August 15, 2026: “How Some of It Happened,” Confession, “hebron”

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been posting a lot this summer.  And I’ve made tons of excuses about WHY I haven’t been posting:  taking some “me” time, working hard at the library, focusing on my latest poetry manuscript, reading War and Peace.  You get the idea.  

Here’s my confession:  I haven’t experienced a whole lot of happiness this summer.  Yes, I am so proud of my son for graduating in May and for landing a job at the local children’s museum.  Yes, my daughter continues to amaze me with her drive and courage in her medical school program.  And my wife is the most loving, supportive partner, even when I’m not easy to be around.

Yet, in these long days of summer, I’ve been really struggling.

Marie Howe writes about her brother’s struggles . . . 

How Some of It Happened

by: Marie Howe

My brother was afraid, all his life, of going blind, so deeply

that he would turn the dinner knives away from, looking at him,

he said, as they lay on the kitchen table.

He would throw a sweatshirt over those knobs that lock the car door

from the inside, and once, he dismantled a chandelier in the middle

of the night when everyone was sleeping.

We found the pile of sharp and shining crystals in the upstairs hall.

So you understand, it was terrible

when they clamped his one eye open and put the needle in his cheek

and up and into his eye from underneath

and held it there for a full minute before they drew it slowly out

once a week for many weeks.  He learned to lean into it,

to settle down he said, and still the eye went dead, ulcerated,

breaking up green in his head as the other eye, still blue

and wide open, looked and looked at the clock.

My brother promised me he wouldn’t die after our father died.

He shook my hand on a train going home one Christmas and gave me

five years, as clearly as he promised he’d be home for breakfast when

I watched him walk into the New York City autumn night.  By nine, I promise,

and he did come back.  And five years later he gave me five years more.

So much for the brave pride of premonition, 

the worry that won’t let it happen.

You know, he said, I always knew I would die young.

And then I got sober, and I thought, OK, I’m not.

I’m going to see thirty and live to be an old man.  And now

it turns out that I am going to die.  Isn’t that funny?

—One day it happens:  what you have feared all your life,

the unendurable specific, the exact thing.  No matter what you say or do.

This is what my brother said:  Here, sit closer to the bed

so I can see you.

Howe’s brother experiences what he feared the most:  blindness.  Yet, he learns to lean into it, settle down.  It seems that the certainty of his impending death removes his childhood terror of living in darkness.  One struggle replaces the other, and her brother finds a kind of peace, even as he still tries to shield Howe from pain.  The last two lines of the poem absolutely gut me—the brother’s small act of need and comfort:  “. . .  sit closer to the bed / so I can see you.”  Be near me, he’s saying, and I love you.

My struggles pale in comparison to the subject matter of Howe’s poem.  In fact, I’m almost embarrassed to write about my mental health struggles.  Yet, here I sit in metaphorical darkness, asking you, kind reader, to be near me.

That’s been the hardest part of these last couple months—the loneliness.  When you’re sitting on your living room couch in the middle of the night, crying for no tangible reason, you start feeling like you’re stranded on some alien planet with no way to get home.  (So, either I’m E.T. the extraterrestrial trying to phone home, or I’m Matt Damon in The Martian, trying to grow potatoes to survive until the rescue team shows up.)

I’ve been trying to pinpoint the cause of my current melancholia.  I am now the father of two adult children who no longer depend on me for sage advice or help with homework.  I realized this week that I’ve already lived over half my life and have only 30 or 35 years left.  If I’m lucky.  (Like Howe’s brother, I’ve always thought I was going to die young.)  And, looking back on my life, I’m not sure how much of a difference I’ve made in this world.  I haven’t saved anyone from a burning building or donated a kidney.  As far as I know, my writing hasn’t altered the universe in any way, either.

In short, my life hasn’t really mattered all that much.  (Yes, as I typed those words, I started crying.  Again.)

This weekend, in particular, has been very difficult for many reasons.  The only moment I found a scrap of happiness came this afternoon when I finished a poem I’ve been trying to write for over a week.  I read it to my wife, and she smiled and nodded at me (after making me change one image—she is my best and harshest critic).  For a little while, I actually felt lighter, as if some weight had lifted off my shoulders.  I held onto that feeling for as long as I could before the darkness descended again.

That’s my confession.  This whole summer has been my penance.

Here’s the poem Saint Marty finished today . . . 

hebron

by: Martin Achatz

standing at the mouth of the cave as a tornado

screamed by, elijah thought it was god

blowing out birthday candles.  but it wasn’t.  then

the ground shook its fist, the mountain stomped

its feet, and elijah was sure it was god line dancing

with moses, but it wasn’t.  then a firestorm baked

everything to bricks and pottery, and elijah thought

it was god having a smoke after dinner, but it wasn’t.

then a mosquito flew into his ear, sang him 

a lullaby, and elijah thought it was his mother,

but it wasn’t.  it was god eating ripe blueberries

and humming “what a wonderful world”

before it had even been written.

June 3-4: Completely Broken in Pieces, Confession, Forgiveness

Merton feels abject rejection . . . 

