May 1: "Children," Endless Summer Vacation, "School Playground"

Billy Collins and a movie trailer . . .

Children

by:  Billy Collins

There's a new movie out

titled Children.

I don't know

what it's about

but I like the voice

on the radio

when it says:

"Children:  now playing everywhere."

There is something truly joyful about seeing children play.  Kids don't have the self-awareness to worry over what other people think about them.  It's what's in front of their faces that counts, not what's behind or ahead.  They are creatures of the present.

I think the world would be a much better place if everyone adopted this way of existing.  Me?  I'm constantly worried about what's coming around the corner.  Maybe that's simply a byproduct of getting older.  Instead of endless summer vacation, there's work and health problems and bills.  College loans.  Mortgages.  Car payments.  I'm not saying that planning for the future is a bad thing.  In fact, it's necessary.  But, when all you're doing is saving your money for the future, you're just going to end up a rich corpse.  

Poetry depends upon living in the present.  Paying attention.  That's why kids are such natural poets.  Each moment of the day is an adventure, and, for young people, those moments stretch out like Lake Superior.  No shore or beach in sight.  Just endless blue.  I have difficulty cultivating that youthful, live-in-the-present perspective.  When I'm in the fever of writing, I can tap into it.  

Most of the time, however, Saint Marty just catches glimpses from a distance, like when he watched his son and daughter from the playground's chain link fence. 

School Playground

by:  Martin Achatz

Those days on

swings, slides, monkey bars

with other kids,

they taught me a lot

about poetry--

like how to get 

sweaty, wild words

to stand in a single-file line

without pushing or kicking.

My two best poems

June 20: Sage Ejaculation, Infest the Country, Children

But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his own epicurean lips.

"Cook, cook!- where's that old Fleece?" he cried at length, widening his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper; and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; "cook, you cook!- sail this way, cook!"

The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops; this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of command, came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb's sideboard; when, with both hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play.

"Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone? You've been beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender. Don't I always say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and deliver my message. Here, take this lantern," snatching one from his sideboard; "now then, go and preach to them!"

Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand drooping his light low over the sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.

"Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lips! Massa Stubb say dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!"

"Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden slap on the shoulder,- "cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear that way when you're preaching. That's no way to convert sinners, cook!"

"Who dat? Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turning to go.

"No, cook; go on, go on."

"Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:"-

"Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to it, try that," and Fleece continued.
"Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you, fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness- 'top dat dam slappin' ob de tail! How you tink to hear, 'spose you keep up such a dam slapping and bitin' dare?"

"Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have that swearing. Talk to 'em gentlemanly."

Once more the sermon proceeded.

"Your woraciousness, fellow-critters. I don't blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned. Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber out your neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but then de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid, but to bit off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge to help demselves."

"Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on."

"No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scougin' and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word; no use a-preaching to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get 'em full, dey wont hear you den; for den dey sink in the sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber."

"Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to my supper."

Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his shrill voice, and cried-
"Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust- and den die."

"Now, cook," said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; "stand just where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular attention."

"All 'dention," said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the desired position.

"Well," said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; "I shall now go back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you, cook?"

"What dat do wid de 'teak, " said the old black, testily.

"Silence! How old are you, cook?"

"'Bout ninety, dey say," he gloomily muttered.

"And you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, cook, and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak?" rapidly bolting another mouthful at the last word, so that morsel seemed a continuation of the question. "Where were you born, cook?"

"'Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roanoke."

"Born in a ferry-boat! That's queer, too. But I want to know what country you were born in, cook!"

"Didn't I say de Roanoke country?" he cried sharply.

"No, you didn't, cook; but I'll tell you what I'm coming to, cook. You must go home and be born over again; you don't know how to cook a whale-steak yet."

"Bress my soul, if I cook noder one," he growled, angrily, turning round to depart.

"Come back here, cook;- here, hand me those tongs;- now take that bit of steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be? Take it, I say"- holding the tongs towards him- "take it, and taste it."

Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old negro muttered, "Best cooked 'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy."

"Cook," said Stubb, squaring himself once more; "do you belong to the church?"

"Passed one once in Cape-Down," said the old man sullenly.

"And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town, where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here, and tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?" said Stubb. "Where do you expect to go to, cook?"

"Go to bed berry soon," he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.

"Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It's an awful question. Now what's your answer?"

"When dis old brack man dies," said the negro slowly, changing his whole air and demeanor, "he hisself won't go nowhere; but some bressed angel will come and fetch him."

"Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah? And fetch him where?"

"Up dere," said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and keeping it there very solemnly.

"So, then, you expect to go into our main-top, do you, cook, when you are dead? But don't you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets? Main-top, eh?"

"Didn't say dat t'all," said Fleece, again in the sulks.

"You said up there, didn't you? and now look yourself, and see where your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by crawling through the lubber's hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you don't get there, except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It's a ticklish business, but must be done, or else it's no go. But none of us are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my orders. Do ye hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t'other a'top of your heart, when I'm giving my orders, cook. What! that your heart, there?- that's your gizzard! Aloft! aloft!- that's it- now you have it. Hold it there now, and pay attention."

"All 'dention," said the old black, with both hands placed as desired, vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at one and the same time.

"Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad, that have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that, don't you? Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for my private table here, the capstan, I'll tell you what to do so as not to spoil it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live coal to it with the other; that done, dish it; d'ye hear? And now to-morrow, cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure you stand by to get the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle. As for the ends of the flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now ye may go."

But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.

"Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch. D'ye hear? away you sail then.- Halloa! stop! make a bow before you go.- Avast heaving again! Whale-balls for breakfast- don't forget."

"Wish, by gor! whale eat him, 'stead of him eat whale. I'm bressed if he ain't more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself," muttered the old man, limping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.

Yes, I know this is a long passage, but I couldn't find a good place to cut it.  The whole scene smacks of 19th-century racism.  Fleece is a caricature.  An old, uneducated, superstitious black man whom Melville plays for cheap laughs.  Fleece is 90-years-old, and Stubb is treating him like a child.  It is not one of the book's greatest moments.  It almost reads like a minstrel show.

I point these things out because it drives home the point I'm trying to make today--the type of racism exhibited in this chapter is indicative of a huge problem.  A book that's universally hailed as one of the greatest American novels ever written is riddled with racial stereotypes.  Racism is a problem that runs deep in the United States.

Today, Donald Trump reversed his policy of separating illegal immigrant children from their parents.  These kids are being housed in facilities that basically resemble kennels--chain link fences, cement slabs, several children to a cage.  It's despicable, and the President of the United States, until today, has defended the practice, saying immigrants "pour" across the borders and "infest the country."  That's right, folks, he's making an analogy that was used in Germany more than 70 years ago to justify the Holocaust.  Donald Trump is dehumanizing people to justify his actions.  It's right out of the Nazi playbook.

Now, I know you're probably hearing about this situation from all over--newspapers, television, social media, friends, family members.  I don't know on what side of the political spectrum you fall.  I don't care, really.  I grew up in a highly Republican household.  The only Democrat my father ever voted for in his entire life was John F. Kennedy.  In the 2016 Presidential election, he voted for Donald Trump.  People whom I care very deeply about are Republicans.

This isn't about Republican or Democrat.  It really isn't.  It's about little kids.  Scared.  Crying.  Traumatized.  If small children were found in cages in your neighbor's backyard, you'd call the police.  That neighbor would be arrested, put in jail, and imprisoned for child abuse, among other things.  That is a fact.  Yet, when the President of the United States does the same thing, he's "making America great again."

Sadly, this isn't something new for the United States of America.  Ask Native Americans and African Americans.  Or Japanese Americans.  Call them what you want--reservations, plantations, or internment camps--my country has a habit of incarcerating people (including American citizens) who it considers threats to national security.  Most of these people were non-white or non-Christian.  People who didn't look like "us."

I am ashamed of my country right now.  We have become what we are supposed to hate.  And there are people using the Bible to defend this.  Let me be clear on this:  people who think the Bible encourages the victimization of children are not followers of Christ.  They are not defenders of family values.  They are hypocrites and liars, more demagogues than disciples.

I apologize for the bluntness of this post.  I think the time for subtlety has passed.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight that his children are safe and secure and loved, and he prays that ALL children have the same security, the same safety, and the same love.

October 12: End of the War, Children, Old White Men

American fighter planes came in under the smoke to see if anything was moving.  They saw Billy and the rest moving down there.  The planes sprayed them with machine-gun bullets, but the bullets missed.  Then they saw some other people moving down by the riverside and they shot at them.  They hit some of them.  So it goes.

