August 4: More Noble and More Able, Putting Up With Me, Gurnee

Santiago admires the fish . . . 

"He is two feet longer than the skiff," the old man said. The line was going out fast but steadily and the fish was not panicked. The old man was trying with both hands to keep the line just inside of breaking strength. He knew that if he could not slow the fish with a steady pressure the fish could take out all the line and break it.

He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run. If I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.

I admire a lot of people and things.  I admire the moon on a clear night.  The sound of rain pelting my window.  Poems by Sharon Olds and Tracy K. Smith.  President Obama.  President Biden for being willing to take on the mess left by his predecessor.  My dog for showing me unconditional love every day.  And I admire my wife and kids for putting up with me and all my weird, neurotic, obsessive, depressive tendencies.

Today, I took a seven-hour drive with my family to Gurnee, Illinois, to make good on a promise I made to my son.  When he had his eighth grade class trip taken away from him by a school administration too worried about covering its own mistakes, I told my son that I would take him to Great America.  So, here I sit in a Gurnee hotel room with my son, daughter, daughter's significant other, and wife.

I didn't make this trip because I want my family to admire me.  Or because I love rollercoasters.  (I don't, by the way.)  Or because I had an extra $1000 lying around the house.  (I never do.)  I am in Illinois tonight because I love my wife and kids.  Period.  Love being with them.  Sharing pizza with them.  Going to movies with them.  Laughing with them.

All we have is today.  Right now.  I chose to live in this moment because there's no guarantee for tomorrow.  This point has been made very clear to me in the last day or so.  

Sure, I'm still climbing my way out of an unending blue funk.  At points during every day I cry, panic, cry some more, and feel overwhelmed.  But even in the middle of all of that, I know love.  Deep love.

Saint Marty's blessing today:  a new pair of Vans shoes.  (Hey, they are super cool.)

September 10: Brain Dead Post, Tracy K. Smith, "Dusk"

This will be a brain dead post.  I have engagements and teaching and work from 6 a.m. until 8 or 9 p.m. from now until Friday night.  Not sure how many appearances Moby-Dick will be making in the next few days. 

So, instead, Saint Marty offers you a poem:

Dusk

by:  Tracy K. Smith

What woke to war in me those years

When my daughter had first grown into

A solid self-centered self? I’d watch her

Sit at the table—well, not quite sit,

More like stand on one leg while

The other knee hovered just over the chair.

She wouldn't lower herself, as if

There might be a fire, or a great black

Blizzard of waves let loose in the kitchen,

And she'd need to make her escape. No,

She'd trust no one but herself, her own

New lean always jittering legs to carry her—

Where exactly? Where would a child go?

To there. There alone. She'd rest one elbow

On the table—the opposite one to the bent leg

Skimming the solid expensive tasteful chair.

And even though we were together, her eyes

Would go half-dome, shades dropped

Like a screen at some cinema the old aren't

Let into. I thought I'd have more time! I thought

My body would have taken longer going

About the inevitable feat of repelling her,

But now, I could see even in what food

She left untouched, food I'd bought and made

And all but ferried to her lips, I could see

How it smacked of all that had grown slack

And loose in me. Her other arm

Would wave the fork around just above

The surface of the plate, casting about

For the least possible morsel, the tiniest

Grain of unseasoned rice. She'd dip

Into the food like one of those shoddy

Metal claws poised over a valley of rubber

Bouncing balls, the kind that lifts nothing

Or next to nothing and drops it in the chute.

The narrow untouched hips. The shoulders

Still so naïve as to stand squared, erect,

Impervious facing the window open

Onto the darkening dusk.

July 8: Unconditional Love, Tracy K. Smith, "Song"

Sometimes, I don't think that I'm a very nice person.  I can be grouchy and impatient.  Snappish.  Especially when I am dealing with a problem that keeps happening over and over.  At that point, I tend to step up on my soapbox and deliver a sermon.  My kids hate it.  My wife isn't too fond of it, either.

I'm not an easy person to love, and yet people love me.  That's amazing to me.  But that's all part of the deal, I guess.  True love is unconditional, despite flaws and idiosyncrasies.

Saint Marty is pretty lucky to have unconditional love in his life.

