person brings to mind.  After you complete your draft, research this person and find an actual quote to use as an epigraph or weave into the poem.

Joseph McCarthy Remembers Blueberry Muffins

by: Martin Achatz

“I will not get into a pissing contest with that skunk.”

          — Dwight D. Eisenhower, talking about Joseph McCarthy

You have to love your enemies,

he says, just like Jesus.  He sits

on his front porch, remembers how

skunks jumped in fields when

he pumped bullets into their asses,

how satisfying the smell was

as it settled on him like Hail Marys

after a great confession.  They were

everywhere, in basements, under

porches, behind outhouses, inside

corn cribs.  Sneaky bastards.  His eyes

get all misty as he recalls Old Lady

Schmidt bringing him warm blueberry

muffins one afternoon after he wiped

out a stench of seven from her farm.

She shook my hand, thanked me.

He wags his head, spits.

Christ, the blueberries were big

as horseflies that summer.

May 11, 2025: “The Food-Thief,” Mother’s Day, “Fortune Telling”

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone!

Now that the craziness of the beginning of 2025 has subsided a little, I’m going to try to post at least once a day.  If you can’t tell, I’m experiencing a little guilt for being such a slacker blogger saint.  I have no legitimate excuse aside from the fact that I was busy and tired and overwhelmed (by life, teaching, politics, you-name-it).  

I live with a lot of guilt.  I grew up Catholic—it sort of comes with the territory.  The smallest mistake or oversight can send me into a tailspin of penance and apology.  My mother never really exploited my natural tendency to self-flagellate, except when it would teach me a lesson of some sort.  Punishment from Mom came in the form of disappointment—I never wanted to hear her say, “I’m disappointed in you.”

Sharon Olds writes about punishment and mercy . . . 

The Food-Thief

by: Sharon Olds

(Uganda, drought) 

They drive him along the road in the steady 

conscious way they drove their cattle 

when they had cattle, when they had homes and 

living children. They drive him with pliant 

peeled sticks, snapped from trees 

whose bark cannot be eaten—snapped, 

not cut, no one has a knife, and the trees that can be 

eaten have been eaten leaf and trunk and the 

roots pulled from the ground and eaten. 

They drive him and beat him, a loose circle of 

thin men with sapling sticks, 

driving him along slowly, slowly 

beating him to death. He turns to them 

with all the eloquence of the body, the 

wrist turned out and the vein up his forearm 

running like a root just under the surface, the 

wounds on his head ripe and wet as a 

loam furrow cut back and cut back at 

plough-time to farrow a trench for the seed, his 

eye pleading, the white a dark

occluded white like cloud-cover on the 

morning of a day of heavy rain. 

His lips are open to his brothers as the body of a 

woman might be open, as the earth itself was 

split and folded back and wet and 

seedy to them once, the lines on his lips 

fine as the thousand tributaries of a 

root-hair, a river, he is asking them for life 

with his whole body, and they are driving his body 

all the way down the road because 

they know the life he is asking for—

it is their life.

It’s a horrible little narrative that Olds relates—a man being tortured to death because he was hungry and stole food.  A Victor Hugo kind of tale.  Most of us, if we were starving, would probably steal a loaf of bread or a chicken nugget.  And most of us, if one of our loved ones was starving, would probably kill for a loaf of bread or chicken nugget, especially if the loved one is a child.  I know I would, and I can safely say that my mother would have, too.

Most mothers I know are pretty altruistic.  They would do anything to protect their babies from harm, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual.  It’s written in the fine print when you sign up to be a parent.  Sacrifice simply comes with the job description.  

My mom would do anything for us kids.  She raised nine of us to the best of her abilities, and those abilities were pretty badass.  She made sure my sister, Rose, who was born with Down Syndrome, was never left behind when it came to anything, including education.  When doctors and principals told my mom that Rose would never walk or talk on her own, let alone learn to read and do math, Mom’s response was pretty much, “Oh, yeah?”  Rose not only learned to walk and talk, but also how to play basketball and write long, handwritten letters to family and friends.  

I miss my mother daily.  I know that’s something everyone who’s lost their mothers says, but it’s not a cliché for me.  When I encounter a problem, it’s my mom’s no-nonsense, common sense voice that I hear in my head, guiding my actions.  Her bullshit detector never failed.  Did she make mistakes?  Sure.  Nobody’s perfect.  However, she never hurt anyone intentionally, and that’s an example I try to emulate every day of my life.

