May 18: Danez Smith, "a note on the body," Potential

Once more, I find myself angry and sad on a night of senseless loss.  I'm not going to go on and on about the need for sensible gun legislation.  Or the cowards in Congress and the White House.  I'm just going to focus on what could have been.  All the potential. 

Saint Marty sends this poem to all the young lives in Santa Fe . . .

a note on the body

by:  Danez Smith

your body still your body

your arms still wing

your mouth still a gun

          you tragic, misfiring bird

you have all you need to be a hero

don’t save the world, save yourself

you worship too much & you worship too much

when prayer doesn’t work:      dance, fly, fire

this is your hardest scene

when you think the whole sad thing might end

but you live      oh, you live

everyday you wake you raise the dead

          everything you do is a miracle

January 13: Danez Smith, "dream where every black person is standing by the ocean"

You know, it's difficult living in the United States right now.

Yesterday, all of the news organizations were covering a story about Donald Trump discussing immigration, and he characterized Haiti and El Salvador and some African nations as "shithole countries."

Donald Trump and his followers do not speak for me or my family or my friends or my country.  He is an anomaly who, unfortunately, is in a position of great power at the moment.  He's also an illiterate racist.

Saint Marty thinks it is time to remove Donald Trump.  #trumpistheshithole

dream where every black person is standing by the ocean

by:  Danez Smith

& we say to her
          what have you done with our kin you swallowed?

& she says
          that was ages ago, you've drunk them by now

& we don't understand

& then one woman, skin dark as all of us
          walks to the water's lip, shouts Emmett, spits

&, surely, a boy begins
         crawling his way to shore 

January 12: Love Poem, Danez Smith, "bare"

Tonight, I need a love poem.  It has been a difficult week, full of loss and tragedy.  Tomorrow evening, I will go to a funeral for a young man of 23 who was in love and about to become a father for the first time.  My friend, the young man's mother, was about to become a grandmother for the first time.

Sometimes, all you can do in life is hang on, hope for someone who understands.  Someone to hold you.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the possibility of love in darkness.

bare

by:  Danez Smith

for you i'd send my body to battle
my body, let my blood sing of tearing

itself apart, hollow cords
of white knights' intravenous joust.

love, i want & barely know how
to do much else.  don't speak to me

about raids you could loose on me
the clan of rebel cells who thirst

to watch their home burn.  love
let me burn if it means you

& i have one night with no barrier
but skin, this isn't about danger

but about faith, about being wasted
on your name, if love is a room

of broken glass, leave me to dance
until my feet are memory.

if love is a hole wide enough
to be God's mouth, let me plunge

into that holy dark & forget
the color of light.  love, stay

in me until our bodies forget
what divides us, until your hands

are my hands & your blood
is my blood & your name

is my name & his & his

January 11: News from the Feegees, Envy, Full Bottle of Gin

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland- no fire at all- the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind- not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner.

"My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty."

"Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?"

"Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't- he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare."

"The devil he does," says I. "Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?"

"He'll be here afore long," was the answer.

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this "dark complexioned" harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on.

Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, "That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees."

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth- the bar- when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island.

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously.

It's a cold night, in the passage above and outside my windows.  There's no fire for Ishmael to warm himself in the Spouter-Inn.  He must rely on boiling tea and his dinner of meat, potatoes, and dumplings to provide any relief from winter.  When the crew members of the Grampus enter a little while later, they are shagged with icicles and head straight to the bar for the heat of some alcohol. 

I'm once again sitting in my office at the university, and there's a doozy of a storm blowing outside.  The rain and fog of this morning have transformed into driving ice pellets and ribs of frozen slush.  My daughter and son got out of school early this afternoon because of the weather.  And here I sit, reading about hot tea and hot food, sort of envying Ishmael his small reliefs of warmth.

It strikes me that I partake in envy a lot.  I envy full-time university professors because I'm a contingent professor.  I envy young people walking down the street because they are young and have their whole lives ahead of them.  Looking over at my office-mate's desk, I envy its lack of piles and empty pop cans and stray paperclips.

