February 2, 2025: "The Derelict," Fall Back, "What If?"

Sometimes I dream of doing something completely different with my life.  No poetry or words.  My dad made me an apprentice plumber when I entered high school, even though I made it pretty clear I had no interest in the trade.  My mom told me, "You should have something to fall back on."  

Probably every person in the world--from the pope to the guy begging for food on the street corner--had dreams and parents who thought those dreams were dangerously unrealistic.

Sharon Olds encounters a homeless person . . . 

The Derelict

by: Sharon Olds

He passes me on the street, his hair

matted, skin polished with grime,

muttering, suit stained and stiffened--

and yet he is so young, his blond beard like a

sign of beauty and power.  But his hands,

strangely flat, as if nerveless, hang and

flap slightly as he walks, like hands of 

someone who has had polio, hands

that cannot be used.  I smell the waste of his

piss, I see the ingot of his beard,

and think of my younger brother, his beauty,

coinage and voltage of his beard, his life

he is not using, like a violinist whose

hands have been crushed so he cannot play--

I who was there at the crushing of his hands

and helped to crush them.

Olds doesn't tell the whole story here about her brother.  Obviously, there's hard feelings or estrangement.  Perhaps underlying violence and/or abuse, too.  Something that's derailed his life.  And Olds seems to take a little responsibility for his situation.

My mom convinced me to study computer science when I graduated from high school and headed off to the university.  "I think there's some future in that," she said wisely.  She knew my passions were not in numbers or lines of code, that I wanted to be a filmmaker or writer.  "It's something to fall back on, in case," she added.  It felt as though I'd already failed as a writer when she said those words.

Here I am, decades later, a published poet with a few books under his belt.  I haven't written a line of programming since I was about 21 or 22.  I never fell back.  I did work as a housekeeper for a hospital,  Painted buildings.  Bused tables.  Sold books and cigars.  Registered patients at an outpatient surgery center and cardiology office.  

But I was writing the whole time.  Look back to the beginning posts of this blog, if you don't believe me.  I never gave up on my dream.  Never settled for Plan B.

Saint Marty wrote a poem today about having something to fall back on, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Imagine that you are given the chance to start your life over.  In this new life you can choose your parents, your hometown, your travels, and your educational and/or career paths, along with your partner, children (or lack thereof), and friends.  What would you change about your life so far if you could?  Write a poem that shares about this new, alternate life.

What If?

by: Martin Achatz

What if, when I wake

up in the morning, I don't

see a finger of sun practicing

scales across the keyboard

of floor?  Or smell coffee 

burning the air like a dying

campfire?  What if instead

I was my dad, listening

to Willie Nelson on WJPD,

my hands hard as permafrost,

all my days dictated by

leaky faucets, basements

flooded with sewage, frozen

pipes and shower drains?

And what if Walt Whitman

decided to paint houses

for a living, or Emily

Dickinson castrated sheep?

How about e. e. cummings

driving a taxi on midnight shifts,

with Wordsworth as his

dispatcher?  What if Sylvia

Plath rode a garbage truck

in Harlem, and Chaucer scooped

ice cream at Baskin-Robbins?

And Shakespeare, ah, Shakespeare.

What if he was a career IRS

agent auditing the return

of Gwendolyn, who owned

a bakery called Brooks' Breads

that specialized in blueberry scones?

What if every poet followed

their parents' advice about

always having something to fall

back on?  Would that mean

Homer getting drunk night after

night at the Paradise after 

a 12-hour shift digging coal, 

telling Odysseus the bartender

how he dreams of sailing

the Mediterranean until

he runs out of baklava or Twinkies?

September 25: The Glory of God, Infinite Loops, Love

A reflection on the goodness of God from Merton . . .

Perhaps they did not know they were waiting for all this. Perhaps they thought they had nothing better to occupy their minds than the wedding of Prince George and Princess Marina which had taken place the day before. Even I myself was more concerned with the thought of some people I was leaving than with the political atmosphere at that precise moment. And yet that atmosphere was something that would not allow itself to be altogether ignored. 

I had seen enough of the things, the acts and appetites, that were to justify and to bring down upon the world the tons of bombs that would someday begin to fall in millions. Did I know that my own sins were enough to have destroyed the whole of England and Germany? There has never yet been a bomb invented that is half so powerful as one mortal sin— and yet there is no positive power in sin, only negation, only annihilation: and perhaps that is why it is so destructive, it is a nothingness, and where it is, there is nothing left—a blank, a moral vacuum. 