I got into New York that evening and called up Father Edmund, but he was too busy to see me. 

So I went out to the house at Douglaston. 

“When are you going to the novitiate?” my aunt asked me. 

“Maybe I’m not going,” I said. 

They did not ask me any questions. 

I went to Communion and prayed earnestly that God’s will should be done—and it was. But I was far from being able to understand it then. 

Father Edmund listened to what I had to say. I told him about my past and all the troubles I had had. He was very friendly and very kind. 

But if I had had any hope that he would wave all my doubts aside with a smile, I was soon disappointed. He said:

“Well, Tom, listen: suppose you let me think it over and pray a bit. Come back in a couple of days. All right?” 

“In a couple of days?” 

“Come back tomorrow.” 

So I waited for another day. My mind was full of anguish and restlessness. I prayed: “My God, please take me into the monastery. But anyway, whatever You want, Your will be done.” 

Of course I understand the whole business now. My own mind was full of strange, exaggerated ideas. I was in a kind of a nightmare. I could not see anything straight. But Father Edmund saw clearly enough for all that. 

He saw that I was only a recent convert, not yet two years in the Church. He saw that I had had an unsettled life, and that my vocation was by no means sure, and that I was upset with doubts and misgivings. The novitiate was full, anyway. And when a novitiate is crammed with postulants year after year it is time for somebody to reflect about the quality of the vocations that are coming in. When there is such a crowd, you have to be careful that a few who are less desirable do not float in on the tide with the rest.... 

So the next day he told me kindly enough that I ought to write to the Provincial and tell him that I had reconsidered my application. There was nothing I could say. I could only hang my head and look about me at the ruins of my vocation. 

I asked a few faint-hearted questions, trying to feel my way and find out if my case were altogether hopeless. Naturally, Father did not want to commit himself or his Order to anything, and I could not even get what might seem to be a vague promise for the future. 

There seemed to me to be no question that I was now excluded from the priesthood for ever. I promised 

I would write at once, and that I would proclaim my undying loyalty to the Friars Minor in doing so. 

“Do that,” Father said. “The Provincial will be pleased.” 

When I walked down the steps of the monastery, I was so dazed I didn’t know what to do. All I could think of was to go over across Seventh Avenue to the Church of the Capuchins, next to the station. I went inside the church, and knelt in the back and, seeing there was a priest hearing confessions, I presently got up and took my place in the short line that led to his confessional.

I knelt in the darkness until the slide snapped back with a bang and I saw a thin, bearded priest who looked something like James Joyce. All the Capuchins in this country have that kind of a beard. The priest was in no mood to stand for any nonsense, and I myself was confused and miserable, and couldn’t explain myself properly, and so he got my story all mixed up. Evidently he decided that I was only complaining and trying to get around the decision that had been made by some religious Order that had fired me out of their novitiate, probably for some good reason. 

The whole thing was so hopeless that finally, in spite of myself, I began to choke and sob and I couldn’t talk any more. So the priest, probably judging that I was some emotional and unstable and stupid character, began to tell me in very strong terms that I certainly did not belong in the monastery, still less the priesthood and, in fact, gave me to understand that I was simply wasting his time and insulting the Sacrament of Penance by indulging my self-pity in his confessional. 

When I came out of that ordeal, I was completely broken in pieces. I could not keep back the tears, which ran down between the fingers of the hands in which I concealed my face. So I prayed before the Tabernacle and the big stone crucified Christ above the altar. 

The only thing I knew, besides my own tremendous misery, was that I must no longer consider that I had a vocation to the cloister.

Not exactly the most comforting depiction of going to confession.  It has been many years since I've received the sacrament of penance.  I don't find it an easy thing to do--speaking aloud all of your deepest shames.  Yet, it can be incredibly healing, as well.  To hear someone say "you are forgiven" is an amazing experience, especially if your guilt has been deep and heavy.  

Merton experiences none of the healing in the above passage, and he leaves the confessional even more broken than when he entered it.  That's just not supposed to happen.  While you have to atone for your transgressions in some way, that atonement should feel liberating, like a gift even.  Merton leaves the confessional even more burdened than when he entered it.

As I said, my last experience in a confessional was many years ago, and I had been carrying around the burden of a particular shortcoming for a very long time.  It had been eating away at me.  When I entered that small space, I couldn't help myself.  I started to weep, could barely speak.  As I gulped out my story between sobs, the priest sat and listened to me, his face not a mask of judgement.  After I was done with my waterfall of misery, he started talking.  He began this way:  "God loves you . . ."

I left the confessional that night feeling as if I could fly.  Literally.  

I wish that I could say I went away and sinned no more.  That would be a lie, and I would have to confess that.  No, I'm just as flawed and broken as the next person--several steps ahead of Donald Trump, but still way behind Mother Teresa.  But that's not my point this evening.

Forgiveness is a powerful force--not just for the forgiven, but the forgiver, as well.  It can set both of you free, if entered into willingly and with an open heart.  I am in a life situation at the moment where I'm struggling with forgiveness.  Mainly because the person I need to forgive doesn't want to be forgiven.  Sees nothing wrong in what she's done/is doing.  Her actions are hurting many people, but she doesn't care.

