Wednesday, July 23, 2025

July 23, 2025: “Waste Sonata,” Wasted Time, “Yellow Brick”

I don’t like wasting anything.  I don’t like wasted food or wasted paper or wasted time.  Especially wasted time.  I plan my days out so that I can make maximum use of every second I’m conscious.  I was talking to a poet friend this morning, and I asked her if she ever felt guilty about taking time to draft a poem.

“Only if it’s not productive,” she said.  “If the writing goes well, that time is always justified.”

Sharon Olds writes about human waste . . . 

Waste Sonata

by: Sharon Olds

I think at some point I looked at my father
and thought He’s full of shit.  How did I
know fathers talked to their children,
kissed them?  I knew.  I saw him and judged him.
Whatever he poured into my mother
she hated, her face rippled like a thin
wing, sometimes, when she happened to be near him,
and the liquor he knocked into his body
felled him, slew the living tree,
loops of its grain started to cube,
petrify, coprofy, he was a
shit, but I felt he hated being a shit,
he had never imagined it could happen, this drunken
sleep was a spell laid on him—
by my mother.  Well, I left to them
the passion of who did what to whom, it was a
baby in their bed they were rolling over on,
but I could not live with hating him.
I did not see that I had to.  I stood
in that living room and saw him drowse
like the prince, in slobbrous beauty, I began to
to think he was a kind of chalice,
a grail, his love the goal of a quest,
yes!  He was the god of love
and I was a shit.  I looked down at my forearm—
whatever was inside there
was not good, it was white stink,
bad manna.  I looked in the mirror, and 
as I looked at my face the blemishes
arose, like pigs up out of the ground
to the witch’s call.  It was strange to me
that my body smelled sweet, it was proof I was 
demonic, but at least I breathed out,
from the sour dazed scum within,
my father’s truth.  Well it’s fun talking about this,
I love the terms of foulness.  I have learned
to get some pleasure from speaking of pain.
But to die, like this.  To grow old and die
a child, lying to herself.
My father was not a shit.  He was a man
failing at life.  He had little shits
traveling through him while he lay there unconscious—
sometimes I don’t let myself say
I loved him, anymore, but I feel
I almost love those shits that move through him,
shapely, those waste foetuses,
my mother, my sister, my brother, and me
in that purgatory.



Waste is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.  Sharon Olds cherishes the little shits in her father’s body, even if she struggles to say “I love you” to her father.  Her father is not a shit, she says.  He was a man who is “failing at life.”  His main fault, it seems, is disappointment with his life choices.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I really don’t like wasting time.  Every morning, I plan my days out, using lists and numbers and checkmarks.  That list was fairly short today.  I attended an art bookmaking workshop in the morning, and I hosted a library concert by one of my favorite local bands (Ramble Tamble) in the evening.  Plus, I got to hang with one of my best friends at the concert.  In between all that, I drafted a couple new poems, as well.  

I’d call that a pretty productive day.

Of course, I could have gotten a lot more done.  That’s always the case.  I rarely cross off every item on my daily lists.  If there are more than two or three unfinished tasks at the end of the day, I count that as a failure.  As I sit typing this post, I still have three unfinished chores.  Therefore, by the rule I just stated, I’m a big, fat loser today.

I’m okay with that, because I have drafts of two new poems from workshop this morning.  That means, by my poet friend’s rules, I have had a very productive day.  I’m going to stick with that.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about time and nature, based on prompts from two days in The Daily Poet . . . 

July 21:  In celebration of Tess Gallagher’s birthday, spend some time in the outdoors, even if it means taking a walk to the post office or stepping out to retrieve the mail.  Gallagher, reflecting on exploring vast amounts of territory in both the Pacific Northwest and the Ozarks, states “it builds something in you.”. Whether it’s an appreciation for bird song or a fondness for cottonwood fluff, let the natural world build something in you today, then share about it in a poem of ten lines of ten syllables each.

July 22:  I often find my best poems while driving, but only when I pay close attention, viewing road signs, billboards, restaurants, and movie theatre marquees with fresh eyes.  Who lives on the street names Never Give Up Road?  What does a store called BIGLOTS! tell us about the age we live in?  Wipe the nothing’s-new-under-the-sun sand from your eyes, and get into your car (or motorcycle or bike), and make a poem out of what you find.

Yellow Brick

by: Martin Achatz

Each day, I drive into sunrises, lick
yellow brick light with hungry eyes.  Today,
I spotted a roadkill doe in the ditch,
her legs snapped, neck angled strangely, as if
she was still leaping milky streams, charging
through cedar swamps after shadows of winged
monkeys chasing the emerald heart of day.
If she only knew, if she only knew
all she had to do was click her hooves once,
twice, thrice, and think of sweet, ripe blueberries.



Sunday, July 20, 2025

July 20, 2025: "I Wanted to Be There When My Father Died," Date Night, "7 Reasons We Need Superman Right Now"

So, it has been a fairly busy weekend.

I mowed the lawn yesterday because of rain in the weather forecast.  (It never rained.)  I played two church services, one yesterday evening and one this morning.  I wrote a few poems.  I led a poetry workshop tonight that ended a little over an hour ago.

The highlight of last couple days was going to see the new Superman with my wife last night.  Then we went to one of our favorite restaurants/pubs where we had a couple drinks, ate some chicken nachos and breadsticks, and decompressed from the stress of the last couple weeks.

Sharon Olds comes clean about her feelings over her father . . .

I Wanted to Be There When My Father Died

by: Sharon Olds

I wanted to be there when my father died
because I wanted to see him die—
and not just to know him, down 
to the ground, the dirt of his unmaking, and not
just to give him a last chance
to give me something, or take his loathing
back. All summer he had gagged, as if trying
to cough his whole esophagus out,
surely his pain and depression had appeased me,
and yet I wanted to see him die
not just to see no soul come
free of his body, no mucal genie of
spirit jump
forth from his mouth,
proving the body on earth is all we have got,
I wanted to watch my father die
because I hated him. Oh, I loved him,
my hands cherished him, laying him out,
but I feared him so, his lying as if dead on the
couch had seemed to pummel me, an Eve
he took and pressed back into clay,
casual thumbs undoing the cheekbone
eye-socket rib pelvis ankle of the child
and now I watched him be undone and
someone in me gloried in it,
someone lying where he’d lain in chintz
Eden, some corpse girl, corkscrewed like
one of his amber spit-ems, smiled.
The priest was well called to that room,
violet grosgrain river of his ribbon laid
down well on that bank of flesh
where the daughter of death was made, it was well to say
into other hands than ours
we commend this spirit.




Yes, Olds hates and loves her father.  Human beings are able to experience conflicting emotions simultaneously.  ("We shake with joy, we shake with grief. / What a time they have, these two / housed as they are in the same body."--Mary Oliver)  When my sister, Sally, died, I was not only heartbroken over her loss, but also grateful for the end of her suffering.  When my daughter moved downstate last weekend to begin medical school, I was not only excited for her, but also grieved for her absence in my life.

So, it was good last night to spend some time with my wife, holding hands, eating popcorn, watching the Man of Steel kick some Lex Luthor ass, and coming clean about our feelings over our daughter's move.  No surprise, we're both shaking with joy and grief at the same time.  

I wish the universe did have superheroes with powers to keep things on an even keel.  At this point in the history of the United States, it wouldn't hurt to have Superman around to stop wars, save innocent people from harm, and stop the occasional supervillain.  (Unfortunately, our current supervillain is sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.)  

I'm of the belief that any person can be a superhero.  I mean, Martin Luther King, Jr., didn't grow up thinking he was going to be the leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, let alone win the Nobel Peace Prize.  And I'm sure that Marie Curie, as a little girl, had no clue she would discover radioactivity and lead the way for effective cancer treatments (and also win two Nobels).  Martin and Marie were two ordinary people who became extraordinary heroes because of their circumstances.