Song

by:  Tracy K. Smith

I think of your hands all those years ago,
Learning to maneuver a pencil, or struggling
To fasten a coat.  The hands you'd sit on in class,
The nails you chewed absently.  The clumsy authority
With which they'd sail to the air when they knew
You knew the answer.  I think of them lying empty
At night, of the fingers wrangling something
From your nose, or buried in the cave of your ear.
All the things they did cautiously, pointedly,
Obedient to the suddenest whim.  Their shames.
How they failed.  What they won't forget year after year.
Or now.  Resting on the wheel or the edge of your knee.
I am trying to decide what they feel when they wake up
And discover my body is near.  Before touch.
Pushing off the ledge of the easy quiet dancing between us.

July 7: Short Week, Tracy K. Smith, "The Soul"

One of my coworkers always walks into the office on Fridays and proclaims joyously, "It's Friday, bitches!"

I am so happy that this short week has come to an end.  I still haven't completely recovered from Independence Day festivities.  Tired.  All the time.  Tomorrow, it's another parade and more fireworks in the evening.  If I survive this weekend with my sanity intact, it will be a miracle.

I'm sort of craving silence and calm.  A good book or movie.  Gin and tonic to drink.  No plans.  No obligations.  Just rest.  A quiet time for the soul.

That sounds like a little piece of Saint Marty heaven.

The Soul

by:  Tracy K. Smith

The voice is clean.  Has heft.  Like stones
Dropped in still water, or tossed
One after the other at a low wall.
Chipping away at what pushes back.
Not always making a dent, but keeping at it.
And the silence around it is a door
Punched through with light.  A garment
That attests to breasts, the privacy
Between thighs.  The body is what we lean toward,
Tensing as it darts, dancing away.
But it's the voice that enters us.  Even
Saying nothing.  Even saying nothing
Over and over absently to itself.

July 6: Transform Grief, Tracy K. Smith, "It's Not"

I'm going to use the poem below in my workshop tonight.  I think it's a great example of the power of poetry to transform grief and loss into something redemptive.  Healing.  The first time I read it, I was still struggling a lot with the death of my sister.  It was Christmas, one of my sister's favorite times of the year.  A friend gave me Smith's collection Life On Mars as a gift.  And I found this poem.

Yes, it is filled with death and loss.  But it also has more than a little eternity in it, which is comforting.

Saint Marty is looking forward to sharing this poem this evening with people.

It's Not

by:  Tracy K. Smith

                for Jean

That death was thinking of you or me
Or our family, or the woman
Our father would abandon when he died.
Death was thinking what it owed him:
His ride beyond the body, its garments,

Beyond the taxes that swarm each year,
The car and its fuel injection, the fruit trees
Heavy in his garden.  Death led him past
The aisles of tools, the freezer lined with meat,
The television saying over and over Seek

And ye shall find.  So why do we insist
He has vanished, that death ran off with our
Everything worth having?  Why not that he was
Swimming only through this life--his slow,
Graceful crawl, shoulders rippling,

Legs slicing away at the waves, gliding
Further into what life itself denies?
He is only gone so far as we can tell.  Though
When I try, I see the white cloud of his hair
In the distance like an eternity.

July 5: Surrounded by Angels, Tracy K. Smith, "The Angels"

You know, I'm a lucky guy.  I'm surrounded by angels.

Okay, this is not going to be one of those posts that cause the nearest diabetic to go into a coma.  It's a simple observation.  My life is filled with wonderful people.  I like my coworkers at the medical center.  My office mate at the university is one of my best friends.  My daughter and son bring me joy on a daily basis.  My daughter's boyfriend is a wonderful kid who treats her really well.  I have best friends who I know would do anything for me, and vice versa.  An my wife doesn't mind that I'm a poet. 

Saint Marty doesn't deserve all the goodness these people bring to his life.

The Angels

by:  Tracy K. Smith

Two slung themselves across chairs
Once in a motel room. Grizzled,
In leather biker gear. Emissaries
For something I needed to see.

I was worn down by an awful panic.
A wrenching in the gut, contortions.
They sat there at the table while I slept.
I could sense them, with a deck

Of playing cards between them.
To think of how they smelled, what
Comes to mind is rum and gasoline.
And when they spoke, though I couldn’t,

I dared not look, I glimpsed how one’s teeth
Were ground down almost to nubs.
Which makes me hope some might be
Straight up thugs, young, slim, raw,

Who bounce and roll with fearsome grace,
Whose very voices cause faint souls to quake.
— Quake, then, fools, and fall away!
— What God do you imagine we obey?