It is only the infinite mercy and love of God that has prevented us from tearing ourselves to pieces and destroying His entire creation long ago. People seem to think that it is in some way a proof that no merciful God exists, if we have so many wars. On the contrary, consider how in spite of centuries of sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice, spawned and bred by the free wills of men, the human race can still recover, each time, and can still produce men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity. How could all this be possible without the merciful love of God, pouring out His grace upon us? Can there be any doubt where wars come from and where peace comes from, when the children of this world, excluding God from their peace conferences, only manage to bring about greater and greater wars the more they talk about peace? 

We have only to open our eyes and look about us to see what our sins are doing to the world, and have done. But we cannot see. We are the ones to whom it is said by the prophets of God: “Hearing hear, and understand not; and see the vision, and know it not.”

There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God to the whole world. 

There is not an act of kindness or generosity, not an act of sacrifice done, or a word of peace and gentleness spoken, not a child’s prayer uttered, that does not sing hymns to God before His throne, and in the eyes of men, and before their faces. 

How does it happen that in the thousands of generations of murderers since Cain, our dark bloodthirsty ancestor, that some of us can still be saints? The quietness and hiddenness and placidity of the truly good people in the world all proclaim the glory of God.

This passage is Merton in love with the evidences of God in the world.  Yes, his story is about to plunge into the horrors of World War II, with all the crimes humans committed against each other during that conflict.  Yet, through it all, Merton says, the subtle and hidden work of truly good people--unspoken saints doing what unspoken saints do--sings hosannas to the glory of God.  It's Merton in ecstasy over goodness.

It has been a very good day.  My son is happy, went to school.  He seems lighter than I've seen him in weeks, as if, were he not tethered to the ground by gravity, he would float skyward.  That, for me, is an example of what Merton is talking about:  God's grace in action.  Sure, he is being helped by guidance counselors and physicians and therapists and medications, but he is smiling and full of light.  That is what matters today.

Now, I am not being naive here.  I know that, tomorrow or tonight or in the next half hour, things could change.  That is the nature of mental health issues.  There aren't any magical cures.  However, there are times when, after a long period of darkness, there's a break in the clouds, and the sun shines through.  This is one of those times for me, and I will take all the sun that I can get.

Tomorrow will be my son's twelfth birthday.  We will celebrate it at my mother's house, with cupcakes and ice cream and singing loud enough to embarrass him until his thirteenth birthday.  And then, on Sunday, we will celebrate it again with some of my son's friends and more family at a socially distanced birthday party.  All the young people will be locked in an Escape Room while the adults watch on iPads.  Face masks will be the fashion of the day.

But, sometime this weekend, maybe tonight, I know I will do something that will cause my son to scream at me, "You are a SHITTY dad!"  And then he will storm off to his computer and disappear into some world where he'll chop the head off an ogre that looks like me.

Because that's what being a parent is all about.  Supporting your kids.  Doing everything you can to give your kids the best life possible.  Wanting your kids to be happy.  Then, when they want to do something stupid or unsafe, you have to use that dreaded word:  No.  And an entire lifetime of mediocre-to-good parenting is wiped out in an instant.  Sort of like the dinosaurs being snuffed out by a meteor.

And you start rebuilding.  It's an unending process.  An infinite loop.  When I was studying Computer Science as an undergrad, I got stuck in a lot of those.  My programming caused a lot of computers to crash.  Now, as a father, I'm trying to program my kids to do the right things, to grow up into good people.  Reflections of the glory of God in this world, as Merton would say.  But kids are a lot harder to program than computers.  They don't speak binary.  And they're wiring is a lot more unpredictable.

However, I do know where to start with my son and daughter.  I know the first line of their programming code.  And it's a line that's looped infinitely, from now until the day I pass from their lives.  It consists of one miraculous word, repeated over and over and over and over:  Love.

Saint Marty sees the glory of God every day in his kids.

June 30: Coming Up in the World, Choices in My Life, Living Proof

Billy made a noise like a small, rusty hinge.  He had just emptied his seminal vesicles into Valencia, had contributed his share of the Green Beret.  According to the Tralfamadorians, of course, the Green Beret would have seven parents in all.

Now he rolled off his huge wife, whose rapt expression did not change when he departed.  He lay with the buttons of his spine along the edge of the mattress, folded his hands behind his head.  He was rich now.  He had been rewarded for marrying a girl nobody in his right mind would have married.  His father-in-law had given him a new Buick Roadmaster, an all-electric home, and had made him manager of his most prosperous office, his Ilium office, where Billy could expect to make at least thirty thousand dollars a year.  That was good.  His father had been only a barber.

As his mother said, "The Pilgrims are coming up in the world."

Thirty thousand dollars doesn't seem like a whole lot of money these days, especially when you consider what Billy had to do for that money--enter into a loveless marriage.  A marriage of convenience for him.  However, when you adjust that amount for inflation, Billy Pilgrim would have been making over $200,000 per year.  That's a pretty good chunk of change.  Again, he has to give up a lot for that money, including happiness.