I'm not a superhero, but I try to be the best person I can be every day of my life.  I don't always succeed.  Yet, the striving is important.  Human beings are incredibly flawed creatures.  We can save a child from a burning house, but we can also stand on the sidelines and witness genocide.  I'd like to think that, at the end of my life, my character strengths will outweigh my failings.  And, just maybe, I will have made some kind of impact on the world.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about superheroes for night, based on the following prompt from July 19 of The Daily Poet:

In admiration of Juan Felipe Herrera's poem entitled "187 Reasons Mexicans Can't Cross the Border," write your own list poem using "because" as your refrain word.  Examples from Herrera's poem:  
Because the north is really south, Because every nacho chip can morph into a Mexican wrestler, Because Pancho Villa's hidden treasure is still in Chihuahua, Because we couldn't clean up Hurricane Katrina, Because we have visions instead of televisions.  Some suggested ideas may be:  "99 Reasons to Grow Your Own Food," "54 Reasons It's Not Your Fault You're Fat," "88 Reasons to Say No without Saying No." 

7 Reasons We Need Superman Right Now

by: Martin Achatz

1.  Because most aliens on this planet just want to drive to McDonald's to get an M&M McFlurry.

2.  Because capes are back in style.

3.  Because truth and justice are endangered species, almost extinct in the continental United States, and the Smithsonian doesn't have room in its collections for 185,000 migrants.

4.  Because if he catches a cold, he could reverse global warming with a sneeze.

5.  Because eggs are expensive, and we need his blood to create a super chicken.

6.  Because all of our other heroes have been sent to concentration camps.

7.  Because we need a Fortress of Solitude to hide our neighbors when the white vans roll through the neighborhood.



Friday, July 18, 2025

July 18, 2025: “The Ferryer,” Day Off, “Bussing Tables at the Elks Club Fish Fry: A Love Story”

I took the day off work.  

That doesn’t mean I slept in or sat on my couch all day, napping and watching reruns of Northern Exposure.  No, I took my puppy for a few walks, read a book, wrote some poems and blog posts, practiced some church music.  My daughter messaged me at one point, and we had a lovely text conversation, catching up on her new life downstate.  (Yes, I did cry a little after the conversation ended.)

So, you see, even if I’m not officially working, I still work.  Tomorrow I plan to mow my lawn and work on a new poem.  I’ll probably end up doing a couple loads of laundry, too.  

Sharon Olds writes about a job her dead father works . . .

The Ferryer

by: Sharon Olds

Three years after my father's death
he goes back to work. Unemployed
for twenty-five years, he's very glad
to be taken on again, shows up
on time, tireless worker. He sits
in the prow of the boat, sweet cox, turned
with his back to the carried. He is dead, but able
to kneel upright, facing forward
toward the other shore. Someone has closed
his mouth, so he looks more comfortable, not
thirsty or calling out, and his eyes
are open—under the iris, the black
line that appeared there in death. He is calm,
he is happy to be hired, he's in business again,
his new job is a joke between us and he
loves to have a joke with me, he keeps
a straight face. He waits, naked,
ivory bow figurehead,
ribs, nipples, lips, a gaunt
tall man, and when I bring people
and set them in the boat and push them off
my father poles them across the river
to the far bank. We don't speak,
he knows that this is simply someone
I want to get rid of, who makes me feel
ugly and afraid. I do not say
the way you did. He knows the labor
and loves it. When I dump someone in, he 
does not look back, he takes them straight
to hell. He wants to work for me
until I die. Then, he knows, I will
come to him, get in his boat
and be taken across, then hold out my broad
hand to his, help him ashore, we will
embrace like two who were never born,
naked, not breathing, then up to our chins we will
pull the home blanket of earth and
rest together, at the end of the working day.



I read this poem and think to myself, Jesus, even when you die you still have to work!

I like being busy and productive.  There’s a difference, however, between working a midnight shift at Walmart and pursuing a dream.  Since I was very young, I’ve wanted to be a successful, published author.  I majored in English as an undergraduate (along with computer science and math); received advanced degrees in both fiction and poetry writing; and published two collections of poems (so far).  I’ve also been writing this blog for over ten years, and I currently receive approximately 150,000 to 250,000 page views a day.  (On Wednesday, my page views were 1.3 million for the day.)  

I work hard on my writing—at least two or three hours a day, usually more.  But it doesn’t feel like work.  I enjoy sitting down with my journal or laptop.  It doesn’t stress me out like, say, correcting a pile of student papers or practicing music for church. Language has always been my friend, confidant, and therapist. 

There was a time when writers had patrons—wealthy landowners or royalty. Patrons supported the writers financially, and all the writers had to do was . . . write.  An amazing concept, I know.  Rewarding people for doing what they’re really good at.  That doesn’t mean I want to go back in time to Elizabethan England.  (Not a big fan of bubonic plague.)

But I also don’t want to work shitty jobs until the day I die.  (I’ve had my share of occupations that really didn’t suit me—plumber’s apprentice, busboy, medical records clerk.)  Eventually, I’d like not to have three to five jobs at the same time.  I don’t want to be physically and mentally exhausted at the end of every day.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

So, if any of my disciples knows a rich person with a penchant for literature, send them my way.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about a shitty job I once had, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet . . . 

On this date in 1955, Weldon Kees’ Plymouth Savoy was found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge, the keys in the ignition.  Though he’d talked of starting a new life in Mexico, most presumed suicide.  Since that day, Kees has increasingly become a cult figure among poets, his poems admired for their earnest intensity and their facility with everyday speech.  In one of his poems, Kees describes corporate jobs as Siberias with bonuses, places where the fire roared and died.  Do you now have or did you once have a job where the phoenix quacked like a goose?  What were your duties?  What specifically about the job made you long to call in sick?  Write a poem in everyday speech about a job you once had.

Bussing Tables at the Elks Club Fish Fry: A Love Story

by: Martin Achatz

Every Friday night, I came home smelling
like the sea and cigarette smoke,
pockets crammed with my share
of tip money—sweaty quarters,
bitter dimes, dollar bills wadded
up like old Kleenexes.  Enough to put
a couple gallons of gas in my tank
with a little left over for a bag
of weed.  It wasn’t glamorous work,
scraping shrimp tails, baked potato
scraps, cod skins, butts and ashes
into garbage cans, wiping down
tables slick with grease and melted
butter.  For at least two days after a shift,
I could still smell work on my skin,
as if I was a walking can of tuna.
I dated the dishwasher for a while,
although the relationship was doomed
from the start, both of us fresh out
of high school, too shy for anything
more than quick pecks, chapped 
lips pressed against chapped lips,
in the walk-in freezer when the cook
ran low on filets or French fries.
I broke up with her after I dreamed
one night she was a mermaid swimming
in a pool of tartar sauce.  I still can’t eat
at Red Lobster without thinking
of her breasts cupped in seashells,
hair wild with kelp and ocean waves.

Thursday, July 17, 2025

July 17, 2025: “Natural History,” Happiness, “Visitation”

Every morning, I sit down and create a list of tasks I need to complete during the day.  I try not to put more than three or four things on that list.  Anything more than that, and I won’t finish off the list, and, eventually, I’ll feel like a failure at day’s end.  

Today, I put twelve items on my list.  Emails to send.  Reports to finish up.  Schedules to finalize.  I’m taking off work tomorrow, so I needed to get shit done.

I was brought up this way.  My father and mother were hard workers, and they instilled that ethic into all of their kids to the point that I feel guilty if I’m just sitting around, doing nothing.  Like it or not, we inherit our parents’ ideals (or we rebel against them).  

Sharon Olds writes about what she inherited from her father . . .