Envy is pretty seductive.  It can make you feel righteous ("That bastard doesn't deserve that!") and unappreciated ("I work twice as hard as she does!") and weirdly superior ("I am so much better than him at teaching/writing/basketball/insert-your-own-skill-here!").  Envy makes you feel better about yourself by feeling worse about yourself.  It's like having a bad day, going home, drinking a full bottle of gin, and then expecting to feel better about yourself in the morning.

It doesn't quite work that way.  Envy allows a person to sit back and wait to be successful.  For example, if I tell myself that I'm already a better poet than, say, Danez Smith (I'm not!), then all I have to do is wait for the rest of the world to catch up with me.  I'm already great.  Everybody just needs to recognize my greatness.

And, of course, envy also completely dismisses the struggles and pains of other people.  If I envy Danez Smith's success, I'm overlooking all of the things he's had to overcome in his life as a gay African American male.  Nobody's existence is perfect, despite power or money or talent or fame.  Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime.  Emily Dickinson published fewer than a dozen poems while she was alive.  To envy them, I must also envy their mental and physical illnesses.  The homophobia and racism.

Nobody knows my inner landscape.  I am the Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  Yet, I'm also incredibly insecure with my poems.  Nothing I write ever seems good enough.  I received a teaching award in December.  Yet, when I read my student evaluations from last semester, I feel like a complete failure because of two or three negative comments.  I overthink and beat myself up, all the time.

My point tonight is that we need to treat each other (and ourselves) with more kindness.  Not begrudge peoples' successes.  Not rejoice in their failures.  If someone is warm and you're cold, make yourself some tea.  If someone is grief-stricken and you're joyful, share some of your happiness. 

And remember, envy is a small emotion that makes you even smaller.

Saint Marty is thankful for the cold he feels today.  The sadness and the happiness, as well.

January 11: Obsessing, Danez Smith, "it won't be a bullet"

Sometimes, I obsess about the stupidest things.  Books and clothes and cars and bills.  I obsess about this blog.  I don't feel complete until I publish my two posts every day.  I worry that I'll be missed or lose readers.

Tonight, I'm obsessing about a surgical procedure that I'm going to have on Monday.  It's a routine thing.  Nothing life-threatening.  Yet, here I sit, worrying and what-iffing.  It's one of my many character flaws.  I overthink everything.

My friend losing her son in a fire on Monday reminds me of how insignificant most of my worries and obsessions are.  Books don't really matter.  Clothes and cars, ditto.  If I don't publish a blog post today, the world will not end.

Here is what Saint Marty knows tonight:  all the people he loves are safe and happy.

it won't be a bullet

by:  Danez Smith

becoming a little moon--brightwarm in me one night.
thank god.  i can go quietly.  the doctor will explain death
& i'll go practice.

in the catalogue of ways to kill a black boy, find me
buried between the pages stuck together
with red stick.  ironic, predictable.  look at me.

i'm not the kind of black man who dies on the news.
i'm the kind who grows thinner & thinner & thinner
until light outweighs us, & we become it, family
gathered around my barely body telling me to go
toward myself.

January 10: At Sea, Danez Smith, "last summer of innocence"

I'm still a little at sea emotionally about the news of the death of my friend's son.  Don't know how to approach it, except through poetry. 

You'll forgive Saint Marty if he doesn't find something to be thankful for tonight.

last summer of innocence

by:  Danez Smith

there was Noella who knew i was sweet
but cared enough to bother with me

that summer when nobody died
except for boys from other schools

but not us, for which our mothers
lifted his holy name & even let us skip

some Sundays to go to the park
or be where we had no business being

talking to girls who had no interest
in us, who flocked to their new hips

dumb birds we were, nectar high
& singing all around them, preening

waves all day, white beater & our best
basketball shorts, the flyest shoes

our mamas could buy hot, line-up fresh
from someone's porch, someone's uncle

cutting heads round the corner cutting
eyes at the mothers of girls i pretended

to praise.  i showed off for girls
but stared at my stupid, boney crew.

i knew the word for what i was
but couldn't think it.  i played football

& believed its salvation, its antidote.
when Noella n 'nem didn't come out

& instead we turned our attention
to our wild legs, narrow arms & pig skin

i spent all day in my brother's arms
& wanted that to be forever--

boy after boy after boy after boy
pulling me down into the dirt.