If you spoke with any of my siblings, they would all tell you that I was a typical spoiled, youngest child, and that would be an accurate statement.  I got away with a lot of shit, BECAUSE I was the youngest,  Curfews were loosely enforced, and, as long as I keep my grades up, I could pretty much do what I wanted.  (I graduated as salutatorian of my class, so grades were never an issue.). I never had to beg for my mother’s mercy

My mother would have hated this post.  She never liked being the center of attention.  (Is that a mother thing, too?)  I couldn’t buy her mushy Mother’s Day cards emblazoned with roses or hearts or rainbows.  She liked to laugh, and making her laugh was something I loved to do.

So, for my mother:  Motherhood is like a fairy tale, but in reverse.  You start out in a beautiful ball gown and end up in stained rags cleaning up after little people.

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

Write a poem where you pretend you can see into the future.  It can be serious, funny, dark, or light in tone.  Who’s the president in 2032?  What does communicating look like?  Where are people wearing?  What color is the sky?  What does the ocean taste like?  Allow yourself to play with your future scenario and be specific and detailed.  Do you need a crystal ball to see the future?  Tea leaves?

Fortune Telling

by: Martin Achatz

If she still had lips, would she

tell my daughter to go to church

more or my son to get his hair cut?

If she still had eyes, would she 

notice I’ve gained weight or

the atlas of lines around my mouth?

If she still had a nose, would she

smell the carnations and daisies

my kids place on her headstone,

the way she buried her face in

her coffee cup every morning?

If she still had breasts, would she

feel them hard and full of milk

to feed my brothers and sisters and me

who could never get enough of her?

If she still had hands, would she

have a rosary threaded between

her fingers, shelling prayers

like peanuts all day long?

If she still had a body, would she

sit in her recliner, rock it gently

with her toes as she listens

for her husband’s boots

stomping off snow on the front step?

You see, all I have left are these

pieces, like an old photograph

torn up because someone blinked

or wasn’t looking at the camera.

I puzzle them together now

like tea leaves at the cup’s bottom,

settled into a fingerprint of all the lies

I told her as a kid, all my little betrayals

she forgave before I was even born.

May 7, 2025: "On the Subway," Different Lives, "When I Come Back"

Well, I'm done teaching for a little while.  Submitted my final grades for the semester yesterday at around 11:58 a.m.  (They were due at noon.)  Then I sat and just breathed for a little while, thinking of the last four or so months--teaching and the NEA Big Read and the Great Lakes Poetry Festival and the death of a pope and my sisters moving and my daughter moving and my son finishing up his junior year in high school.  I'm not even going to get into politics.  The beginning of 2025 has literally felt like a couple centuries long.

I've been evaluating my life a lot since January.  Thinking about jobs and family and friends and death and failure and success.  What makes me happy and sad.  What my dreams and hopes are.  Even when I was a kid, I wanted to make a difference in the world somehow.  Cure something incurable.  Discover something undiscovered.  Write something heretofore unwritten.

Now that I'm old(er), I'd be happy just knowing that I made someone smile on a bad day.

Sharon Olds confronts the racial divide while . . . .

On the Subway

by: Sharon Olds

The boy and I face each other.
His feet are huge, in black sneakers
laced with white in a complex pattern like a
set of intentional scars. We are stuck on
opposite sides of the car, a couple of
molecules stuck in a rod of energy
rapidly moving through darkness. He has the
casual cold look of a mugger,
alert under lowered eyelids. He is wearing
red, like the inside of the body
exposed. I am wearing old fur, the
whole skin of an animal taken
and used. I look at his unknown face,
he looks at my grandmother's coat, and I don’t
know if I am in his power —
he could take my coat so easily, my
briefcase, my life —
or if he is in my power, the way I am
living off his life, eating the steak
he may not be eating, as if I am taking
the food from his mouth. And he is black
and I am white, and without meaning or
trying to I must profit from our history,
the way he absorbs the murderous beams of the
nation’s heart, as black cotton
absorbs the heat of the sun and holds it. There is
no way to know how easy this
white skin makes my life, this
life he could break so easily, the way I
think his own back is being broken, the
rod of his soul that at birth was dark and
fluid, rich as the heart of a seedling
ready to thrust up into any available light.