Think of the toil we must cost them,
One scaled perfectly to eternity.
And still, they come, telling us
Through the ages not to fear.

Just those two that once and never
Again for me since, though
There are — are they? — 
Sightings, flashes, hints:

A proud tree in vivid sun, branches
Swaying in strong wind. Rain
Hurling itself at the roof. Boulders,
Mounds of earth mistaken for dead

Does, lions in crouch. A rust-stained pipe
Where a house once stood, which I
Take each time I pass it for an owl.
Bright whorl so dangerous and near.

My mother sat whispering with it
At the end of her life
While all the rooms of our house
Filled up with night.

July 4: Taking It Easy, Tracy K. Smith, "The Good Life"

If you can't tell, I am taking it easy today.  Trying not to stress about anything.  I am living the good life, being a rainbow.

Saint Marty doesn't do this very often.

The Good Life

by:  Tracy K. Smith

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.

July 3: Poet of the Week, Tracy K. Smith, "Do You Wonder, Sometimes?"

Tracy K. Smith was just chosen as Poet Laureate of the United States last week.  Her book, Life on Mars, is one of my favorite poetry collections of the last few years.

Plus, she likes David Bowie, which makes her really alright in my book.

Saint Marty thinks all this qualifies her to be Poet of the Week.

Do You Wonder, Sometimes?

by:  Tracy K. Smith

After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span
Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like
Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman
Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.
And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure

That someone was there squinting through the dust,
Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only
To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then,
Even for a few nights, into that other life where you
And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?

Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my
Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?
Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep
Or charging through his veins. And he'll never grow old,
Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired

And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen
That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life
In which I'm forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
Thinking one day I'll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns.


2.

He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That's Bowie
For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play
Within a play, he's trademarked twice. The hours

Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out,
Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.
But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.

Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives
Before take-off, before we find ourselves
Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

The future isn't what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts
For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky
Like migratory souls.


3.

Bowie is among us. Right here
In New York City. In a baseball cap
And expensive jeans. Ducking into
A deli. Flashing all those teeth
At the doorman on his way back up.
Or he's hailing a taxi on Lafayette
As the sky clouds over at dusk.
He's in no rush. Doesn't feel
The way you'd think he feels.
Doesn't strut or gloat. Tells jokes.

I've lived here all these years
And never seen him. Like not knowing
A comet from a shooting star.
But I'll bet he burns bright,
Dragging a tail of white-hot matter
The way some of us track tissue
Back from the toilet stall. He's got
The whole world under his foot,
And we are small alongside,
Though there are occasions

When a man his size can meet
Your eyes for just a blip of time
And send a thought like SHINE
SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE
Straight to your mind. Bowie,
I want to believe you. Want to feel
Your will like the wind before rain.
The kind everything simply obeys,
Swept up in that hypnotic dance
As if something with the power to do so
Had looked its way and said:
Go ahead.

January 14: The Truth is Out There, Tracy K. Smith, "Solstice"

The new media will be greatly preoccupied this week with the impending presidential inauguration in the United States.  (I just typed "Untied States," which seems quite appropriate.)  Since the November election, I have tried to pay less attention to the daily news, although it's almost impossible to be completely oblivious.

Truth has become a very arbitrary thing in these last few months.  People glean their facts from Twitter and Facebook.  Believe it with all their hearts, too.  I find this trend very alarming.  No matter what is real, a good meme can change a person's mind.

We have become immune to the truth, even though the truth is out there.

Saint Marty may go on news blackout until next week.

Solstice

by:  Tracy K. Smith

They're gassing geese outside of JFK.
Tehran will likely fill up soon with blood.
The Times is getting smaller day by day.

We've learned to back away from all we say
And, more or less, agree with what we should.
Whole flocks are being gassed near JFK.

So much of what we're asked is to obey--
A reflex we'd abandon if we could.
The Times reported 19 dead today.

They're going to make the opposition pay.
(If you're sympathetic, knock on wood.)
The geese were terrorizing JFK.

Remember how they taught you once to pray?
Eyes closed, on your knees, to any god?
Sometimes, small minds seem to take the day.

