November 18: "Lesson for the Day," Orange Pancake, Laughter and Beauty

So, it was a long day, and I needed a laugh tonight.

Billy Collins made me laugh with this poem . . .

Lesson for the Day

by: Billy Collins

I didn't know Marianne Moore

had written a little ode to a steam roller

until this morning.  She has it walking

back and forth over the particles it has crushed.

She must have watched a lot of cartoons.

She also compares it to a butterfly unflatteringly.

I like it better when she speaks to a snail.

It's pleasurable to picture her in a garden

bending forward in her dated black clothes

and her tilted black triangle of a hate,

as she seriously addresses the fellow curled in its shell.

But when I see her standing before the big drum

of a steam roller and saying not very nice things,

only one eventuality every comes to mind,

for I, too, am a serious student of cartoons.

And no one wants to avoid seeing

a flattened Marianne Moore hanging out to dry

on a clothesline or propped up

as a display in a store window more than I.

It's a surreal image, right out of a Road Runner cartoon--Wile E. Coyote falling victim to one of his traps and being flattened by a boulder or anvil.  It happens over and over.  I used to watch those Looney Tunes religiously every Saturday morning with a bowl of Lucky Charms in my lap.

So a flattened Marianne Moore hanging on a clothesline is pretty dang funny to me.  Sure, I know those cartoons are incredibly violent and have fallen out of parental favor, but I literally grew up with them.  They defined my childhood.  

Tonight, upon reading the above poem, I thought about other people I'd like to see flattened by a steam roller.  Of course, the top of that list is the Felon in Chief.  I'd love to see him reduced to a two-dimensional orange pancake.  (Don't misinterpret what I'm saying.  I am not advocating violence against the man.  I just find pleasure in picturing him as a crepe.)  

Sometimes, I have to embrace the absurd in order to cope with a world that seems to be falling apart.  I also embrace beauty, and, now that the holiday season is fast approaching, all I have to do is go for a walk to find it.  Tonight I noticed a beautiful light display across from my daughter's apartment, and it was a blessing.

Laughter and beauty.  That's all Saint Marty has to offer tonight.

March 3: "Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness," Midwest Weirdfest, Celebration

Mary Oliver reflects on the need for darkness . . .

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

by:  Mary Oliver

Every year we have been

witness to it:  how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?

I don't say

it's easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,

this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

Mary Oliver embraces darkness in this poem. because she knows that darkness is necessary if the world is to have light.  Every good poet I know walks that line between darkness and light, what was and what will be.  Every breath we take brings us closer to our last breath.  Every minute of autumn closer to the first minute of winter.  Every second of night closer to dawn.

I am writing this post in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  I've traveled here with my family and close friends to attend the Midwest Weirdfest, an annual festival of dark, strange, paranormal, experimental, and, well, weird films.  I'm here because a documentary in which I'm featured, Bigfoot and Marty, is in competition.  It was made by one of my best friends.

I'm also here because I like weird.  Ya know, I'm a poet.

Tonight, we watched Hundreds of Beavers.  It was a film set in the 19th century about a drunken applejack salesman who takes on an army of supernatural beavers in order to win the hand of the woman he loves.  There was no dialogue and lots of Looney Tunes type physical comedy.  Imagine a live-action Roadrunner cartoon.  It was gloriously strange.

The theatre was practically SRO, packed with fellow aficionados of the dark and bizarre.  Audience members cheered.  Laughed.  Not just polite chuckles.  Big, true belly laughs.  I was surrounded by people who appreciate this doomed life, as Oliver describes it.

Though the world be rich mash, the ponds cold and black, I know that it's just a prelude, interlude, and postlude to another season of sweetness.  Darkness is necessary.

And Saint Marty embraces it.