Natural History

by: Sharon Olds

When I think about eels, I think about Seattle, 
the day I went back to my father’s grave.
I knew we had buried ashes, a box
of oily fluff, and yet, as I approached,
it felt as if the length of him
were slung there, massive, slack,
a six-foot amber eel flung down
deep into the hill.  The air was clammy,
greenish as the old Aquarium air when we
would enter from the Zoo.  Whenever we saw
a carnivore, my father would offer
to feed me to it—tigers, crocodiles, 
manta rays, and that lone moray
eel, it would ripple up to us, armless,
legless, lipless as a grin of terror.
How would you like a tasty girl, my
father would ask the eel, a minister
performing a marriage, How would you like
to get in there with that, he’d lift me up the
think glass, as if I were rising
on the power of my own scream.  Later I would
pass the living room, and see him 
asleep, passed out, undulant, lax,
indifferent.  And at his grave
it was much like that—
the glossy stone, below it the mashed
bouquet of ashes, and under that,
like a boy who has thrown himself down to cry, the
great, easy, stopped curve
of my father.  Length to length I lay on it,
and slept.



Olds was obviously scarred by her father’s behavior at the Zoo.  What kid wouldn’t be?  Olds wrote an entire collection of poems about her relationship with her dad, working through her demons.  Poets do this kind of shit all the time.  It’s a lot cheaper than therapy (he writes flippantly, knowing he’s been in therapy for years).  

Even when they’re long gone (my dad died in 2018, my mom in 2021), parents can still control your life, or at least influence it a lot.  If it weren’t for my mother, I would never have learned to play the piano or pipe organ, and I wouldn’t be a church musician these days.  I also wouldn’t be an avid reader or love musical theater.  

I know that all my mother or father wanted for me was happiness.  Of course, my definition of happiness is quite a bit different from their definitions.  Having both been born at the end of the Great Depression, my parents equated happiness with having a steady job, money in the bank, and food on the table.  My parents, for the most part, had all three of these things.  Plus, they raised nine kids.

My definition of happiness is a little different.  While I work hard (two main jobs plus some musical side-hustles), my happiness comes from walks with my dog, a new poem by a favorite poet, dinner with my wife and kids, and time to write.  While I don’t want to starve, I don’t equate food with happiness.  While I hate living paycheck to paycheck, I don’t believe that money can buy happiness.  I’ve worked jobs simply to pay the bills, and I’ve worked jobs to fuel my passions.

Tomorrow, I get to rest, relax.  Maybe write a little.  Practice some church music.  That’s it.  Perhaps I’ll mow my lawn if I get ambitious.  And I’ll be happy.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about his mother’s happiness, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet . . . 

Write a poem in the voice of your mother or father (biological, adoptive, beloved or never-once-met).  Have them share heartily their quirky memories about none other than you, for example, the time your sister cut the nipple off a baby bottle and showed you how to drip milk all over daddy’s books.  If you can’t remember specific childhood memories, feel free to make up a few interesting moments.

Visitation

by: Martin Achatz

Here he comes again.  I can feel
his car pulling through the gates,
past all the Marys, angels, Jesuses,
headstones.  He just can’t let me rest, 
enjoy the deer nibbling grass around
me.  I think he’s forgotten how
much I loved  my quiet times, 
before the house woke up, when
I would sit with my coffee
and prayer books and God.  He
never got that as a kid, my need
for quiet sometimes, his instinct
to the fill empty air with sound—
the TV or radio.  But I did love
it when he sat down at the piano,
played the sun into morning with
something soft and gentle.  Debussy
or an old Pasty Cline song.  I would
sit there while his fingers coaxed 
music out of nothing.  I wish I
could tell him how much I loved
it when he played “How Great
Thou Art,” even when he made
mistakes.  Especially when 
he made mistakes.

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

July 16, 2025: “The Underlife,” Ghost Hunting, “Husband…Father…Friend…Poet”

Back to work today.  After having three days off—in which I left my daughter downstate, mourned her absence when I got home, tried to come to terms with my new “normal”—I had a pretty difficult time settling back into routine.  Because nothing seems routine at the moment.

Confession:  on my way to my library office this morning, I drove my daughter’s old apartment.  I don’t know why or what I was expecting to see.  There was an irrational part of my brain hoping to spy her car still parked in the driveway, I suppose.  Maybe I was ghost hunting.  

Sharon Olds writes about what lurks beneath the surface of everyday life . . .

The Underlife

by: Sharon Olds

Waiting for the subway, looking down
into the pit where the train rides,
I see a section of grey rail de-
tach itself, and move along the packed
silt.  It is the first rat I have seen
in years, at first I draw back, but then
I think of my son’s mice and lean forward.
The rat is muscular, ash-grey,
silvery, filth-fluffy.  You can see
light through the ears.  It moves along the rail, it looks
cautious, domestic, innocent.  Back
home, sitting on the bed, I see
a tawny lozenge in the sheet’s pattern
begin to move, and of course it’s a cockroach,
it has lived in all the other great cities
before their razing and after it.
Christ you guys, I address these creatures,
I know about the plates of the earth shifting
over the liquid core, I watched the
bourbon and then the cancer pull my
father under, I know all this.  And the
roach and rat turn to me
with the swiveling turn of natural animals, and they
say to me We are not educators,
we come to you from him.



Olds is speaking about all that happens beneath life’s surface.  Everything might look clean and bright, but, on closer inspection, you find ants or mouse turds on the kitchen counter.  Olds is confronted by a rat and a cockroach in the poem, and both these creatures are messengers from “him”—which I assume is Olds’ recently deceased father.

Nobody likes to think about the “underlife.”  Of course, everything or one has an underlife.  Sometimes this hidden realm is lovely.  Most of the time, however, it isn’t.  Instead of angels and rainbows and unicorns, it’s populated by rats and cockroaches and vultures and snakes.

Like Olds, I’m sort of obsessed with the underlife of things.  The darkness versus the light.  Hunger versus satisfaction.  Sorrow versus joy.  I think there’s a reason why Dante started with The Inferno—evil is more interesting than goodness.  

As I said, I returned to work this morning after having a three-day weekend.  There was no underlife to my state of mind.  I was sad, distracted, and tired.  I got lots of tasks finished, but, every once in a while, my daughter would enter my thoughts, and I had to just stop and breathe.  Let the emotion work its way out. 

Think about the underlife the next time you visit a cemetery.  Every name on a headstone is attached to a once living, breathing person.  However, a name rarely provides important details like a lover’s face or child’s favorite toy or mother’s lullaby voice.  Those things remain concealed, like a colony of wasps beneath a rotting stump.

At this current moment, my underlife is consumed with nostalgia for a life that has changed drastically over the past ten or so years.  As I’ve aged, life hasn’t gotten easier.  It’s gotten smaller, harder.  When I say smaller, I mean that loss is built-in to the process of time.  Mountains get worn down over time.  Canyons get carved out.  People get sick, move away, die.  TV shows get canceled.  Books get banned.  Democracies fall to wannabe dictators.  Kindness becomes a sign of weakness.

All of that has happened in the past decade.  Now, I could walk around all day being mad or depressed or anxious over the current state of the world.  But I’m not going to do that.  Instead, I’m going to double down on everything I hold dear.  I’m going to try to be kinder, more supportive.  I will laugh more.  Read more good books.  Write more poetry.  Learn more truths.  Shout those truths as loud as I can

In the end, I don’t want people to remember me as a bitter, angry old liberal.  I want people to say my name with a smile on their faces and in their hearts.

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

Write a comic poem (it may or may not turn serious) about choosing your own or someone else’s grave marker.  Situate yourself at a monument store, observing the many sizes, shapes, and designs.  Will you choose a headstone festooned with stars and lilies or a plain block of granite?  What will be your epitaph?  Where would you like to be buried?  Consider sharing details about who will visit your grave and what they might feel or say.