Election fraud.  A migratory plague. 
Less and less surprises us as odd.
We dislike what they did at JFK.
Our time is brief.  We dwindle by the day.

January 13: Nostalgia, Tracy K. Smith, "The Good Life"

Nostalgia is a strange thing.  It makes a person happy and sad at the same time.  This morning, I was watching my son sleeping next to my wife.  He always crawls into bed with her after I get up to get ready for work.  He looked really small next to her, like he was still two or three years old.

And that made me think of my daughter when she was four or five.  How she would get off the bus from preschool and climb onto the couch with me.  We would watch "Frosty the Snowman," and she would fall asleep on my chest.  She was like a little furnace, and I would stay there, sweating, replaying Frosty's trip to the North Pole over and over, until she woke up.

I didn't know it then, but that really was the good life.  My beautiful little girl, sleeping in my arms, completely trusting me to keep her safe. 

Saint Marty misses those times.

The Good Life

by:  Tracy K. Smith

When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One of two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.

January 12: My Parents, Tracy K. Smith, "The Speed of Belief"

It is difficult seeing your parents diminished.  My mother and father both have struggles with memory and mobility now.  It almost seems like a betrayal to even write those sentences, like I'm somehow dishonoring them.  My family has always been very private.  Not sharing a whole lot of personal information.

However, I am an anomaly.  I write a poem, tell the truth.  Write a short story, truth.  Essay, truth.  Blog post, truth.  Each word, truth.  That's what writers do.

That's what Track K. Smith does, too.

Saint Marty firmly believes that.

The Speed of Belief

by:  Tracy K. Smith

                              In memoriam, Floyd William Smith 1935 - 2008

I didn't want to wait on my knees
In a room made quiet by waiting.

A room where we'd listen for the rise
Of breath, the burble in his throat.

I didn't want the orchids or the trays
Of food meant to fortify that silence,

Or to pray for him to stay or to go then
Finally toward that ecstatic light.

I didn't want to believe
What we believe in the rooms:

That we are blessed, letting go,
Letting someone, anyone,

Drag open the drapes and heave us
Back into our blinding, bright lives.

January 11: Soundtrack of My Life, Track K. Smith, "The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"

I always wonder what the soundtrack of my life would be.  My early life would probably be dominated by the Star Wars theme by John Williams.  Luke Skywalker and R2D2.  Later, the 1980s, the soundtrack would be be Risky Business and Amadeus, a mixture of rock and Mozart. 

In the 1990s, I became a church organist.  "How Great Thou Art."  "Amazing Grace."  Got married in 1995.  Became a father in 2000.  Dora the Explorer.  SpongeBob SquarePants.  And now?  We're back to Star Wars.

Saint Marty has come full circle.

The Universe:  Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

by:  Tracy K. Smith

The first track still almost swings.  High hat and snare, even
A few bars or sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough.

Synthesized strings.  Then something like cellophane
Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe.  Crinkle and drag.  White noise,

Black noise.  What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings
In molasses.  So much for us.  So much for the flags we bored

Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire
And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame.  Listen:

The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,
Marbled with static like gristly meat.  A chorus of engines churns.

Silence taunts a dare.  Everything that disappears
Disappears as if returning somewhere.

January 10: Snow and Wind, Tracy K. Smith, "Sci-Fi"

The snow has pretty much ended, and now, wind.  All kinds of wind.  Howling.

When you live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, you tend to be a little preoccupied with weather.  Especially in the winter, your days are dictated by the weather.  I know, at about 3:30 tomorrow morning, that I will wake up to the sound of snowplows screaming down my street, throwing a wall of snow into my driveway and yard. 

That's January in the U. P.

If any of my disciples have been wondering about the results of the voting for the next Poet Laureate of the U. P., I received an e-mail last night.  The gentleman who oversees the whole process informed me that an announcement will be made some time in February, once the publicity is in place.

So, until that time, Saint Marty will live in snow and wind.  And poetry .  . .

Sci-Fi

by:  Tracy K. Smith

There will be no edges, but curves.
Clean lines pointing only forward.

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared
Corners, will be replaced with nuance,

Just like the dinosaurs gave way
To mounds and mounds of ice.