This poem is not easy.  It's confronting racism--the life of a wealthy white woman versus the life of a poor black young man.   The white woman feels threatened by the young man's presence, even though she has no reason to.  Through her words, Olds is trying to put a face on prejudice, make it not about ideologies but about real people.

That's what all poets do--speak truth, even when that truth is difficult.  Truth can open people's eyes (unless you own a MAGA hat).  That's why Stalin imprisoned poets and writers in gulags.  It's also why dictators do things like ban books and attack journalists and arrest protestors.  Truth is the greatest weapon against tyranny.

So, I'm going to share some of my truths tonight, even though my words are not going to stop the war in Ukraine or make the current President of the United States sane.

Currently, in Rome, around 130 some Catholic cardinals are conclaving in the Sistine Chapel to choose the next pope.  Around 1:30 p.m., black smoke came pouring out of the chimney, indicating that no pontiff had been selected.  Voting begins again tomorrow.

I was baptized by a bishop.  His name was Joseph M. Breitenbeck.  I never met the man, but I did see him on TV serving Mass with Pope John Paul II at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1987.  I think my mom thought I was her best shot at having a priest son.  However, I never felt that call.  The best I could do was become a church organist.

Except for a few years (high school into college) when I avoided religion, I've been a pretty faithful churchgoer most of my life.  I find the history of the Catholic church fascinating, especially the highly secretive process of selecting popes.  So, for the last couple weeks (ever since the funeral of Pope Franics), I've been reading up on the rules of a conclave and the names of the papabile (favored cardinals).

I'm sure the mothers of each of those cardinals had dreams of their sons becoming pope.  Perhaps, as Bishop Breitenbeck was drowning me with holy water, my mom had some thought about me becoming the first pope from the United States.  (The first of many disappointments she experienced because of me.)  

Maybe I was a pope in a former life.  Personally, I’d prefer to be the reincarnation of Robert Frost or Flannery O’Connor or Sylvia Plath (without the mental illness, I’ve already got daddy issues).  Of course, before Pope Francis was pope, he was just Jorge from Buenos Aires, and before Flannery O’Connor was THE Flannery O’Connor, she was just Mary from Savannah.  Fame is an artificial construct.  It can change people, sure, but, for the most part, I’d bet Pope Francis still felt like that little Argentinian boy even while blessing the crowds from the balcony of Saint Peter’s.  

I will never be a priest or bishop or cardinal or pope.  I will never be a Southern gothic writer from Georgia.  As Popeye says, “I yam what I yam.”  I’m a poet from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I’m also a husband, father, teacher, friend, church musician, and library programmer.  In a year’s time, I might be something else.

Whether I like it or not, life is about change and reinvention.  I will not be the same person tomorrow that I am today.  Yes, a bishop baptized me—the same bishop who served Communion with Pope John Paul II over 40 years ago in Detroit.  That doesn’t mean the cardinals are going to elect me the first pope from North America.

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

On this day in 1977, Seattle Slew won the Kentucky Derby.  Since racehorses have the most interesting names, look up the names of horses (they don’t have to be famous) and use ten to fifteen of them in a poem.  Or make a list of your own made-up humorous, poignant, or whimsical racehorse names.  Write a poem about something other than a horse race using either list of names.

When I Come Back

by: Martin Achatz

it will be as a flower

with a name like Charismatic

or American Pharoah or Tim Tam.

My petals will be striped purple,

my stem laced with thorns

to discourage being plucked for vases.

Or I will find myself buried

in a field of goldenrod, nestled

in the rib cage of a long-dead 

moose or sealed in a tomb 

of sun-baked manure—yes, I will

be a stone so precious it defies

words, begs to be placed on

the tongue and sucked until

it’s smooth as a frozen

tear or frog belly.  At night,

the moon will call me, sing

out my name:  Sunday Silence.

Or maybe I’ll sprout as a feather

in a peacock tail, ride all day

behind her until she shivers

herself into glory at dusk, a pleasant

colony of eyes blinking at the heavens.

A field of Ferdinand grass, swale

crowded with cattails, flash

flood in Thunder Gulch where

unbridled waters swallow

rock, mesa, saguaro in one

big brown gulp—I could be

all of these when I come back.

