July 11: Mother and Child, Little Man, Matthea Harvey, "Cheap Cloning Process Lets You Have Your Own Little Elvis"

He [Ives] prayed, his eyes upon the painting of the Mother and Child near the altar.  He prayed for his dead adoptive father, and for his mother and father whom he had never known.  For all the things he never knew.

This paragraph comes one page before the end of the book.  Ives has made his peace with God.  Now, Ives returns to the prayers he said when he was young.  He accepts that he will never fully understand the universe in all its complexity.  Yet, he has trust and faith in the goodness of God.

That's what I'm going to do today.  I'm giving my worries and cares away.  I know I'm in control of nothing.  My sister's life is in God's hands.  This morning, she was Skyping with my parents, and she said to my six-year-old son, "Hey, little man."  That makes me incredibly happy.

This morning, I ran a two-mile race with my daughter (she placed first in her age bracket, I placed fourth).  Then I went to a parade in a neighboring city.  Tonight, I'm taking my kids and nieces and nephews to another fireworks show on the shores of a lake.

I'm not going to get all profound today.  I want to maintain that happiness I felt earlier.  Thus, Matthea Harvey's final poem for this week makes me smile.  I hope it will do the same for you.

Saint Marty is going to buy some kettle corn tonight, sit back on a blanket by a lakeshore, and enjoy the light show in the sky.

Cheap Cloning Process Lets You
Have Your Own Little Elvis

by:  Matthea Harvey

If the real Elvis was a racecar,
the little matchbox-sized Elvis we buy
are the half-galaxies of other cars'
odometers seen through a cab window
at night.  When my Elvis does a hip swivel
(like a bobblehead dog on the dash, he's game,
will swivel all day long) it doesn't cause
a full-on swoon, just a tiny pinprick
of desire felt in the arch of the foot.
Like a lozenge when you want a meal.
The Elvi are smart not to serenade us
with "Baby, If You'll Give Me all of Your Love"
on their nanoguitars--we'd crush them
with one corresponding hip spiral of our own.
They stick to strumming "Dainty Little Moonbeams"
while we smoke cigarettes and cloak them
in smoke.  My friend, who's strangely loyal
to the Original Elvis timeline, maintains hers
nicely, smoothes baby oil onto his black hair.
Using a microscope, she's already sewn him
a tiny sequined jumpsuit for his later fatter years
and to that end she deep-fries breadcrumbs stuffed
with a dab of peanut butter and one Baco Bit.
Once I caught mine manhandling a sprig of parsley,
pretending it was Priscilla.  Every month or so
we meet at a playground on our lunchbreak
and corral them all in a sandbox.  Fights flare up
instantaneously over who's the real Elvis,
who's an imposter, and while they pull on
each other's pompadours, we munch on
our pastrami sandwiches, imagining
what's up next:  a tiny Jesus, or a mini
Michael Jackson wearing Disco Barbie's glove.

Love me tender...

July 10: Terrible Darkness, Text Ping, Matthea Harvey, "Preset Fairy Tale Mode"

As they happily walked to the subway, they were looking forward to spending a lot of time together at home during the holiday, in the company of family and friends.  Ives and Annie had stopped to peer into a window display of French linen when, just like that, a terrible darkness entered them, and they could not move and stood looking at one another stupidly, on the crowded and busy sidewalk.

Ives and Annie are out on the town, enjoying some pre-Christmas festivities:  parties, window shopping, watching ice skaters at Rockefeller Center.  As they prepare to return home, they are suddenly overtaken by a cloud of sadness.  They don't understand what has just happened.  All they can do is stare at each other, not knowing that their son has just been killed on the sidewalk in front of their church.

I have spent most of this week dreading a similar experience.  Every time I receive a phone text, a sense of dread overtakes me.  It's not that I have no hope for my sister, but when you're bombarded with terms like "lymphoma" and "neuroblastoma" and "brain atrophy," it's kind of tough to remain positive. 

This morning, I heard the text ping on my phone while I was having breakfast.  I just sat on the couch, not moving for several seconds.   Then I got up and read the message.  It was from the person with whom I carpool, telling me she was going to be a little late.  I literally said "Thank God" because I was so relieved.

This afternoon, my sister went to surgery for her brain biopsy.  Everything went well, but there won't be any news about the results for a couple of days.  That means that I will receive a text on Monday at work.  I'm praying for good news.  Hoping for good news.  But that text could bring a terrible darkness, as well.

I'm really not in the mood to write a fairy tale this week, so I'm going to let the Poet of the Week do that job for me.