The idea was to hasten the end of the war.

Nobody was supposed to be alive.  The attack on Dresden was supposed to kill everything and everyone, thereby proving the superiority of the Allied forces and encouraging the Germans to surrender.  Of course, it took two nuclear bombs to convince Japan to give up.  In three months, Hitler will be dead, and the Nazis will wave the white flag.  Dresden, I suppose, was the beginning of the end.

I'm not sure if the American forces knew that Dresden was housing American prisoners of war.  If they did, then the bombing is not just an attack on German civilians.  It's an attack on our own soldiers.  Don't get me wrong--the lives of prisoners of war are not any more important than the lives of innocent women and children. 

Warfare is ugly.  That's one of the facts that I think Vonnegut is trying to drive home in Slaughterhouse.  When war happens, children are harmed.  After all, Vonnegut subtitled the novel "The Children's Crusade."  Wars aren't fought by old people.  They're fought by young men and women who have barely stepped out of their graduation caps and gowns.

Now, the world is in great turmoil.  Great Britain is preparing for possible armed conflict with North Korea.  The President of the United States keeps hinting at something big coming.  It's terrifying to think that old white men are making decisions that may cause the deaths of an entire generation of human beings.

Certainly, not all wars are unjustified.  The Nazis needed to be stopped.  Slavery in the United States needed to come to an end.  That doesn't change the fact that wars are horrifying events, full of tragedy and sorrow.  And the leaders who call for war sit back in their homes, completely safe and worry-free.

Saint Marty thinks that if a leader of any country declares war, his family needs to be sent to the front lines to fight.  It may mean less war, more negotiation.  And chocolate chip cookies.

March 20: Mrs. Morrow, Hot-Shot, Mother

Old Mrs. Morrow didn't say anything, but boy, you should've seen her.  I had her glued to her seat.  You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is.

Holden meets Mrs. Morrow on a train to New York City.  She's the mother of one of his classmates at Pencey, a "sonuvabitch" in Holden's estimation.  Yet, Holden likes Mrs. Morrow and tells her a pack of lies about her son, making Ernie out to be a "hot-shot" at school.  Popular,  Humble.  Shy.  Modest.  By the time the train reaches New York, Mrs. Morrow is inviting Holden to visit her son during summer vacation.

Mothers always want to hear the best about their sons and daughters.  Holden tells Mrs. Morrow exactly what she wants to hear.  Her child is a future President of the United States or Nobel Peace Prize winner.  I've had people tell me what a sweet, quiet girl my daughter is.  I usually look at them like they're describing a stranger.  Quiet?  My daughter?

My mother just became an octogenarian a little while ago.  She's always been a strong force in my life.  More than once, she marched up to the high school office when she thought they weren't giving me challenging classes.  When I was a freshman, she had a conversation with the principal on the first day of classes.  The next day, I found myself transferred out of study hall into geometry.  When she dropped me off at school that morning, she looked at me and said, "Don't disappointment me."  I got all A's the entire year.

I appreciate the fact that my mother pushed me as much as she did.  She was a tiger mother before the term "tiger mother" entered the popular lexicon.  She drove me to college scholarship interviews (I eventually received a full-ride from my school of choice).  She was the one who forced me to double-major--English and Computer Science.  She encouraged me to go to graduate school (where I received another full-ride).  After I earned my Master's degree, she suggested a PhD program might be a good idea (although I'd already started applying).  My mother has pushed, nudged, and prodded me through my whole life.  At the release party for my first book of poems, she was in the front row at the reading, smiling and nodding at her hot-shot son.

My mother's mind isn't what it used to be.  When I'm around her, she repeats herself a lot, asks the same questions over and over.  She suffers from macular degeneration.  A voracious reader her whole life, she's reduced to large-print James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks novels.  Last Sunday afternoon, I had dinner at her house.  We talked about my college teaching, and, in a moment of tiger mother clarity, she said, "When are they going to make you a full-time professor?"

I laughed and said, "When I hire a hit man to take out one of the poets in the department."

