January 21, 2025: "Possessed," A Bumpy Ride, "10 Versions of Hope"

Since yesterday afternoon, things in the United States have been a little . . . strange.  The Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America, and pronouns have been declared illegal.  Mount Denali has been rechristened Mount McKinley.  I could go on, but you get the idea.

It all feels strangely familiar.  We have now entered The Twilight Zone.  Again.

Sharon Olds can't escape her parents . . . 

Possessed

by: Sharon Olds

I have never left. Your bodies are before me 

at all times, in the dark I see 

the stars of your teeth in their fixed patterns 

wheeling over my bed, and the darkness 

is your hair, the fragrance of your two heads 

over my crib, your body-hairs 

which I count as God counts the feathers of the sparrows, 

one by one. And I never leave your sight, 

I can look in the eyes of any stranger and 

find you there, in the rich swimming 

bottom-of-the-barrel brown, or in the 

blue that reflects from the knife's blade, 

and I smell you always, the dead cigars and 

Chanel in the mink, and I can hear you coming, 

the slow stopped bear tread and the 

quick fox, her nails on the ice, 

and I dream the inner parts of your bodies, the 

coils of your bowels like smoke, your hearts 

opening like jaws, drops from your glands 

clinging to my walls like pearls in the night. 

You think I left—I was the child 

who got away, thousands of miles, 

but not a day goes past that I am not 

turning someone into you. 

Never having had you, I cannot let you go, I 

turn now, in the fear of this moment, 

into your soft stained paw 

resting on her breast, into your breast trying to 

creep away from under his palm— 

your gooseflesh like the shells of a thousand tiny snails, 

your palm like a streambed gone dry in summer.

Olds is constantly being reminded of her mother and father, through memory and the eyes of a stranger and the tread of feet in a hallway.  No matter how long it's been, where she is, her parents haunt her daily.

Now, the United States is going through the same thing.  It's almost as if the ghost of our drunk uncle has appeared for Thanksgiving dinner, and he immediately sits down at the table and starts talking about JFK conspiracy theories and denying the Holocaust.  Buckle your seatbelts, folks.  It's going to be a bumpy ride.

The only way to combat dread and darkness is by embracing hope, in whatever form it takes.  Tonight, I hosted an event at the library called Words & Music for Hope--local musicians singing hopeful songs, local poets reading hopeful poems.  It was a full house, and, by the end of the evening, people were smiling and laughing.  

It was a good night, full of good people from the community who are really struggling with the Ghost of President Present.  They needed some way to exorcise their fears and angers.  I'm not saying everyone left the program feeling calm and confident about the future.  However, for about an hour and a half, everyone got a break from the Dementia Don show.  

We laughed.  We sang and clapped.  We hugged.  We hoped.

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

Instead of focusing predominantly on sight today, focus on taste, hearing, scent, and touch.  As you notice something that doesn't involve sight, jot it down in a notebook.  It could be "my hands smelled like pennies after digging through the change jar," or "heard a kingfisher calling over the sounds of waves."  At the end of the day, write a poem using your jotted down images.

10 Versions of Hope

by: Martin Achatz

It's the sun's warm fingers rubbing your neck on a 40-below-zero morning.

And your dog's sandpapery tongue licking your cheeks until they burn.

If you've heard silence buzzing in your ears like bees, that's hope.

That apple fragment, sweet as honeycomb, stuck between your teeth--hope.

Your furnace snoring to life in the middle of a January night.

An itch on your shoulder that your wife scratches into submission.

If you've smelled the musk under your arm in July, you've smelled hope.

Muffled laughter behind a closed door and onions steaming your eyes with tears.

Hope smacks its lips at dinner, loudly, when the bread is warm, dripping with butter.

When your 16-year-old son leans over, kisses your forehead softly, unexpectedly, before he goes to bed, that's hope, too.

November 7: "Drawing You from Memory," Do Language, Joy

I keep seeing posts on social media about not losing hope and finding light in the darkness.  This Toni Morrison quote has been popping up quite a bit, too:  "This is precisely the time when artists go to work.  There is no time for despair.  No place for self pity.  No need for silence.  No room for fear.  We speak.  We write.  We do language.  That is how civilizations heal."

Billy Collins indulges in a little art . . . 

Drawing You from Memory

by: Billy Collins

I seem to have forgotten several features
crucial to the doing of this,
for instance, how your lower lip
meets your upper lip besides just being below it,
and what happens at the end of the nose,
how much does it shade the plane of your cheek,
and would even a bit of nostril be visible from this angle?
Chinese eyes, you call them
which could be the difficulty I have
in showing the flash of light in your iris,
and being so far away from you for so long,
I cannot remember what direction
it flows, the deep river of your hair.

But all of this will come together
the minute I see you again at the station,
my notebook and pens packed away,
your face smiling as I cup it in my hands,
or frowning later when we are home
and you are berating me in the kitchen
waving the pages in my face
demanding to know the name of this latest little whore.

Tonight at the library, I celebrated my new book of poems--A Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders--with a reading.  Much work went into the event, and I certainly wouldn't have been able to pull it off without family and friends.  One of my best poet friends helped me plan the evening, acted as MC, and played guitar while I read.  Another best friend did the food--charcuterie board, cookies, cannoli cream, chocolate.  Still another best friend set up the merchandise table and took pictures.

Almost 80 people came for the reading.  So many friends and colleagues and family.  My sisters,  My wife's family.  My daughter and her significant other.  My son.  We all gathered to laugh, hug, and forget for just a little while what happened on Tuesday.  It was a balm for my hurting heart.

Collins' poem is all about distrust and anger and accusation.  I like to think the poems I read this evening were all about joy and love.  It was good to be a part of bringing people together, driving out the oppressive darkness of the last few days.

Yes, since Tuesday, I've felt like opening my front door, throwing out a lit match, and watching the world burn to the ground.  But my daughter sent me this text tonight:  "It was a wonderful reading, and I was so grateful to be there.  I don't know how I got so lucky to have you as my dad."

My daughter is an amazing, smart, compassionate young woman, and I'm not going to let Dementia Don and his cronies ruin her life and future.  I will speak.  Write.  Do language.  

Nobody fucks with the people Saint Marty loves.