Husband…Father…Friend…Poet

by: Martin Achatz

will be my epitaph.  Mel Blanc chose
That’s All Folks.  Robin Williams
was scattered in San Francisco Bay,
his marker Alcatraz’s rocks studded
with seals and fog and waves.
But really, you can’t sum up a life
with just a few words etched in
polished black granite.  Words are
for moments, breaths, morning
glories blazing into beauty then washing
away like sand castles at high tide.
I hope my kids come visit me every
once in a while.  I’ll stand beside
them, place an invisible hand on
their shoulders.  Maybe they’ll feel
my fingers they way they felt
the kisses I placed on their foreheads
each night as they slept, my lips 
riding there until the rapture of dawn.



Tuesday, July 15, 2025

July 15, 2025: “Beyond Harm,” Moments, “Hills Like White Sharks”

All lives are made up of small moments strung together to create an experience, all the experiences strung together to create a day, all the days strung together to create a season, all the seasons strung together to create a lifetime.

That’s how it goes.  Some moments/experiences/days/seasons are better than others.  There are seasons in my life I’d love to revisit.  Other seasons are better off left in the past.  But I know that I wouldn’t be who I am right now without all the struggles I’ve faced.  Adversity shapes a person just as much as success.

Sharon Olds gets some late-in-life love from her father . . . 

Beyond Harm

by: Sharon Olds

A week after my father died
suddenly I understood
his fondness for me was safe – nothing
could touch it. In those last months,
his face would sometimes brighten when I would
enter the room, and his wife said
that once, when he was half asleep,
he smiled when she said my name. He respected
my spunk – when they tied me to the chair, that time
they were tying up someone he respected, and when
he did not speak, for weeks, I was one of the
beings to whom he was not speaking,
someone with a place in his life. The last
week he even said it, once,
by mistake. I walked into his room, and said, “How
are you,” and he said, “I love you
too.” From then on, I had
that word to lose. Right up to the last
moment, I could make some mistake, offend him, and with 
one of his old mouths of disgust he could re-
skew my life. I did not think of it,
I was helping to take care of him,
wiping his face and watching him.
But then, a while after he died,
I suddenly thought, with amazement, he will always
love me now, and I laughed – he was dead, dead!



It’s an amazing moment—Olds’ dad letting his guard down, admitting his love, and Olds holding onto his words, afraid they might evaporate like snowflakes in June.  She recognizes that her father has given her an unintentional gift that she keeps opening over and over after he dies.

We all do it, return to cherished memories in times of struggle or sadness.  These last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about my kids’ childhoods, when most everything was simpler, easier.  Trips to the Wisconsin Dells and Walt Disney World.  Birthdays and Christmases.  Great moments.

The one memory to which I keep returning is watching Zootopia outside, under the stars, at the Boyne Mountain Resort.  My then 17-year-old daughter and I sat close together on a bench, ate popcorn, and just kind of blissed out that August night.  I rarely use the “p” word, but it really was perfect.

Of course, no moment (perfect or shitty) lasts forever.  There have been some rocky paths since.  But, just like nobody can take away the “I love you too” Olds’ father gave to her, nobody can take away that shared movie and popcorn, our fingers and lips coated in buttery salt while the crickets sang.

I keep reminding myself of this temporality.  I may be sad right now because my daughter moved downstate for medical school, but that sadness will be replaced eventually, maybe with joy or surprise or anger.  Who knows?  That’s how life works.  Nothing is permanent.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today (featuring one of his daughter’s favorite movies) based on the following prompt from July 14 of The Daily Poet:

Today we’re going to burrow like crabs.  To start digging, set a timer for six minutes and freewrite off a randomly-chosen line or phrase.  Examples:  the donut hole is thriving or a cloud stretching a thousand miles. When the chimer chimes, reset it for four minutes and make the last three words you’ve written the first three words of your next freewrite.  Repeat this process two more times (setting the timer for six and then four minutes).  This slight pause and backing up will allow you to go deeper.  Later, extract the best parts of this exercise and turn it into a poem.

Hills Like White Sharks

by: Martin Achatz

I was too young, had to wait three years to see it, long after the Orca sank, Millennium Falcon blasted out of Mos Eisley, Dreyfuss boarded the Mothership at Devils Tower.  By that time, everyone was back in the water, not remembering Quint’s final moments in the shark’s mouth, kicking, punching, screaming like he was throwing a temper tantrum on a playground.  What do I remember about my first time?  Three guys on a boat, drunk, comparing battle scars, singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” Robert Shaw monologuing about the Indianapolis with a smile on his face, as if he was on the cusp of delivering a punchline.  But he wasn’t.  It reminded me of the story where a couple sits at a train station, the man talking about letting air in, the woman pleading for him to please please please please please please please stop talking.  Because we’re all just treading water, trying not to drown, while below us something big and hungry wants to shake us, tenderize us, swallow us whole. 





Sunday, July 13, 2025

July 13, 2025: “His Ashes,” Long Trip Home, “Just Because”

As I was driving home today after helping my daughter move into her new apartment downstate, I kept on seeing and hearing and smelling little things that reminded me of her.  A song on the radio.  A piece of long hair she left on my teeshirt when she hugged me goodbye.  A can of Diet Coke, her favorite.

That’s the nature of memory, though.  It ambushes you.

Sharon Olds writes about her father’s cremains . . .

His Ashes

by: Sharon Olds

The urn was heavy, small but so heavy,
like the time, weeks before he died,
when he needed to stand, I got my shoulder
under his armpit, my cheek against his
naked freckled warm back
while she held the urinal for him—he had
lost half his body weight
and yet he was so heavy we could hardly hold him up
while he got the fluid out, crackling and
sputtering like a wet fire.  The urn had that
six-foot heaviness, it began
to warm in my hands as I held it, under
the blue fir tree, stroking it.
The shovel got the last earth
out of the grave—it must have made that
kind of gritty iron noise when they
scraped his ashes out of the grate—
the others would be here any minute and I 
wanted to open the urn as if then
I would finally know him.  On the wet lawn,
under the cones cloaked in their resin, I
worked at the top, it gave and slipped off and
there it was, the actual matter of his being:
small, speckled lumps of bone
like eggs, a discolored curve of bone like a
fungus grown around a branch;
spotted pebbles—and the spots were the channels of his marrow
where the live orbs of the molecules
swam as if by their own strong will
and in each cell the chromosomes
tensed and flashed, tore themselves
away from themselves, leaving their shining 
duplicates.  I looked at the jumble
of shards like a crushed paper-wasp hive;
was that a bone of his wrist, was that from the
elegant knee he bent, was that
his jaw, was that from his skull that at birth was
flexible yet—I looked at him,
bone and the ash it lay in, chromium-
white as the shimmering coils of dust
the earth leaves behind it, as it rolls, you can
hear its heavy roaring as it rolls away.



In her hands, Olds holds all that is left of her father’s body.  The man who loved her into being.  Held her as an infant.  Self-medicated his disappointment and anger with alcohol.  Physically abused her and her siblings.  The urn contains the weight of all that.

It was a long, weighty trip home.  We went out to breakfast with my daughter and her significant other before we left.  IHOP.  My daughter ordered blueberry pancakes—they’ve always been her favorite.  In fact, it’s almost blueberry season in the U.P., and for the first time in a long while, she’s not going to be able to go picking with me.  (I’m hoping to talk my son into accompanying me this year.)

Did I cry?  Did she cry?  Did we all cry?  