Women will still be women, but
The distinction will be empty.  Sex,

Having outlived every threat, will gratify
Only the mind, which is where it will exist.

For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves
Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.

The oldest among us will recognize that glow--
But the word sun will have been re-assigned

To a Standard Uranium Neutralizing device
Found in households and nursing homes.

And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks
To popular consensus.  Weightless, unhinged,

Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift
In the haze of space, which will be, once

And for all, scrutable and safe.

January 9: Invasion, Poet of the Week, Tracy K. Smith, "The Weather in Space"

My wife and I took our son to McDonald's this evening.  We were killing some time before my son's dance class.  My son went immediately to the kids' area when he got there.  There's a large play structure with slides, soft mats, steps, tubes to climb through. 

Well, when my son started moving through the play structure, he discovered that some person had taken a permanent marker and written messages all through it.  He found the words "tit" and "Fuck Hillary."  And scrawled on one wall was the word "nigger."

We immediately told the manager, who came in, examined the graffiti, took pictures, and then scribbled the words out with another permanent marker.  My son went through the rest of the restaurant, looking for other messages.

I can't explain to my eight-year-old son how the incoming President of the United States has given free license for the worst elements of society to be expressed.  It's okay to hate in the United States of America right now.  To call people names because of race or ethnicity or sexual preference or religious affiliation.  After eight years of President Obama, it feels like I'm living on another planet, like I'm in some kind of alternate universe.

I got a book from a good friend for Christmas.  It is Tracy K. Smith's poetry collection Life on Mars.  It's half science, half science fiction.  An elegy to Smith's scientist father, a nostalgic summoning of the space operas of the 1950s. 

I thought this book would be a good follow-up to seeing Rogue One this weekend, and also help me deal with the incoming invasion from Planet Trump in a few weeks.  Therefore, Tracy K. Smith is Poet of the Week.

Saint Marty wants to remind his disciples:  in space no one can hear you scream.

The Weather in Space

by:  Tracy K. Smith

Is God  being or pure force?  The wind

Or what commands it?  When our lives slow

And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls

In our laps like a gangly doll.  When the storm

Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing

After all we're certain to lose, so alive--

Faces radiant with panic.

December 29: Thanks His Host, Book Club Christmas Party, Crescent Weenies

What book should I use next year on the blog?  Take the poll:

Book Poll 


I think that they drying pray at the last not "please," but "thank you," as a guest thanks his host at the door . . .

I chose this quote because it sort of reflects my entire day, which has been consumed by two things:  funeral plans and book club plans.

This evening, I hosted my book club's Christmas party.  Agatha Christie.  Chili.  A cheese fountain with warm, soft pretzels.  Lemon bars and fruit tarts, among other goodies.  Plus, we had a Secret Santa exchange.  I got a book of poems by Tracy K. Smith (Life on Mars) and an Adele CD (21).  It was a good night, full of good will.

Tomorrow will be all about the funeral service for my wife's grandmother.  I will be playing the music on the pipe organ.  Nothing difficult--"How Great Thou Art" and "In the Garden."  Two of her grandma's favorite hymns.  Just finished cooking some crescent weenies for the lunch after the service. 

It's been a busy day.  I'm pretty beat, and there's not a while lot of relaxation in store for me this weekend.  Three church services, including the funeral.  New Year's Eve.  New Year's day.  Right now, I keep falling asleep with my fingers on the keyboard.  I just typed "bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbblllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll."

Translation:  it's time for Saint Marty to go to bed.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Martin Achatz):

Vote for next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

May 14: Scarred and Broken, Sewer Again, Tracy K. Smith, "The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"

Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now:  a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass?  Must everything whole be nibbled?  Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall; the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling--not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.

Dillard is musing on the violent beauty of the world.  She has just witnessed a mosquito land on the back of a rattlesnake, drink its fill, and then fly off.  She marvels at this sight, the rattlesnake not even responding to the annoyance of the feeding insect.  It's all part of the broken and scarred nature of creation.  The world after the fall.

I am thinking quite a bit about the brokenness of the world this morning.  You may recall that a couple days ago I had a little problem with my sewer.  I paid $150 to have my sewer line cabled by a couple of plumbers.  This morning, as I was going about my morning ablutions, I flushed the toilet and heard gurgling in my bathtub drain.  My sewer is blocked again.

