February 22, 2025: “Blue Son,” Twin Brother, "Crossing the Delaware"

I've always been a person who hates wasting time.  Even sleep seems like a waste of time to me, though I know it's kind of essential for wellbeing.  In the hours that my eyes are closed and mind is idle, I could accomplish so much shit--write poems and books, grade papers, read, practice music, or exercise.  Yet, for some reason, my body tells me to shut down and recharge.

This penchant I have for overwork always catches up with me.  I can go for days/weeks on about three or four hours of sleep a night.  Then I crash big time.  I lie down and sleep for ten or 12 hours, or I get really, really sick, walking around like I'm a refugee from Night of the Living Dead.  

Sharon Olds writes about her sick son . . . 

Blue Son

by: Sharon Olds

All day with my blue son, 

sick again, the blue skin

under his eyes, blue tracing of his

veins over the bones of his chest

pronounced as the ribs of the dead, a gree

vein in his groin, blue-green as the

numbers on an arm.  His eloquent face

grows thinner each hour, the germs use him

like a soap.  Exhaustion strips him, and under each

layer of sweetness a deeper layer of

sweetness is bared.  His white skin,

so fine it has no grain, goes blue-

grey, and the burning blue of his eye

dies down and goes out, it is the faded cobalt on the

side of a dead bird.  He seems to 

withdraw to a great distance, as if he is

gone and looking back at me

without regret, patient, like an old

man who has just dug his grave and

waits at the edge, in the evening light,

naked, blue with cold, in terrible 

obedience.

As most of my faithful disciples know, I suffered for a few months recently with a major depressive episode.  (That's what my therapist diagnosed me with.)  All I wanted to do was sleep.  Wasn't hungry.  Couldn't concentrate.  Short-tempered.  Overwhelmed.  The list is endless.  On top of all that, I had motivation to complete only the barest of minimums.  I wasn't wasting time.  I was just hanging on, barely.

I'm thankfully coming out of that bluest of funks.  I've got more energy now for sure, but I still can't just put my head down on my pillow and fall asleep.  Instead, I write in my journal, read, fold clothes until I can barely keep my head up straight.  Then I flop into bed and let sleep conquer my overstimulated brain.

I've always dreamed of having a twin brother, as if that would solve all my guilt when I sleep.  Then I could rest while my twin brother continued on with my tasks.  (That sounds more like a clone, doesn’t it?). I once taught a student who had an identical twin brother.  When that student didn’t feel like coming to class, he’d send his brother instead.  The twin would listen, take notes, participate in class discussion.  (They’d obviously been doing this quite a while.). Eventually, I discovered their secret—I had them write something for me in-class, and their handwriting didn’t match.  

I often wonder if having a double would actually make me less tired or more tired.  Would I be tempted to work twice as hard to accomplish twice as much?  Knowing the way my mind works, that would probably be the outcome.  So, it would mean that I’d be twice as tired.

Saint Marty can’t win this battle.  He wrote a poem about having a twin, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1732, George Washington was born.  Head to the Metropolitan Museum website and study closely the painting titled Washington Crossing the Delaware.  Zoom in on General Washington's face, the icy Delaware, the billowing American flag, then write a poem that describes the scene and/or shares historical facts about the December 26, 1776 attack on the Hessians near Trenton, New Jersey.  If you do not have Internet access, use the portrait of Washing's face on the American dollar or quarter to inspire a poem about the ubiquity of Washington's face in American culture.

Crossing the Delaware

by: Martin Achatz

I always wanted a twin brother--

a person I didn't have to explain

myself to, who understood all

my cravings, desires--from Maria, 

the cute girl who sat next to me

in third grade, her black hair 

smelling like lemon, to Red

Sonja in her chainmail bikini,

cardinal mane, the Farrah

Fawcett of the Marvel crowd,

filling my dreams with hopes

of capture, ropes, manacles, 

stocks, a complete surrender.

My twin would know all this

without me saying single word, 

the way Washington in the painting 

seems to know what awaits him 

on the distant shore, eyes

aimed like canons, ready to fire

at anything blood-colored,

while the soldiers paddle and bale, 

desperate, as if they're crossing 

the River Styx , Charon 

as their commander.