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

All day long, I felt a weight on my shoulders.  When we finally pulled into the driveway, I looked at the house and thought to myself, “This place is never going to feel the same.”  A part of it is missing.  Of course, there are reminders of my daughter all over the place.  On Friday night, we watched one of her favorite movies—The Corpse Bride.  The DVD was still sitting by the TV.  There’s a framed photo collage of my daughter hanging on the wall.  And, I kid you not, I swear I could still smell her presence in the house.

So, as I sit typing this post, I am surrounded by her.  She haunts this house, in a good way.  Am I crying again?  Maybe.

I’m sure, in a couple months, this is all going to feel normal, whatever normal is.  However, right now, I don’t feel normal.  I feel like an open wound.

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

For today’s poem, begin by making a list of your burdens.  They may be real or imagined, great or small, but make sure they are specific; for instance, not “my child,” but “the weekly trips to the sensory gym and speech therapy.”  Once you’ve done this, make an accompanying list of your pleasures:  knitting, berry picking, fishing, calligraphy.  Write a poem that contrasts your passions with your commitments using “because” to create anaphora, the literary term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginnings of successive clauses.  Example:  Because I rehabilitate in a stuffy gym each Tuesday afternoon, I fill my basket with blueberries, my ego dissolving with each plunk.  Because I writhe at the suggestion that I must break into a sweat, I recline in my chaise, blueberries unbrooding my brain.

Just Because

by: Martin Achatz

Because poetry chases me, I lock
the front door, turn off all lights,
watch a movie I’ve seen dozens 
of times, maybe Jaws or Raiders.
Because sadness visits in the middle
of night, I eat vanilla ice cream
sprinkled with Lucky Charms
even though Mom told me once
that all my teeth wold fall out.
Because the toilet tank leaks
a bucket every couple hours, I collect
copies of A Christmas Carol—hardcover,
paperback, illustrated, Muppet, 
pocket-size—so I’m surrounded
by ghosts and plum pudding always.
Because I’m middle-aged and hate
to sweat, I take my dog for walks
in the woods where she can
hunt yellowtails in long grass.
Because my daughter just moved
away to attend college, I unlock
the front door tonight, sit down, pick
up a fountain pen, begin writing
this poem.  I’ll mail it to her
tomorrow with an IHOP gift card.
Blueberries are in-season, and she
won’t be able to go picking
with me this year.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

July 12, 2025: “The Feelings,” Dropping Off Daughter, “Phobophobia”

It’s been a pretty emotional day for me and my family.

We spent most of it traveling.  My daughter and her significant other moved downstate for her to attend medical school, so we caravanned to Mount Pleasant and helped them unload belongings into their new home.  Then we went out for dinner after returning the U-haul truck.  

Now, I’m sitting in a hotel room.  My son is swimming, and my wife is snoring (loudly) in bed.  I’ve been trying to process my current state of mind, sorting and cataloging my feelings.

Sharon Olds deals with some strong emotions . . .

The Feelings

by: Sharon Olds

When the intern listened to the stopped heart
I stared at him, as if he or I
were wild, were from some other world, I had
lost the language of features, I could not
know what it meant for a stranger to push
the gown up along the body of my father.
My face was wet, my father’s face
was faintly moist with the sweat of his life,
the last moments of hard work.
I was leaning against the wall, in the corner, and
he lay on the bed, we were both doing something
and everyone else in the room believed in the Christian God,
they called my father the shell on the bed, I was the
only one there who knew
he was entirely gone, the only one
there to say goodbye to his body
that was all he was, I held, hard,
to his foot, I thought of the Inuit elder
holding the stern of the death canoe, I
let him out slowly into the physical world.
I felt the dryness of his lips under
my lips, I felt how even my slight
kiss moved his head on the pillow
they way things move as if on their own in shallow water,
I felt his hair rush through my fingers
like a wolf’s, the walls shifted, the floor, the
ceiling wheeled as if I was not
walking out of the room but the room was
backing away around me.  I would have
liked to stay beside him, ride by his
shoulder while they drove him to the place where they would
               burn him, 
see him safely into the fire,
touch his ashes in their warmth, and bring my
finger to my tongue.  The next morning,
I felt my husband’s body on me
crushing me sweetly like a weight laid heavy on some
soft thing, some fruit, holding me
hard to this world.  Yes the tears came
out like juice and sugar from the fruit—
the skin thins, and breaks, and rips, there are
laws on this earth, and we live by them.



Yes, there are laws on this earth, and we all have to live by them.  Gravity.  Relativity.  Motion.  We don’t even think about most of these universal laws.  They just occur naturally.

There are other, unwritten laws, as well.  Don’t eat yellow snow.  Don’t shit where you eat.  (That was one of my dad’s favorites.).  Don’t vote for a convicted felon to be President of the United States and expect it to turn out well.  You get the idea.  It’s all common sense.

Kids are supposed to grow up, move out, and create lives for themselves.  That’s one of the laws of parenting, as I’ve been saying these last couple weeks.  Mothers and fathers eventually work themselves out of a job.  They become outmoded.

My daughter spread her wings today, and all I can do as her father is gaze up at the heavens and watch her fly.  And be happy.  Can’t say that I’ve reached the “happy” part of that formula yet.  I’m sort of stuck in the “where did all the time go?” phase.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m thrilled for my daughter and her significant other.  She’s had this doctor dream since she was a young girl, and seeing her dreams come true is thrilling.  I’m just struggling with the whole letting go.  (It seems like Olds is having a hard time with letting go of her father in today’s poem, as well.)  

Letting go has never been my strong suit.  I don’t like change.  Hate it when Walmart rearranges its merchandise.  I reread favorite novels because then I know what to expect, plot-wise.  I rewatch movies and TV shows for the same reason.  As the husband of one of my best friends once said, “There’s nothing wrong with sameness.”

But, today, sameness doesn’t cut it.  I have to let go.  My daughter has always been smarter than me and more together than me.  I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, but she has known the answer to that question since she was about eight or nine years old.  That doesn’t make this process any easier.

I’m sure, when my wife, son, and I get in the car tomorrow morning to head home, there are going to be tears shed.  (I think that’s a law on this earth, as well.)  This parting will be a first for all of us.  I thought it was bad when she moved just a half mile away.  Now, she’s going to be almost six hours away.  I predict weeping for a good portion of the return trip.  (Another law.)  Lots of difficult feelings to sort through.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about feelings and fears for tonight, based on the following prompt from July 9 of The Daily Poet:

This exercise is inspired by the poetry of Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of At the Drive-in Volcano (Tupelo Press, 2007).  Write a poem about one or more phobias.  Do you have alliumphobia, a fear of garlic?  Or how about enetophobia, a fear of pins?  You can access a complete list of phobias at:  www.phobialist.com.  For inspiration, take a peek at Aimee’s wonderful poem “Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia,” published at www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2004/01/hippopotomonstrosequippedaliophobia.html

Phobophobia

by: Martin Achatz

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
               — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I discovered I am afraid of heights
on top of the Empire State Building
on a cold March afternoon, which is like
finding out you’re afraid of water
by booking passage on the Lusitania
or realizing clowns terrify you
when you enroll in Ringling Bros.
Clown College.  FDR tried to comfort
shanty towns and soup kitchens
by ranking fear as Public Enemy
Number One, before Pretty Boy Floyd
and John Dillinger.  This morning, 
I’m scheduled for a root canal.  When I say
those two words, friends wince,
look at me as if I’ve just announced
a terminal diagnosis.  I see it 
written on their faces—capital “F”
fear—even though I’m the one
facing shots and drilling.  Perhaps
it’s contagious, like whooping
cough or measles.  Soon we’ll be
in the middle of a global fear 
pandemic, everyone sheltering 
in place to avoid black cats, broken
mirrors, cracks in the sidewalk.  
We’ll sit at home, binge Tiger King
again, get all nostalgic for when
that fat spider in the bathtub was
the only thing we had to worry about.