Or just maybe I’ll be a word or breath

in a poem that makes everyone 

say Damn! then Damn! again,

as if they’ve just found twenty dollars

in an old coat pocket or been kissed

hard by an old lover they haven’t seen

since high school or college.

May 1, 2025: "Summer Solstice, New York City," Change, "Habemus Spring"

Yes, I know that it’s been a while since my last post.  A lot has happened since Good Friday.  Pope Francis died on Easter Monday.  President 47 ignored the Vatican dress code, played with his phone, chewed gum, and fell asleep in the front row of the papal funeral.  I taught my last classes for the winter semester.  

A lot has also stayed the same since my last post.  President 47 is still trying to dismantle the United States Constitution.  And defund NPR and PBS.  And get rid of the Department of Education.  And deport U.S. citizens to foreign countries without due process.  And send ICE agents into schools and churches.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  

It’s enough to make me want to climb to the top of a building and jump.

Speaking of which . . . 

Summer Solstice, New York City

by: Sharon Olds


By the end of the longest day of the year he could not stand it,
he went up the iron stairs through the roof of the building
and over the soft, tarry surface
to the edge, put one leg over the complex green tin cornice
and said if they came a step closer that was it.
Then the huge machinery of the earth began to work for his life,
the cops came in their suits blue-grey as the sky on a cloudy evening,
and one put on a bullet-proof vest, a
black shell around his own life,
life of his children's father, in case
the man was armed, and one, slung with a
rope like the sign of his bounden duty,
came up out of a hole in the top of the neighboring building
like the gold hole they say is in the top of the head,
and began to lurk toward the man who wanted to die.
The tallest cop approached him directly,
softly, slowly, talking to him, talking, talking,
while the man's leg hung over the lip of the next world
and the crowd gathered in the street, silent, and the
hairy net with its implacable grid was
unfolded, near the curb, and spread out, and
stretched as the sheet is prepared to receive at a birth.
Then they all came a little closer
where he squatted next to his death, his shirt
glowing its milky glow like something
growing in a dish at night in the dark in a lab and then
everything stopped
as his body jerked and he
stepped down from the parapet and went toward them
and they closed on him, I thought they were going to
beat him up, as a mother whose child has been
lost might scream at the child when its found, they
took him by the arms and held him up and
leaned him against the wall of the chimney and the
tall cop lit a cigarette
in his own mouth, and gave it to him, and
then they all lit cigarettes, and the
red, glowing ends burned like the
tiny campfires we lit at night
back at the beginning of the world.

It is the first day of May.  Summer is right around the corner.  In the next few months, lots of things in my life are going to be changing.  (Unfortunately, I don’t see impeaching President 47 as one of the changes.). My daughter is going to be moving downstate in early July to start medical school in the fall.  My son is going to be a senior in high school in the fall.  My sisters have decided to sell my mom and dad’s house (where I grew up) and move about 100 miles away.

I know that life isn’t static.  Whether I like it or not, loved ones grow up, move away, get sick, die.  Maybe that’s what is happening right now in Washington, D. C.  Growing pains.  Either we’re going to be a dictatorship, or we will rise up to protect and defend the Constitution.  Right now, I’m not quite sure which of those options will happen.

So, when faced with all these unknowns, I have to fall back on faith.  My daughter and son are great kids and love me.  The new pope will walk in the footsteps of Francis.  President 47 will eventually try to do something so stupid/outrageous that even Republicans will turn against him.  I have faith in all of these things.

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

Look up the names of flowers that grow in your geographical location and write a poem using at least ten of those names in a poem.  Also, feel free to use the names of flowers in unusual ways, such as I slipped on my ladyslippers or she hollyhocked her way into our conversation.

Habemus Spring

by: Martin Achatz

Soon cardinal flowers will conclave

as harebells ring under rough blazing

stars.  This morning, I wait for trillium

to unfurl their snow wings, bless my house

as a pope is buried like a tulip bulb

in Rome.  This in-between winter

and summer time, so much has yet

to happen:  peepers chanting in swamp

milkweed, white snakeroot blossoming

above the roof of the Sistine Chapel.

Geese, with their clerical collars, open

their beaks, fill the heavens with trumpet

blasts as they carry the sun on their backs

into June  Tonight, the grass and butterfly

weed will stretch and pray for lilacs

to fill the world with their sweet incense.