Hopefully, Saint Marty, and Saint Marty's sister, will live happily ever after.

Preset Fairy Tale Mode

by:  Matthea Harvey

Once upon a time, in the time
of once upon a time, there was
an inventor who loved a mermaid
and would do anything to please her.
Because she loved sound, he invented
a megaphone, a telettrofono and a drink
that fizzed with the tiny effervescent
fireworks of fermented fruit.  Because
she loved light, he invented smokeless
wicks and built a candle factory.  Because
she was over-fond of candles, he invented
flame retardant paint.  Because she loved
her cats, he came up with a way to carefully
quantify the amount of cream in their milk.
Because she missed her sisters' voices
he made a marine telephone.  Because
her bones were not made for this loud
human world, they began to crack and
ache and crumble.  Because she needed quiet
he tried to hush the trains, the carriage,
even the gulls.  Because she could no longer
climb up or down the stairs, he carried her.

Looking for more Disney, less Grimm brothers

July 9: Otto Messmer, Lymphoma of the Brain, Matthea Harvey, "My Bird Family"

Sometimes he'd bring his son with him, the kid no more than three or four years old and delighted by the futuristic machinery in that room.  [Otto] Messmer [cartoonist and "father of Felix the Cat"], stoic, reading a newspaper, even as Ives, against a backdrop of flashes--the afterglow of two thousand flickering lightbulbs seeping in--moved toward the control board.  Fascinated, watching a gear or switch move, levers shifting, cylinders and piano rolls turning, and, at certain intervals, a whole new deluge of light:  the walls suddenly pinkish or azure or carnival yellow, those colors flashing across his face; Ives remaining still, but ever tempted to push a lever or button or two, as he thought God might with men.

I really love this passage.  It's another one of Ives' countless versions of God.  This one has a very 1950s science fiction feel.  God as the great control board operator, pushing buttons, pulling levers to make sunrises and sunsets, hurricanes and earthquakes.  Cross this wire, a baby is born.  Unscrew this fuse, a dog is hit by a car.  It's not a very comforting vision of the Divine, that's for sure.

I've been struggling a little bit with God recently.  So much of what's been happening in my life seems arbitrary, as if there's some kind of bug in the computer code of my life.  I mean, c'mon.  My kitchen ceiling collapses.  My roof needs to be replaced.  The steering column on my car decides to stop working.  And then there's my sister.  Honestly, God seems to have it in for me.

The latest text about my sister from the University of Michigan:

Dr. Fink and his team were in.  Sally has lymphoma of the brain.  It is treatable.  Mass in brain growing fast.  He said this will happen.  Grow then shrink on and off...

I'm not quite convinced.  The doctor is trying to get a stat brain biopsy arranged.  Until I have definitive, pathological proof of this diagnosis, I'm not believing it.  There's been way too many physicians providing way too many diagnoses in the past month.

I'm finding it really difficult to believe in a loving, caring God right now.  I grew up with the image of the Grandpa in the Sky.  White hair, white beard, white robes.  Smiling and benevolent.  At the moment, I'm leaning toward the Otto Messmer God, sitting in a big control room, reading a newspaper, the world on a kind of autopilot.  Every once in a while, when a warning light goes off, He gets up and pushes a button or flicks a bulb.

I want something good to happen.  Anything.  I want something to restore my faith in a loving Supreme Being.

In the meantime, Saint Marty feels like one of the birds in poet Matthea Harvey's bird family.  Trapped.  Waiting for God to open the cage door.

My Bird Family

by:  Matthea Harvey

was spooling out a mournful song.  A misbegotten
gulp in the gizzard, ice on the clenched claw after
a blizzard, when I swooped in with my solo:
a bird filled with lead is better off dead.
For a change, we weren't larking about
in our strap-on beaks.  I had been a finch filled
with certainty until the end of the talk
about the universe at which point I was just
a diminutive coo lost in the bamboo, an "or"
in a grove I thought was mine.  The others too.
We fell backward into dreaming.
Somewhere was a park bench covered in
down, or a complicated carousel of up,
hatching new angles of flight which would outnumber
every plane contrail, every kite hypotenuse,
every lip-licking catleap toward the birdhouse.
In the sandpit we collided with toddler-made
castles and were none the worse, though the sky
spun slightly.  The clouds turned back to meringue.
Sometimes we stretched out a courageous claw
and climbed back into our cages, just to see
the human look in at us with his giant eyes,
to let his booming whistle swish through out feathers.