Tuesday, July 8, 2025

July 8, 2025: “Wonder,” Reality, “Good Humor”

Sometimes, the mind tricks you.

If you’ve been reading this blog in the last few days, you know that I’m dealing with many mixed emotions regarding my daughter’s imminent departure for medical school.  I’ve known this was her plan for quite some time.  Children grow up.  They move out and away.  And, hopefully, they find happiness and love.

Yet, my mind was playing a trick on me.  I didn’t really accept that my daughter was leaving until I stopped by her apartment tonight and saw her living room floor filled with packed boxes.  Shit got real for me then.  The best analogy I can come up with is reading about Pearl Harbor your whole life and then visiting the Arizona Memorial in Honolulu.  Gazing down into the water at the Arizona, which still contains the bodies of over 900 sailors and Marines, changes you.  You walk away with the weight of that moment in history sitting on your shoulders.

With wonder last night, I realized that my little girl (while she was always be my little girl) is a young woman now, independent, smart, and full of hope.  She knows what she wants, and she’s chasing it like a kid chasing an ice cream truck on a hot summer day.

Sharon Olds writes about wonder . . . 

Wonder

by: Sharon Olds

When she calls to tell me my father is dying
today or tomorrow, I walk down the hall
and feel that my mouth has fallen open
and my eyes are staring.  The planet of his head
swam above my crib, I did not understand it.
His body came toward me in the lake over the agates,
the hair of his chest lifting like root-hairs—
I saw it and I did not understand it.
He lay behind beveled-glass doors, beside
the cut-crystal decanter, its future
shards in upright bound sheaves.
He sat by his pool, not meeting our eyes,
his irises made of some boiled-down, viscous
satiny matter, undiscovered.
When he sickened, he began to turn to us,
when he sank down, he shined.  I lowered my
mouth to the glistening tureen of his face
and he titled himself toward me, a dazzling 
meteor dropping down into the crib,
and now he is going to die.  I walk down the
hall, face to face with it,
as if it were a great heat.
I feel like one of the shepherd children
when the star came down onto the roof.
But I am used to it, I stand in familiar
astonishment.  If I had dared to imagine
trading, I might have wished to trade
places with anyone raised on love,
but how would anyone raised on love
bear this death?



It’s a sobering little poem.  A grown child confronting the imminent death of a parent.  Most every person alive on this planet has faced or will face this experience.  It’s inevitable.  The only thing more inevitable than death is Republican stupidity.  

These kinds of huge, life-altering events fill me with wonder.  No poem or novel or prayer or essay or blog post can prepare you for it.  When my sister Sally died, I walked around in a state of wonder and sadness for weeks.  The cacophony of emotions was deafening in my head—each one beautiful and terrible at the same time.

I’m probably not explaining myself all that well.  You see, grief can be ugly and debilitating.  However, the experience of deep grief also means that you’ve experienced deep love.  That’s something to celebrate, and it uplifts and carries you through the darkness.  And that is wonder.

I’m on the cusp of grief right now.  I’m also on the cusp of joy for my daughter.  Those two emotions are not mutually exclusive.  They can coexist.  At the moment, grief is in the driver’s seat for me.  Ask me in a couple weeks, and I may have a different answer for you.

That’s my current reality, and like all realities, it’s complicated.  Nobody promised me sunshine and roses every day.  In fact, nobody promised that I’d be around today or tomorrow or next week.  It’s about embracing life fully, in all its beautiful ugliness, with every breath you take.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about a memory from his daughter’s childhood.  It’s based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Good Humor Ice Cream Truck:  Freewrite on this topic for five minutes.  In your freewrite, try to describe your childhood memories of summer evenings using all five of your senses.  What did the cooling asphalt smell like?  How did it feel on your tongue to lick the wooden Strawberry Shortcake stick?  Write a poem that allows the reader to experience your youthful memories,

Good Humor

by: Martin Achatz

My young daughter, body tan, sleek
as an otter, chased that sound
through our neighborhood on steamy
July days, dollar bills wadded
like used Kleenexes in her fist,
the music box chimes cutting
the stagnant air, windless trees,
as if a flock of arctic terns was
blown off course into our summer
and was now singing laments for
missing glaciers and ice and sea.
I see her now, disappearing around
the corner, auburn hair flashing
like a fox tail in the sun, and I know
she won’t slow down until she finds
that penguin nesting ground where
night never ends and a vanilla
moon rides in her hand, waning
under the shadow of her hungry tongue.



Monday, July 7, 2025

July 7, 2025: “The Race,” Rushing, “Feeding the Hungry”

There are times when we all rush.  Sometimes, it’s for doctor’s appointments.  Job interviews.  Classes.  Airplane flights.  Movies that started five minutes ago.  Or simply to escape a world that’s too fast or cruel or Republican.

Sharon Olds writes about racing to see her dying father . . . 

The Race

by: Sharon Olds

When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk,
bought a ticket, ten minutes later
they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors
had said my father would not live through the night
and the flight was cancelled. A young man
with a dark brown moustache told me
another airline had a nonstop
leaving in seven minutes. See that
elevator over there, well go
down to the first floor, make a right, you'll
see a yellow bus, get off at the
second Pan Am terminal, I
ran, I who have no sense of direction
raced exactly where he'd told me, a fish
slipping upstream deftly against
the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those
bags I had thrown everything into
in five minutes, and ran, the bags
wagged me from side to side as if
to prove I was under the claims of the material,
I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast,
I who always go to the end of the line, I said
Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said
Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then
run. I lumbered up the moving stairs,
at the top I saw the corridor,
and then I took a deep breath, I said
goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort,
I used my legs and heart as if I would
gladly use them up for this,
to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the
bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed
in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of
women running, their belongings tied
in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my
long legs he gave me, my strong
heart I abandoned to its own purpose,
I ran to Gate 17 and they were
just lifting the thick white
lozenge of the door to fit it into
the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not
too rich, I turned sideways and
slipped through the needle's eye, and then
I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet
was full, and people's hair was shining, they were
smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a
mist of gold endorphin light,
I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,
in massive relief. We lifted up
gently from one tip of the continent
and did not stop until we set down lightly on the
other edge, I walked into his room
and watched his chest rise slowly
and sink again, all night
I watched him breathe.



Rushing to a dying parent’s bedside is understandable.  I would have run like Olds to catch that flight, without a doubt.  I don’t like being late for anything.  My parents taught me that, if I’m five minutes early, I’m already ten minutes late.  Thus, I always arrive about a half hour early for important events/obligations.  It’s just the way I’m wired.

It doesn’t help that I’m the youngest in my family of nine siblings.  If I sat down late for dinner when I was a kid, chances are the best food would be gone.  I’d get stuck with peas instead of mac and cheese.  Not a good tradeoff.  

That’s right.  Food insecurity fueled my perpetual promptness. Also, my diabetes kind of makes it imperative that I adhere to meal times pretty strictly.  Extreme low blood sugars tend to make me feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.  It takes about five or so hours for me to fully recover.

It’s Monday, after a three-day weekend.  Sliding back into my work schedule was challenging.  Zero motivation.  Zero energy.  Yet, I plugged along and got lots of things accomplished.  I don’t want this week to really rush by.  On Saturday, we have to drive downstate to help our daughter relocate for medical school.  The faster this week goes, the sooner I have to say goodbye to her.  Therefore, I’m hoping this week goes by s . . . l . . . o . . . w . . . l . . . y . . .

But time is so relative.  Today has felt like a wild ride on the back of a tortoise.  As the week progresses, I’m sure things will speed up.  Summer in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan always seems like a fever dream.  It’s over before you even have a chance to hit the beach.  Now that it’s past July 4th, there’s a lull—no big events to anticipate in the coming months.  Pretty soon, classes will resume at the university, and, from there on, it’s a quick sprint to winter.