I worry about my mother now, grieve for the hurricane of woman she used to be.  She doesn't leave the house much anymore and uses a walker to get from her chair to the kitchen to the bathroom.  She could no longer strike fear into the hearts of school principals and counselors.  Yet, I still sense her over my shoulder when I teach or write or give a reading.

She's always there, smiling, whispering in Saint Marty's ear, "Don't disappointment me."

She is mother, hear her roar.

December 4: Dark Brown Curls, Genial Face, Saint Nicholas

...It's dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air...

In most of the movie adaptations of A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present (described in the passage above) looks like a Victorian Santa Claus, wrapped in a royal green robe and crowned with a holly wreath fringed with icicles.  The Ghost spreads goodwill and blessings everywhere he goes with Scrooge, although he gets around without a sleigh or flying reindeer.

December 6 is Saint Nicholas Day.  Nicholas was a bishop in what is now Turkey in the fourth century. He was known for his holiness and "abstemious" ways.  He was also known for his acts of generosity and charity.  In one legend, when Nicholas heard about a father who was struggling to support his three daughters.  At night, the bishop climbed to the roof of the father's house and threw three bags of gold down the chimney.

The Feast of Saint Nicholas was the precursor to our modern-day Christmas (before Church fathers moved the celebration of Christ's birth to the winter solstice).  In some countries, Saint Nicholas is still a pretty big deal.  Nicholas is the patron of children, bakers, and pawnbrokers.  Over the centuries, Saint Nicholas morphed into Santa Claus, the jolly old elf who delivers presents to the children of the world on Christmas Eve, climbing down chimneys and eating plates filled with homemade baked goods.

At my office, I have a coffee mug, even though I don't drink coffee.  On the mug is a picture of Santa Claus and two printed words:  "I believe."  My daughter is turning twelve tomorrow, and I'm sure she has her doubts about the Big Guy in red.  However, she humors me.  She still sets out a plate of cookies on Christmas Eve.  She still writes letters addressed to the North Pole.  She's not leaving anything up to chance.

For me, my coffee mug says it all.  I believe.  I believe in Christmas love and generosity and hope.  Hope for something better.  A world without war and poverty and need.  That's what the nativity story is all about.  And Santa Claus.  And Saint Nicholas.  And the Ghost of Christmas Present.  They're all about stepping out of darkness into light.

Saint Marty believes in that Light for the world.  Just ask his coffee mug.



I believe, just add cream and sugar



August 24: Until the Last, Tiny Tim, Feeling Sentimental

But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.

This moment is the first where Scrooge connects with Bob Cratchit and his family.  Scrooge views Christmas dinner at the Cratchit's house with the Ghost of Christmas Present, and, for the first time, becomes aware of Tiny Tim and his health issues.  Some may call this little scene sentimental.  Justifiably so.  It's a Christmas novel, and therefore a certain amount of sentimentality is expected.  However, sick and desperate children are not unusual in the works of Charles Dickens.  Think of all the homeless orphans in Oliver Twist or Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop whose death set off world-wide mourning.  Tiny Tim is just one in a long line of such kids in Dickensian novels.

I'm feeling a little sentimental myself this morning.  Before I sat down to type this post, I spent a few minutes gazing at a picture of my three-year-old son.  In particular, I was staring at his tiny hand.  It's so perfect.  The skin is smooth, and each finger is a little pudgy.  Baby pudgy.  I got a little choked up because, over the summer, my son has grown into this little boy, tall and sweaty and covered in dirt.  He isn't a baby anymore.  (Don't get me wrong.  I'm happy to be almost out of the diaper stage of my parenting life.)  He's just this miraculous creature, full of curiosity and adventure and happiness.

There's a reason Dickens uses Tiny Tim as one of the biggest catalysts of Scrooge's redemption.  Aside from Tim being a Christ figure (Tim's crutch is a little cross he carries everywhere), he is a symbol of innocence and vulnerability.  He represents the delicacy of childhood and the future.  Of hope.  That's why Tiny Tim effects Scrooge so strongly.

I think that's what children represent to most people.  Hope.  I look at my kids, and I see potential.  My daughter dances and sings and makes videos and does gymnastics.  My son loves cars and music and books and computers and running.  They are limitless right now.  That's a daily miracle, even when they're irritating the crap out of me.

Forgive Saint Marty this morning.  He's having a happiness moment.  It will soon pass.

A future President of the United States