I'm Felix the Cat, and God is Otto Messmer

July 8: Glorious Life, Smartest Person, Matthea Harvey, "Michelin Man Possessed by William Shakespeare"

Glorious life ending.  There must have been a moment when his son had gasped for air, the last time, as Jesus must have.  But as Jesus had risen, he wanted his son to rise up, organs and spirit and mind intact, and everything to be as it had been not so long ago.

Ives has this thought not long after his son is murdered.  Robert's death was so sudden and unexpected.  One moment, he was a happy high school senior, planning on entering the seminary.  The next moment, he was a statistic of crime and poverty.  Ives longs to return to his happier life, wants his son to emerge from his bedroom and say "Hey, pop, what's up?" like old times.

I understand Ives' thinking here.  When life changes drastically in a short period of time, nostalgia is a natural reaction.  Yes, I'm going to talk about my sister who's ill again.  Forgive me.  She's on my mind a lot.  I get updates daily on her condition at the University of Michigan.  I also spend much time thinking how different things were a year ago.

My sister is the smartest person I've ever known, and I've known a lot of smart people.  Poets and mathematicians and doctors.  My sister could read the manuals for complex pieces of medical equipment and have them memorized.  Literally.  She knew medical laws and regulations better than any risk manager.  People respected her opinions.  Trusted her.

For the last four or five days, my sister hasn't been able to talk.  Today, she spoke a little.  She said part of a prayer with my other sister.  The Hail Mary.  The words weren't completely clear, but she was obviously responding.

She is never going to be the person she once was.  Next week, she is going to have a brain biopsy.  Terrifying.  The goal of the doctors at the moment is to get her stable enough to come home, I think.  Nobody is talking about prognosis right now.

I miss my sister.  I miss seeing her at work, sitting in her office, telling people what to do.  It's almost as if some other creature is fighting to control her.  Like she's possessed by this thing that doesn't want her to eat or drink or talk or think.

Like Ives, Saint Marty wants his sister to rise up, organs and spirit and mind intact.

Michelin Man Possessed
by William Shakespeare

by:  Matthea Harvey

I've taken many forms over the years,
but this may be the strangest one.  I see
through his eyes but cannot shed a tear.
I can feel his feet, but am not free
to leave this spot by the garage.  I think
he feels a kind of love for the balloon
who bobs nearby.  Each day he sees her sink
an inch.  Though I want to tell him of the moon
and slippered feet in marble halls, these tires
at our waist are a mischief.  I make believe
they are couplets of rubber, but barbed wire
would be more apt.  It's very hard to breathe.
Make us a man, or make us a machine--
but do not leave us trapped here in-between.

He's scary, even if he isn't possessed

July 7: New Oblivion, Good Old Days, Matthea Harvey, "The Straightforward Mermaid"

Then the holidays would come and the past would hit Ives like a chill wind.  Memories of his son plaguing him, there came many a day, around Christmas, when Ives would plaintively wait for a sign that his son, who'd deserved so much more than what he had been given, was somewhere safe and beloved by God.  Each day he awaited a slick of light to enter the darkness.  And when life went on as usual, without any revelation, he'd await his own death and the new life or--as he suspected--the new oblivion to begin.

Ives spends a lot of time living in the past.  Memory is his best friend.  After his son is killed, Ives saves the wristwatch he bought for Robert as a Christmas present.  Each year, Ives thinks about how old his son wold have been, imagines him wearing the watch as he goes about his priestly business.  In his old age, Ives still thinks of Robert as a middle-aged parish priest, blessing the Eucharist and wine, distributing communion.  Ives, for most of his life, is a ghost of his past.

I have been spending a lot of time recently thinking about the past.  Every day at noon, I have lunch at the outpatient surgery center my sister used to run.  I sit in the break room with my friends, and we talk about the "good old days."  When my sister was healthy.  When we all worked together.  We share our memories, and we laugh a great deal.

It's amazing how much I miss those times.  I never realized how lucky I was.  How lucky we all were.  Sure, we had our problems.  We pissed each other off and got into fights.  But, above all, we cared about each other.  We loved each other.  And now everything is different.  Someone else is in charge of the surgery center.  I work in a cardiology office.  And my sister is in a hospital downstate, fighting for her life.

Latest news is that the doctors don't think she has cancer.  They now think she has a serious, rare autoimmune disease.  She's still losing weight.  Still has a fever.  The last MRI of her brain showed even more spots.  Bottom line, if she survives, my sister will never be the person she was.  That person is now a memory.  A good, happy memory.

I go through my life, always dreaming that something better is around the corner.  I never appreciate the good things I have right now.  My kids.  Wife.  Family.  Home.  Job.  Friends.  Church.  I'm like the Little Mermaid, yearning for legs, land, and sun.