Being the son of a plumber, I have a good idea of the implications of this second blockage.  There's probably something a little more serious going on.  This isn't a minor annoyance.  I can't swat this mosquito away.  Of course, being the eternal optimist, I am thinking about how I scrounge up thousands of dollars to get a sewer line dug up and replaced.  (Yes, I know, I know--I don't even know what's wrong, but I like preparing for the absolute worst.  Then, if anything better than the worst occurs, I count it as a blessing.)

I have called the plumbers who came on Thursday, left a message.  I have not received an answer.  I called my brother, who is a licensed plumber and lives about an hour away from me.  No go on that possibility, either.  So, I am sitting in McDonald's in a kind of sewage limbo.  We can't use the bathroom in my house.  Can't shower,  Can't wash dishes.  I don't really want to crap in a bucket and use it as fertilizer for a garden.  (I don't think my neighbors would appreciate that, either.)  So, I'm stuck at the moment.  Not moving backward or forward.

The world is a broken place.  When Adam and Eve messed up in Eden, they kind of screwed the rest of us.  If it hadn't been for that apple, I would be lounging, naked, on the banks of a river, eating chocolate off a chocolate tree, enjoying another perfect day of warmth and peace.

Instead, it's snowing and cold; sewage is in the air; and Saint Marty is thinking of going off the grid.

Maybe a poem will help . . .

The Universe:  Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

by:  Tracy K. Smith

The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even

A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough.

Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane

Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise,

Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings

In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored

Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire

And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen:

The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,

Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns.

Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears

Disappears as if returning somewhere.

I know how i feel--shitty

May 11: Spoiler Alerts, Tracy K. Smith, "Sci-Fi"

Recently, I have been thinking a great deal about the future.  It has a lot to do with my new job.  In less than a month, I will be starting over.  Again.  It will mean a change in my schedule and duties and coworkers.  Again.  This coming change has caused me a few sleepless nights.

Over the past two years, I have settled into a new life.  I know what time I have to be to work tomorrow.  I know what I have to do all day long.  I know when I'll take my breaks, eat my lunch.  I know when my work day will be over.  Granted, two years ago, I was in the same situation I am now:  facing an uncertain future.  That future is now my present reality.

In two months' time, my uncertain future will be a reality.  I may be happier.  I may not be happier.  I don't know.  I not a big fan of uncertainty.  I read the ending of books first, spoilers about movies.  I knew that Han Solo died in the new Star Wars movie before I went to see it.  I knew that Dumbledore died before I read the The Half Blood Prince.  Jon Snow is alive.  Glen didn't get eaten by walkers.  Jesus rose from the dead.  No surprises, that's my motto.

Unfortunately, the real world does not work that way.  The future remains a cliffhanger, and I'm waiting for the next episode.

Hopefully, Saint Marty won't be caught in a zombie apocalypse.

Speaking of the future . . .

Sci-Fi

by:  Tracy K. Smith

There will be no edges, but curves.

Clean lines pointing only forward.

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared

Corners, will be replaced with nuance,

Just like the dinosaurs gave way

To mounds and mounds of ice.

Women will still be women, but

The distinction will be empty. Sex,

Having outlived every threat, will gratify

Only the mind, which is where it will exist.

For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves

Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.

The oldest among us will recognize that glow—

But the word sun will have been re-assigned

To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device

Found in households and nursing homes.

And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks

To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,

Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift

In the haze of space, which will be, once

And for all, scrutable and safe.

May 10: Thrashings of the Spirit, First Communion, Tracy K. Smith, "The Universe as Primal Scream"

In his famous Camping and Woodcraft, Horace Kephart sounds a single ominous note.  He writes in parentheses:  "Some cannot sleep well in a white tent under a full moon."  Every time I think of it, I laugh.  I like the way that handy woodsy tip threatens us with the thrashings of the spirit.

Dillard is talking about the power of moonlight and starlight.  Thrashings of the spirit.  Starlight and moonlight raining through the cosmic dust of the universe, falling in glimmers and shinings on the Earth, into our weak eyes, causing us to go a little crazy.  Think about it.  Lunar.  Lunatic.  Loony.  It all boils down to the heavens.  Celestial insanity.