I have to say that I've made choices in my life that have impacted my ability to earn a decent living.  When I first started college, I studied computer science and math.  I was pretty good at it, too.  But, after four years, I was pretty miserable.  I didn't like sitting in front of a computer, unless it was to write a paper for an English class I was taking.  I knew that a lifetime of fiddling with computer code would make me wealthy, but not very happy.

So, I abandoned computers and went to graduate school to study creative writing and English, at which I excelled.  Over twenty years after making that decision, I am not rich or famous.  I work two jobs, live in a tiny house.  Most days, I worry about money.  This morning, I stopped by the gas station to fill up my car.  I wasn't sure that I had enough money to pay for a tank of gas.  I crossed my fingers, said a prayer, and filled up.  The debit card worked.

The thing that I do have is a beautiful family, and I've been able to achieve a certain amount of success as a writer.  That's more than a lot of people can say.  It's more than Billy Pilgrim can say, that's for sure.

So, the point of this post is simple:  I am living proof that money doesn't necessarily buy happiness.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight that he's a struggling poet.

June 9: She Promised, Artificial Intelligence, Expectations

Billy said, "Hello," to her, and she asked him if he wanted some candy, and he said, "No, thanks."

She asked him how he was, and he said, "Much better, thanks."  She said that everybody at the Optometry School was sorry he was sick and hoped he would be well soon, and Billy said, "When you see 'em, tell 'em 'Hello.'"

She promised she would.

A pretty trivial passage, highlighting the lack of real love between Billy and his bride-to-be, Valencia.  Billy does not want to marry this woman, but he is expected to, by his mother, by Valencia's father, and by Valencia herself.  Billy is just living up to people's expectations. 

I must say that I understand this compulsion.  In life, I have always been aware of people's expectations.  I got all A's throughout high school and college.  That was expected.  I studied computer science and math as an undergraduate, because my mother thought it would be a good field for me.  (Had I followed through on her advice, I might be a much wealthier person right now.)  I went to graduate school.  Got two advance degrees.  And now I teach part-time at a university.

In my last semester as an undergraduate, I took a class in Artificial Intelligence.  (That was a rather new field of study for computer science at the time.)  I knew that I wasn't going to pursue a career in computer programming.  I'd already been accepted into a Master's program in English.  That semester, I did not want to program any more.  I hemmed and hawed.  I procrastinated.  I avoided.

One week before graduation, I knew I wasn't going to pass Artificial Intelligence.  I spent three nights trying to complete my final project.  I, literally, had nervous breakdown in front of my computer.  My mother found me in the basement, hyperventilating and crying.  She asked me what was wrong.  I confessed my failure and apologized for disappointing her.

She took my face in her hands and said, "All I want is for you to be happy.  That's all.  I couldn't be prouder of you."

I never finished that final project.  I still graduated summa cum laude.  I went on to graduate school and did really well.  I love what I do now.  Love teaching.  Love poetry.  Love writing.

My mother's only expectation for my life was that I be happy.  I am.

Saint Marty is very thankful for the love of his mother.

April 25: Mr. Ives Senior, Finding My Path, Garrett Hongo, "What For," New Cartoon

Mr. Ives Senior was able to give his third son clothes and books, two brothers and a sister, a little money, and a room in his large, somewhat rundown brownstone, three stories high, on Carroll Street.  And a name:  Edward...

Ives was adopted by a widower, who himself was an orphan.  Ives was lucky.  He had a parent who loved him, provided for him, and encouraged him in his artistic pursuits.  There was no pressure for Ives to follow in his adoptive father's trade--printing.  Ives was allowed to find his own path.  Make his own life.

When I was young, my father, a licensed master plumber, insisted I go on service calls with him.  He said that, no matter what I decided to do with my life, I would always have a trade to fall back on.  So my summers were a series of blocked sewers, leaking water heaters, plugged toilets, and drippy faucets.  I didn't enjoy these days.  I would rather have been in my bedroom, reading novels or writing stories and poems and essays.

My father's intentions were good.  He worked hard, and he taught me to work hard, as well.  My parents both came from pretty humble backgrounds.  My mother was raised by a single mother in Detroit (my grandfather died of stomach cancer when my mother was a young girl).  My dad grew up on a farm and then moved to Detroit, where my grandfather became a plumber.  My mother's mother worked for the railroad and then a local brewery. 

I was allowed to find my own path in college.  At first, I studied computer science (at the urging of my mother).  Four years, I wrote computer programs and took math classes, but I also took literature and writing courses.  Upon graduation, I applied to a graduate writing program and was accepted with a teaching fellowship.  The rest is history.

I am not a plumber, like my father.  I am not a computer programmer.  I am a struggling, part-time college instructor.  Scribbling poems in my spare time.  I thank my parents every day for the chances they provided for me.  The choices I was allowed to make.