Saint Marty needs to start enjoying the present more, before it becomes memory.  

The Straightforward Mermaid

by:  Matthea Harvey

The Straightforward Mermaid starts every sentence with "Look . . ."  This comes from being raised in a sea full of hooks.  She wants to get points 1, 2, and 3 across, doesn't want to disappear like a river into the ocean.  When she is feeling despairing, she goes to eddies at the mouth of the river and tries to comb the water apart with her fingers.  The Straightforward Mermaid has already said to five sailors, "Look, I don't think this is going to work," before sinking like a sullen stone.  She's supposed to teach Rock Impersonation to the younger mermaids, but every beach field trip devolves into them trying to find shells to match their tail scales.  They really love braiding.  "Look," says the Straightforward Mermaid.  "Your high ponytails make you look like fountains, not rocks."  Sometimes she feels like a third gender, preferring primary colors to pastels, the radio to singing.  At least she's all mermaid, never gets tired of swimming, hates the thought of socks.

She should just enjoy being under the sea

July 6: Sister News, "Ives" Dip, Poet of the Week, Matthea Harvey, "Using a Hula Hoop Can Get You Abducted by Aliens"

This morning, I received a text about my sister at University of Michigan:

Having more MRIs this afternoon with 3 different views.  Putting a feeding tube in for nutrition today.  Dr. Burke in and said ct scan of head drastically changed from recent one in Marquette.

There were some other details in the text with some very scary medical terms (vasculitis, acute demyelination encephalopathy, and emboli).  It sounds like my sister is not really improving down at the University of Michigan.  I don't think the doctors have settled on any course of treatment because they don't really know what's wrong yet.  The MRI was postponed until tomorrow for some reason, so I'm not quite sure what "drastically changed" means.

It's been quite a long Monday.  My work day stretched on and on, like some kind of weird science fiction wormhole.  If I didn't know any better, I would have sworn that I was reliving the same moments over and over.  Of course, I am not living in a Dr. Who episode, and my day eventually ended.

Tonight, I will be working on a new poem.  Actually, it's the second part of a poem I started several weeks ago.  I was asked to write it for the sesquicentennial celebration of my wife's church.  It's quite an honor.  It's also quite daunting.  I can't imagine how poets like Maya Angelou and Elizabeth Alexander and Richard Blanco dealt with the pressure of writing poems for presidential inaugurations.

My Ives Dip question for this evening revolves around the future:

Will the future hold happiness, for my sister, my family, myself?

And the crystal ball of Mr. Ives' Christmas says:

...Ives would put some Perry Como or Bing Crosby on the big RCA console with the twenty-one-inch black-and-white TV, radio, and phonograph that his boss had given him as an extra special bonus one year, and the tree-decorating party would begin, the adults chatting on the couch, eating, everyone smoking cigarettes and watching the kids at work.

Well, that's a passage that has one leg in the past (Bing Crosby and Perry Como) and one leg in the future (kids at work).  But it's a happy passage, full of hope.  I will take that.  It reminds me of the Christmases when I was a kid, with all my siblings listening to records on my mother's record player, the tree sparkling in the corner.

Matthea Harvey is the Poet of the Week.  Her collection, If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?. combines all kinds of things I love--fairy tales, Elvis, aliens, and Shakespearean possession, to name a few.  The poems are sometimes irreverent, sometimes funny.  Always profound.

Saint Marty's life feels like a tabloid headline right now.

Using a Hula Hoop Can Get You
Abducted by Aliens

by:  Matthea Harvey

We've never taken anyone
buttoned up and trotting from point A
to point B--subway to office, office to
lunch, fretting over the credit crunch.
Not the ones carefully maneuvering their
watchamacallits alongside broken white lines,
not the Leash holders who take their Furries
to the park three point five times per day.
If you're an integer in that kind of
equation, you belong with your Far-bits
on the ground.  We're seven Star-years
past calculus, so it's the dreamy ones
who want to go somewhere they don't know
how to get to that interest us, the ones
who will stare all day at a blank piece of paper
or square of canvas, then peer searchingly into
their herbal tea.  It's true that hula hoops
resemble the rings around Firsthome, and that
when you spin, we chime softly, remembering
Oursummer, Ourspring, and our twelve Otherseasons.
But that's not the only reason.  (Do we like rhyme?
Yes, we do.  Also your snow, your moss, your tofu--
our sticky hands make it hard for us to put
things down.)  Don't fret, dreamy spinning ones
with water falling from your faces.
It's us you're waiting for and we're coming.

Beam me up!  I'm ready for a different life.