And the older I get, the quicker life seems to be fly by.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about the power of food to slow things down, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1908, food writer MFK Fisher was born.  In honor of her birthday, write a poem in which a specific food or foods, or a recipe, figures.  Scan a cookbook and make a list of verbs that have to do with cooking/baking:  truss, whip, broil, braise, beat.  Aim to include some of these verbs in your poem.

Feeding the Hungry

by: Martin Achatz

I’ve seen friends do it—rummage
around in fridge, freezer, pantry,
collect improbable pairings of ingredients:
quinoa and Cheerios, leftover hotdogs,
kumquats, cheese slices and kale,
always kale because nobody likes it.
They combine, marinate, broil,
sautée these morsels into repast,
and we gather, sometimes around dinner
tables, often in kitchens where
pans simmer and skillets sweat,
use Fritos to scoop something
that resembles guacamole into our mouths,
wash it down with glasses of boxed red wine.
It’s almost Biblical to witness:  Jesus
feeding the five thousand with Ritz
crackers and a tin of sardines.
Nobody goes away hungry.  In fact,
most of us bring home plates piled
with leftovers of the leftovers, starters
for our next impromptu feast, sort of
the way I gather words, lines, images
from journal scraps, dump them all
into a pot with hardy chicken
stock, make a roux that could end
up as the base for a good meal, us
with arms around each other’s shoulders,
feeling as if the tops of our heads have
been taken off by each savory stanza.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

July 6, 2025: “The Lifting,” Quiet Day, “Christmas Anthropology”

People are pretty unknowable.  I’ve lived on this planet for many, many decades, and I’m surrounded by individuals who love me dearly, but even they don’t know everything about me.  Citizen Kane gets it right—nobody knows what my Rosebud is.

Sometimes, we keep secrets that are too embarrassing or too personal to share with others.  Other times, those secrets are gifts that carry only private significance.  (Nobody in Charles Foster Kane’s life knew that a sled was his most prized possession.)

Poets, in their enigmatic ways, share secrets.  We tell the truth, but, as Emily Dickinson said, we tell it slant.

Sharon Olds shares a secret . . . 

The Lifting

by: Sharon Olds

Suddenly my father lifted up his nightie, I
turned my head away but he cried out
Shar!, my nickname, so I turned and looked.
He was sitting in the high cranked-up bed with the
gown up, around his neck,
to show me the weight he had lost. I looked
where his solid ruddy stomach had been
and I saw the skin fallen into loose
soft hairy rippled folds
lying in a pool of folds
down at the base of his abdomen,
the gaunt torso of a big man
who will die soon. Right away
I saw how much his hips are like mine,
the lengthened, white angles, and then
how much his pelvis is shaped like my daughter's,
a chambered whelk-shell hollowed out,
I saw the folds of skin like something
poured, a thick batter, I saw
his rueful smile, the cast-up eyes as he
shows me his old body, he knows
I will be interested, he knows I will find him
appealing. If anyone had ever told me
I would sit by him and he would pull up his nightie
and I’d look at his naked body, at the thick 
bud of his glans in all that
sparse hair, look at him
in affection and uneasy wonder
I would not have believed it. But now I can still
see the tiny snowflakes, white and
night-blue, on the cotton of the gown as it
rises the way we were promised at death it would rise,
the veils would fall from our eyes, we would know everything.



Family members share intimate secrets.  Near the end of his life, my father suffered from dementia.  Always a very proud, independent man, he struggled with the diminishments he had to endure, including losing control of his bladder and bowels.  One of the only times I ever saw him naked was when I helped my sister clean him up after he soiled himself just a few weeks before he ended up in a nursing home.  

That’s what Olds is talking about in today’s poem—those kinds of naked truths we carry around.

It was a quiet day after a pretty busy holiday weekend.  It was around 20 degrees cooler than yesterday, which made me tired.  After a couple days of near 90-degree weather, it was welcome relief.  I napped, read, went for a couple walks, and grocery shopped.

My secret tonight is that I’m not looking forward to the upcoming week.  On Saturday, as I’ve said, my daughter and her significant other are moving downstate.  While I’m excited for her, my father heart is breaking a little bit.  I know, this time next week, I’m going to be an emotional mess.  Letting go is a part of parenting.  I’m well aware of this fact.  That doesn’t make it any easier.

I don’t want to make this separation any harder on my daughter, so I’m going to put on a happy face.  Try not to cry too much.  For close to a quarter century, I’ve been her protector and provider and advisor.  That’s all going to be gone, and I’m going to have to figure out my new role as a father.  It’s a tale as old as time, as Angela Lansbury sang.

If you are so inclined, say a few prayers for my daughter this week.  It’s a big change in her life.  Maybe she’s feeling doubts right now.  Having some misgivings.  Those are the kinds of things we all keep secret.  But, this father knows that she’s going to change the world.

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

Open up a box of stored holiday decorations or visit a holiday website (Oriental Trading has an extensive online catalog), and study the nativity tablecloths, candles, snowman mugs, and menorahs.  If you don’t want to think about the holidays in July, open a catch-all drawer and take out a few odd items.  Write a poem in the voice of a future anthropologist attempting to make sense of these “artifacts.”

Christmas Anthropology

by: Martin Achatz

I want to surround myself with Christmas
cards when I die, the way those old
pharaohs packed food and slaves and gold
cats in their tombs after they exited
the fleshy miracles of their bodies.  When
anthropologists unearth my grave, 
they’ll find glittery stars, Charlie Brown,
Jimmy Stewart hugging Donna Reed,
the Grinch grinning like Osiris when the Nile
overflowed.  Perhaps the anthropologists
will use some Rosetta Stone to decipher
why that figure is half-boy/half pink rabbit.
Why that caribou’s snout glows red
as Sekhmet’s thirsty tongue.  Or why
that snowman’s eyes remind them
of the burnished black face of Anubis.
Maybe it will take centuries to decode
the mystery of my burial site, new
software to unscramble the Hallmark
complexities of my artifacts.  Then, one day,
when some eager researcher unbinds
the Gordian knot of me, they will install
a plaque above the entrance to my
exhibit in the British Museum of Natural History:
You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!



Saturday, July 5, 2025

July 5, 2025: “His Stillness,” Family Members, “Pizza Party”

I have a confession:  my family (parents and siblings) never really went all out for Independence Day.  Generally, we didn’t go to parades.  I’m pretty sure my brothers blew up things with firecrackers, and I have memories of my sisters taking me to see some fireworks displays.  That’s about it.

But we did do barbecues.  Food was a thing that my family always did well.  Hotdogs.  Bratwurst.  Chicken.  Supplemented by watermelon and corn on the cob.  Some of my fondest memories are family meals, especially around holidays.

Sharon Olds writes about her father’s dignity . . . 

His Stillness

by: Sharon Olds

The doctor said to my father, "You asked me
to tell you when nothing more could be done.
That's what I'm telling you now." My father
sat quite still, as he always did,
especially not moving his eyes. I had thought
he would rave if he understood he would die,
wave his arms and cry out. He sat up,
thin, and clean, in his clean gown,
like a holy man. The doctor said,
"There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you." My father said,
"Thank you." And he sat, motionless, alone,
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
I sat beside him. This was my father.
He had known he was mortal. I had feared they would have to
tie him down. I had not remembered
he had always held still and kept quiet to bear things,
the liquor a way to keep still. I had not
known him. My father had dignity. At the
end of his life his life began
to wake in me.



We always swear we will be different than our parents.  Raise our kids differently.  Be more successful.  Retire earlier.  Travel more.  Some people don’t even want to look like their mothers or fathers.