January 9: Things that Make You Angry, Danez Smith, "dear white america"

There is much that is wrong with the United States.  Gender inequality.  Racial inequality.  This morning, I listened to a report on NPR about the epidemic of sexual assault against people with intellectual disabilities.  A person with an intellectual disability, the report said, is SEVEN TIMES more likely to be sexually assaulted.

Those kinds of statistics make me wonder about the human race.  Those kind of statistics also make me realize how important it is to speak up about injustices.  To stay silent in the face of bigotry and hatred makes me just as guilty as, say, Paul Ryan or Donald Trump in perpetuating what is wrong with my country and the world.

Therefore, I am going to keep talking about poor people losing their health insurance.  Black men being shot in the street.  Transgender students being forced to feel like outcasts in their schools.  Rich people getting richer while children are dying of hunger and disease.  Refugees being deported.  These things should make you angry.

They make Saint Marty angry.

dear white america

by:  Danez Smith

i've left Earth in search of darker planets, a solar system revolving too near a black hole.  I've left in search of a new God.  i do not trust the God you have given us.  my grandmother's hallelujah is only outdone by the fear she nurses every time the blood-fat summer swallows another child who used to sing in the choir.  take your God back.  though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent.  i want the fate of Lazarus fro Renisha, want Chucky, Bo, Meech, Trayvon, Sean & Jonylah risen three days after their entombing, their ghost re-gifted flesh & blood, their flesh & blood re-gifted their children.  I've left Earth.  I am equal parts sick of your go back to Africa & i just don't see race.  neither did the poplar tree.  we did not build your boats (though we did leave a trail of kin to guide us home).  we did not build your prisons (though we did & we fill them too).  we did not ask to be part of your America (though are we not America?  her joints brittle & dragging a ripped gown through Oakland?).  i can't stand your ground.  i'm sick of calling your recklessness the law.  each night, i count my brothers.  & in the morning, when some do not survive to be counted, i count the holes they leave.  i reach for black folks & touch only air.  your master magic trick, America.  now he's breathing.  now he don't.  abra-cadaver.  white bread voodoo.  sorcery you claim not to practice, hand my cousin a pistol to do your work.  i tried, white people.  i tried to love you, but you spent my brother's funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones.  you took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after firl after sweet boi & ask why does it always have to be about race? because you make it that way!  because you put an asterisk on my sister's gorgeous face!  call her pretty (for a black girl)!  because black girls go missing without so much as a whisper of where?!  because there are no amber alerts for amber-skinned girls!  because Jordan boomed.  because Emmett whistled.  because Huey P. spoke.  because Martin preached.  because black boys can always be too loud to live.  because it's taken my papa's & my grandma's time, my father's time, my mother's time, my aunt's time, my uncle's time, my brother's & my sister's time . . . how much time do you want for your progress?  i've left Earth to find a place where my kin can be safe, where black people ain't but people the same color as the good, wet earth, until that means something, until then i bid you well, i bid you war, i bid you our lives to gamble with no more.  i'e left Earth & am touching everything you beg your telescopes to show you.  i'm giving the stars their right names.  & this life, this new story & history you cannot steal or sell or cast overboard or hang or beat or drown or own or redline or shackle or silence or cheat or choke or cover up or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or ruin

                                                                                                                     this, if only this one, is ours.

January 8: Poet of the Week, Danez Smith, "little prayer"

For Christmas, I received Danez Smith's collection of poems Don't Call Us Dead.  I've been sort of obsessed with it these last few weeks.  Reading parts of it in the morning for breakfast, with my chicken sandwich at lunch, before brushing my teeth at night.  It's absorbing and beautiful and frightening--sort of like living in Trump America right now.  Lots of ugliness, bigotry and hatred, but also pockets of love and tolerance and resistance.

Danez Smith is the Poet of the Week.

Saint Marty is thankful for his voice and healing words.

little prayer

by:  Danez Smith

let ruin end here

let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lions' cage
& find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing
& if not   let it be