My son is making his First Communion this weekend.  For those of my disciples who are not Catholic, let me explain:  it's a really big deal.  My son's been preparing all year for this.  There's going to be a Mass with singing and incense.  A photographer snapping pictures.  Cake.  Gifts.  My best friend, who's my son's godfather, is driving six hours to attend the ceremony.  Like I said.  A big deal.

Tonight, we attended a rehearsal for this Sunday.  Now, my son has ADHD.  He takes his medication in the morning.  By 6 p.m., that medication is completely gone from his system.  He can't control himself.  Standing is one place is an impossibility for him.  Keeping his hands to himself, not happening, either.  He talks, shouts, laughs.  Does not pay attention.

That's what we were dealing with tonight.  While the other kids were lined up, quietly listening to instructions, my son was doing the exact opposite.  I felt really bad for him.  He couldn't help himself.  Literally.  He simply can't control his racing mind and body.  As I sat in the pew, I heard a mother behind me hiss at my son, "Stop blowing at her!"

My son was puffing out his cheeks and blowing air at the little girl beside him.  I turned around and looked at the woman who had hissed.  She was glaring at my son.  I wanted to get out of my seat and slap her in the face.  I didn't, of course.  I wanted to tell her how my son once said to me, after a particularly difficult day, "I don't know, daddy . . . I'm a bad person . . . I want to kill myself."  He's only seven years old.

It's difficult for people to understand who don't have a child with ADHD.  Certainly, the mother in the pew behind us didn't understand.  Her daughter was quiet, well-behaved.  She saw my son as an anomaly.  A distraction.  A bad kid.  I'm sure almost everybody else there saw the same thing.

When Saint Marty looked around, he saw intolerant asswipes. 

Maybe we all need to go to confession.

And another offering from the Poet of the Week, who would totally get my son's thrashings of the spirit:

The Universe as Primal Scream

by:  Tracy K. Smith

5pm on the nose. They open their mouths

And it rolls out: high, shrill and metallic.

First the boy, then his sister. Occasionally,

They both let loose at once, and I think

Of putting on my shoes to go up and see

Whether it is merely an experiment

Their parents have been conducting

Upon the good crystal, which must surely

Lie shattered to dust on the floor.

Maybe the mother is still proud

Of the four pink lungs she nursed

To such might. Perhaps, if they hit

The magic decibel, the whole building

Will lift-off, and we'll ride to glory

Like Elijah. If this is it—if this is what

Their cries are cocked toward—let the sky

Pass from blue, to red, to molten gold,

To black. Let the heaven we inherit approach.

 Whether it is our dead in Old Testament robes,

Or a door opening onto the roiling infinity of space.

Whether it will bend down to greet us like a father,

Or swallow us like a furnace. I'm ready

To meet what refuses to let us keep anything

For long. What teases us with blessings,

Bends us with grief. Wizard, thief, the great

Wind rushing to knock our mirrors to the floor,

To sweep our short lives clean. How mean

Our racket seems beside it. My stereo on shuffle.

The neighbor chopping onions through a wall.

All of it just a hiccough against what may never

Come for us. And the kids upstairs still at it,

Screaming like the Dawn of Man, as if something

They have no name for has begun to insist

Upon being born.

Sometimes, I need to be dragged . . .

May 9: Malawi, Poet of the Week, Tracy K. Smith, "The Good Life"

Compared to 99% of the world's population, I live a pretty good life.  Plenty of food to eat.  Fresh water to drink.  A house and warm clothes.   I own two cars and have two healthy kids.  I don't have to worry about things like dysentery or malaria.  And I make money.  Lots or money compared to citizens of Malawi or Burundi who subsist on $1.25 a day.

Some days, however, I need a George Bailey moment--a reminder that, despite all of my problems, I really have a wonderful life.  George had a second-class angel to help him out.  Me?  I've got poetry.  In particular, I have Tracy K. Smith.  Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Poet of the Week.

Tonight, my son is sick.  He has strep throat.  Now, in a different country with different circumstances, my son's life might have been in jeopardy.  Instead, he's in bed, asleep, antibiotics filling his body.  He's going to wake up tomorrow morning, feeling better, ready to go on a field trip with his second grade class.

Saint Marty has a good life.  He's lucky.  Blessed. 

The Good Life

by:  Tracy K. Smith

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.