Yet, when I look in the mirror these days, I see my mother’s and father’s faces.  No getting around heredity.  I think I look a lot more like my mom than my dad, and I inherited her calmer disposition, as well.  My dad could be a hothead.  My mom, on the other hand, was always cool and thoughtful.  (When she lost her temper, you really didn’t want to be around her.  I think I take after her in that respect, as well.)

Around holidays, I think a lot about family members who are no longer around to celebrate with us.  My faithful disciples know that, in the last ten years or so, I’ve lost quite a few people in my life—a best friend, brother, two sisters, and both my parents.  The kind of nostalgia I’m experiencing today is pretty normal, I would guess.  Big holidays conjure up big feelings.

I did attend a parade this morning with my wife and kids.  There was even an Elvis impersonator on a float.  Now, I know we were supposed to boycott parades this July 4th in protest of the Republican apocalypse happening in Washington, D.C.  Nothing about the United States at the moment makes me proud to be a citizen of this country.  Yet, I do celebrate the freedom I have today.  (This time next year, I may have a different opinion.  Check back in 2026.)

I know that our country is incredibly flawed.  We live on stolen land in a society built on the backs of African American slaves.  Not really a great way to start this grand experiment in democracy.  However, I’ve also believed that we can be better.  Do better.  And I’m holding onto that hope right now.  I celebrated today what we CAN be as a nation, not what we currently are.  

The fireworks scheduled for tonight were rained out, so, instead, I went to the laundromat to wash some clothes and work on a new poem.  It’s about nine o’clock at night right now and still raining intermittently, but that’s not stopping our neighbors from disturbing the peace with some bottle rockets, firecrackers, and mortars.  That doesn’t bother me, though.  They’re out there having a good time.  Celebrating the freedom that still exists in the United States.  For now.

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

It’s the birthday of Jean Cocteau, surrealist poet and playwright.  In honor of his birthday, write a surrealist poem today.  One way to do this is to begin with a 5-minute automatic writing session.  Write as fast as you can without thinking logically or worrying about making sense.  When you are finished with your timed writing, read it over and highlight passages that interest you.  Using these passages as triggers, continue writing fast.  Once you’ve done this, shape this raw and strange material into a poem.

Pizza Party

by: Martin Achatz

What do ghosts like on their pizzas?
Does my friend, Helen, want just
cheese, unadorned, plain as yoga?
My brother, Kevin, he loves ham,
even though he claimed to be vegan
when he was alive.  Sally is always 
particular, doesn’t want anything 
besides pepperoni to surprise
her tongue with too much heat or salt.
Rose, my other sister, eats everything with
the abandon of a flock of seagulls.  Dad
is meat and potatoes, wants as much
pork and beef and bacon as possible
on his slices, as if he grew up in a Russian
gulag with only one bowl of cabbage
broth to fuel his daily labors in the fields.
Mom?  She always eats after everyone
else, cobbling together her dinner
from turkey necks and sweet potato
skins.  Her pizza will be whatever
is left in the greasy boxes after the rest
of us are ready to nap or go for
a long, long walk.  That’s her now,
gliding around the table, asking
if everybody has had enough 
to eat, her ghostly stomach glowing
like a stove burner that’s just been 
used to fry up a skillet of scrambled eggs.



Friday, July 4, 2025

July 4, 2025: "The Glass," Independence Day, "July 4th Apologia in the Time of Trump"

It is Independence Day in the United States.  Again, for my non-U.S. disciples, I will explain that, on July 4, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence in which we declared our freedom from British rule.  So, pretty much we rejected royal governance.  Translation:  no kings for this country.

This year, July 4th has a different vibe for me.  It feels as if the country that I know and love (for all its flaws, and there are many) is dying right before my eyes, every minute of every day.

Sharon Olds writes about her dying father . . . 

The Glass

by: Sharon Olds

I think of it with wonder now,
the glass of mucus that stood on the table
in front of my father all weekend. The tumor
is growing fast in his throat these days,
and as it grows it sends out pus
like the sun sending out flares, those pouring
tongues. So my father has to gargle, cough,
spit a mouth full of thick stuff
into the glass every ten minutes or so,
scraping the rim up his lower lip
to get the last bit off his skin, then he
sets the glass down, on the table, and it
sits there, like a glass of beer foam,
shiny and faintly golden, he gargles and
coughs and reaches for it again,
and gets the heavy sputum out,
full of bubbles and moving around like yeast–
he is like a god producing food from his own mouth.
He himself can eat nothing, anymore,
just a swallow of milk, sometimes,
cut with water, and even then
it cannot, always, get past the tumor,
and the next time the saliva comes up
it is ropey, he has to roll it in his throat
a minute to form it and get it up and dis-
gorge the oval globule into the 
glass of phlegm, which stood there all day and
filled slowly with the compound globes and I would
empty it, and it would fill again, 
and shimmer there on the table until 
the room seemed to turn around it
in an orderly way, a model of the solar system
turning around the sun,
my father the dark earth that used to
lie at the center of the universe, now 
turning with the rest of us
around his death, luminous glass of 
spit on the table, these last mouthfuls of his life.




Yes, death brings people together.  Doesn't matter what or who is dying.  I've been in a few rooms when members of my family were breathing their last breaths.  It's a difficult and sacred moment--full of sadness and gratitude, saying goodbye and thankyou at the same time.

Will this be the last time the United States will commemorate independence and freedom on July 4th?  I'm not sure.  Next year, will we all be forced to attend goose-stepping, book-burning parades and rallies?  I don't know.  At least to me, I don't feel quite as independent and free as I did last year on this day.  Perhaps I am witnessing the death of democracy in the United States.

Typically, I would attend at least two parades and a fireworks display on Independence Day.  Not this year.  Instead, I hosted a barbecue this evening for friends and family as a kind of send-off for my daughter and her significant other (they will be moving downstate in about a week for my daughter to attend medical school).  So, we served up standard July 4th cuisine--hotdogs and bratwurst and watermelon and pasta salad and delicious, chocolaty desserts.  We told family stories.  Played croquet.  Loved each other.

I'm trying not to get all maudlin about my daughter moving away.  It's difficult, though.  My job as a father these last 24 years has been to protect her, keep her out of harm's way as much as possible.  Now, I'm not sure what my job duties will be, and she's inheriting a country that seems less kind, less loving, less free.

So, you'll excuse me if I don't stand up with my hand over my heart this evening.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight based on the following prompt from July 2 of The Daily Poet:

Happy birthday to Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska!  Szymborska, born in Western Poland and lifelong resident of Krakow, was known not only for her fiercely political poems but for revealing the profound truths in the everyday experience of living.  In her honor, today's assignment is to write a poem of apology.  Don't apologize for minor things, like forgetting to close the windows during a rainstorm; apologize to abstractions such as hope, necessity, chance, and loyalty.  For further inspiration, read Syzmborska's poem "Under a Certain Little Star," which can be found through an Internet search.

July 4th Apologia in the Time of Trump

by: Martin Achatz

I'm sorry to compassion for not having
          an extra bologna sandwich and pillow.
I'm also sorry to justice for taking
          a nap this afternoon.
Freedom, please don't hold it against me
          if I forget your name.
And, common sense, you and I both know
          that throwing salt over your shoulder
          won't change any outcome or mind.  
Laughter, I've known you a long time, but
          I've blocked your texts
          until you come up with new jokes.
Independence, I'm sorry I mowed my lawn
          so the rabbits have to visit
          my neighbor's yard when they get hungry.
My condolences, pride, for leaving my shoes
          in the middle of the living room
          floor to trip over.
But I can't say I'm sorry, patriotism, 
          for not inviting you to tonight's barbecue.
You see, I prefer to hang with
          poets who don't mind sharing
          the last hotdog on the grill
          with the migrant worker next door.
Because everyone should know
          what liberty tastes like.