In the boat, my twin and I whisper 

to each other, sibilant, breathless, 

assaulted by wind and rain,

in a current choked with ice,

not knowing what’s hiding 

in the darkness--a nest of Hessian 

bayonets ready to carve us up

like a Christmas goose, 

or a sexy barbarian with

a sword so sharp it could

split open the belly of sky

to deliver the infant sun

into the arms of morning,

her flashing metal breasts 

blinding us, her willing prisoners.

November 24: Haunted, Good Reads, "The Dead and the Living," New Cartoon

"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."

Scrooge is a haunted man.  He's haunted by his past.  He's haunted by his present.  He's haunted by his future.  He's haunted by his dead sister, Fan.  He's haunted by his lost love, Belle.  He's haunted by beggars and debtors, a whole army of the poor and destitute.  Scrooge has so many ghosts in his life that Marley and the Christmas Spirits are small potatoes, just four in a long line of specters.

The good read I'm going to tell you about today is my favorite collection of poems.  It's the book that made me decide to become a poet.  It's full of ghosts, from the poet's past, present, and future.  There are hosts of children and mothers, fathers and lovers.  There are ghosts of race riots and Marilyn Monroe.  It is one of the most haunted books I have ever read.

The book I'm talking about is Sharon Olds' The Dead and the Living, which won the 1984 National Book Critics' Circle Award for Poetry.  I first read this collection around 1990 or 1991, when I was a graduate student in college.  At the time, I was finishing my Master's in fiction writing, dreaming of being the next John Irving or Raymond Carver.  And then I took a class in Contemporary American Poetry, where I ran into this:

Photograph of the Girl

The girl sits on the hard ground,
the dry pan of Russia, in the drought
of 1921, stunned,
eyes closed, mouth open,
raw hot wind blowing
sand in her face.  Hunger and puberty are
taking her together.  She leans on a sack,
layers of clothes fluttering in the heat,
the new radius of her arm curved.
She cannot be not beautiful, but she is
starving.   Each day she grows thinner, and her bones
grow longer, porous.  The caption says
she is going to starve to death that winter
with millions of others.  Deep in her body
the ovaries let out her first eggs,
golden as drops of grain.

That is Sharon Olds.  She left me stunned, breathless.  I wanted to read more of her.  Each of her poems taught me something about myself and the kind of writer I wanted to be.  In a weird way, I wanted to be Sharon Olds, the way I wanted to be J. D. Salinger when I was a teenager.  Great writers do that to me.  The make me want to be better than I am.  I admired the raw honesty of Olds' poetry.  She didn't shy away from painful or private subjects.  She dissected them, in all their physical complexity.  The girl in the poem above is dying, and yet, within her body, is the golden promise of new life.  The juxtaposition of these two images is thrilling and heartbreaking.

About fifteen years after I first encountered Sharon Olds on the page, I had the privilege of attending a week-long writing workshop taught by her.  Every morning and afternoon, for two hours, I sat in a circle of poets and listened to Olds speak about the hard work of poetry.  She was the den mother to our group of Girl Scout poets.  It was one of the best writing experiences I have ever had.

I brought my copy of The Dead and the Living to that workshop with me.  At the end of our five days, I asked her to autograph it for me.  She didn't write anything special or earth-shattering in it.  It was a standard kind of autograph, "For Marty, with warm best wishes from Sharon, Big Sur, May 2005."  But it is proof that I met her, that she read my poetry and, for five days, knew who I was.

The Dead and the Living still haunts me.  Ghosts from my past and present haunt its pages.  I still want to be Sharon Olds.  I want her courage in choosing subject matter.  I want her gift of image and free association.  I want her ability to constantly surprise with each and every line of poetry she writes.

Saint Marty is going to let Sharon Olds have the last word tonight.

Blue Son

All day with my blue son,
sick again, the blue skin
under his eyes, blue tracing of his
veins over the bones of his chest
pronounced as the ribs of the dead, a green
vein in his groin, blue-green as the
numbers on an arm.  His eloquent face
grows thinner each hour, the germs use him
like a soap.  Exhaustion strips him, and under each
layer of sweetness a deeper layer of
sweetness is bared.  His white skin,
so fine it has no grain, goes blue-
grey, and the burning blue of his eye
dies down and goes out, it is the faded cobalt on the
side of a dead bird.  He seems to
withdraw to a great distance, as if he is
gone and looking back at me
without regret, patient, like an old
man who just dug his grave and
waits at the edge, in the evening light,
naked, blue with cold, in terrible
obedience.

Confessions of Saint Marty