Saint Marty has very few regrets.

What For

by:  Garrett Hongo

At six I lived for spells:

how a few Hawaiian words could call

up the rain, could hymn like the sea

in the long swirl of chambers

curling in the nautilus of a shell,

how Amida’s ballads of the Buddhaland

in the drone of the priest’s liturgy

could conjure money from the poor

and give them nothing but mantras,

the strange syllables that healed desire.

I lived for stories about the war

my grandfather told over hana cards,

slapping them down on the mats

with a sharp Japanese kiai.

I lived for songs my grandmother sang

stirring curry into a thick stew,

weaving a calligraphy of Kannon’s love

into grass mats and straw sandals.

I lived for the red volcano dirt

staining my toes, the salt residue

of surf and sea wind in my hair,

the arc of a flat stone skipping

in the hollow trough of a wave.

I lived in a child’s world, waited

for my father to drag himself home,

dusted with blasts of sand, powdered

and the strange ash of raw cement,

his deafness made worse by the clang

of pneumatic drills, sore in his bones

from the buckings of a jackhammer.

He’d hand me a scarred lunchpail,

let me unlace the hightop G.I. boots,

call him the new name I’d invented

that day in school, write it for him

on his newspaper. He’d rub my face

with hands that felt like gravel roads,

tell me to move, go play, an then he’d

walk to the laundry sink to scrub,

rinse the dirt of his long day

from a face brown and grained as koa wood.

I wanted to take away the pain

in his legs, the swelling in his joints,

give him back his hearing,

clear and rare as crystal chimes,

the fins of glass that wrinkled

and sparked the air with their sound.

I wanted to heal the sores that work

and war had sent to him,

let him play catch in the backyard

with me, tossing a tennis ball

past papaya trees without the shoulders

of pain shrugging back his arms.

I wanted to become a doctor of pure magic,

to string a necklace of sweet words

fragrant as pine needles and plumeria,

fragrant as the bread my mother baked,

place it like a lei of cowrie shells

and pikake flowers around my father’s neck,

and chant him a blessing, a sutra.

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 20: Cliques, Catholics, Cadillacs, and Expectations

"You ought to go to a boys' school sometime.  Try it sometime," I said.  "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques.  The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together.  Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together.  If you try to have a little intelligent--"

Holden doesn't fit in.   He's not an athlete.  He's not a future entrepreneur of America.  He's not an intellectual (although he is emotionally smart).  He's on the fencing team at Pencey, but he loses the team's foils on the way to a competition.  Although cliques aren't his thing, he seems to have a lot of friends, or people with whom he's friendly.  He's not economically challenged (poor).  He's been kicked out of all the best prep schools on the East Coast.  His brother's a semi-famous writer, and his dad is a lawyer.  Everyone expects Holden to be successful, and he's doing everything he can to not be successful.

I sometimes worry whether I've made wrong choices in my life.  When I started college, I majored in computer science, and I was good at it.  Granted, I wasn't a natural like some of the other people in my programming classes.  There was one guy I knew who wrote computer code for fun.  On a Saturday night, he didn't search for computer porn.  He worked on artificial intelligence.  I didn't fit in with this crowd.  I knew I didn't, but I hung on because my family expected me to be successful.  Graduate and get a mid-level IT job where I spent my time chasing down binary code bugs   I wasn't happy.

In my last semester as an undergraduate, I changed my career plans.  I applied to graduate school in English, and I switched my degree.  Instead of a Bachelor's in computer science, I graduated with a major in English and a minor in computer science and math.  I've never looked back.  Until now.

The last couple weeks of financial worries have made me a little reflective.  I've been playing a game of What-If.  As in, what if I had stuck with computers?  What if I'd moved to California and started programming?  What if I'd created an Internet search engine and called it by some kind of funky name, like "Google"?  What if, what if, what if...

The problem is that I wasn't a natural computer science geek.  I didn't eat, sleep, breathe, and have sex with silicon chips.  My classmates never let poor Rudolph play in any computer games, if you know what I mean.  The girls in my major were only interested in the guys with the biggest...pocket calculators.  I wasn't really interested in being a part of the Turbo Pascal clique.

Writing came naturally to me.  I was good at it.  Other people recognized I was good at it.  Girls read my stories and poems and wanted to talk to me.  English was where I belonged.  And that's where I've stayed.

I wish I could find a way to make more money with my English creds.  About 15 years ago, I had an idea about a series of books about a young orphan boy who attends a school for wizards and battles the most evil wizard who ever lived, but I didn't think anyone would be interested in it.  So here I am, working four jobs, teaching part-time, and cranking out blog posts.

Saint Marty has no regrets, except maybe the wizard book thing.

I don't fit in with any of these people...