So, there is the dilemma.  Can you forgive a person who isn't seeking forgiveness?  My answer to that question, for tonight anyway, is "yes."  You can forgive that person.  Keep on forgiving that person.  Because that forgiveness is a way to bring peace into your life and heart.  Most times, when somebody disappoints you, it's because you have put your own expectations on that somebody, and your expectations weren't met.  Cue the sense of betrayal and victimhood.

I can go through my life feeling disappointed.  Being a victim.  Or I can say "I forgive you" over and over until it sinks in.  Until I release that person to make her own mistakes and live with the consequences of her actions, even if it means she ends up alienated and alone.  Or worse.  It's her choice.

When my daughter and son were in preschool, their teachers always did a roll call in the morning.  If one of the children was absent, the teacher would say, "She isn't here today.  We wish her well."  And all the kids would repeat, "We wish her well."

I am still struggling with forgiveness right now.  I sort of feel like that priest who literally kicks Merton out of the confessional, unforgiven and abandoned.  Anger and betrayal are not easy emotions to let go of.  Yet, everybody deserves forgiveness.  Even the people who aren't seeking it, or don't even realize they need it.  Especially them.

So, I will say it now, tonight before I go to sleep, when I wake up in the morning, on my drive into work, and all day tomorrow:  "I forgive."

Maybe Saint Marty will also eventually be able to say, "We wish her well."

August 4: Judith Minty, "Letter About Guilt from California to the Snow Country," Confession

Letter About Guilt from California to the Snow Country

by:  Judith Minty

Last week, rain fell in a rage,
dragging its muddy hair over the hills.
Flood waters, rose, walls and roofs caved in,
redwoods rose, walls and roofs caved in,
redwoods slid and buried lovers in their beds.
Now this warm Monday, sun
spreads out in the pasture and I've peeled back
my clothes to the skin.  A coyote
straggled from the manzanita grove and monarchs
dry their wings over the poppies.

Friend, halfway across the country, you suffer
a different climate.  Where you are, firemen
wear coats of ice and water freezes
when it hits the burning building.  On Lake Michigan
waves break in crystals against the churning boat.
--But I'm trying to speak of guilt, how I
stayed dry, how I'm stealing warmth
from the winter.  I'm thinking about that cardinal
singing in your snow-covered pine tree.
                                        --Santa Cruz, California

_________________________

This poem is about guilt.  About Judith Minty being in warm California winter while her friend is in the frozen north of Michigan.  There's this deep sense of longing in the poem, as well.  As if Minty craves the beauty of snow and ice.  The cardinal in the pine tree.

Guilt is a sneaky emotion.  If you let it creep into your mind, it can completely control you.  Force you to make decisions that are inherently wrong-headed.  Assuaging a guilty conscience is difficult.  I think that's why confession is so important in the Catholic Church.  It's a way of unburdening yourself to another person, and then that person says to you, "You're good.  You're forgiven."  It's a powerful thing to hear those words.

I'm not a theologian.  I'm sort of an armchair philosopher, I suppose.  I think poets, like Minty, point out these human conditions.  They don't offer solutions to problems.  They peel away the skin and let you see things like guilt fully, like a bright red bird in a snowy landscape.

Saint Marty's not feeling guilty today.  He's feeling a little old, a little tired, and grateful it's the weekend.

February 4: Confession, Classic Saint Marty, "Visit at McDonald's"

It has been a long day of school work.  Grading.  Lesson plans.  Then I started working on some revisions of poems and essays.  Took a little bit of time off to go to a Super Bowl party at a local brewery with one of my best friends.

I watched Justin Timberlake, which was the real reason I turned the game on.  Now, I'm sitting on my couch, not really caring what team is going to win.  Sort of rooting for the Eagles.  Sort of thinking about going to bed.  Sort of thinking about the Hershey's chocolate hearts in the kitchen.

I'm reaching back quite a ways for tonight's Classic Saint Marty, to something that I forgot that I wrote.  It's a confession.  Sort of . . .

February 22, 2010:  Saint Margaret of Cartona

As a college writing teacher, I know about the healing power of putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. During my years in the classroom, I've read student essays about binge drinking, drug abuse, sexual violence, eating disorders, and gender confusion. (I've also read essays about gutting deer, fixing pickup trucks, killing goldfish, and kissing grandmothers. It ain't glamorous, but it's a living.) Above all, I've seen the expressions on students' faces when they share something painful or embarrassing. It's a combination of relief and fear, as if they've just revealed to me a vestigial tail or hermaphroditic sex organ they've kept hidden their whole lives. Baring yourself in all of your broken glory is like volunteering to be Zuzu the Ape Girl in a carnival sideshow.

Today's saint could be the patron of all the Zuzus of the world. Margaret of Cartona's story has all the ingredients of an 11th century Girls Gone Wild video. As a teenager, she ran off with a guy from a neighboring town, got knocked up, and had an illegitimate son. She lived in unwedded bliss for nine years, until her Tuscan stud was murdered. After returning home to her father and being rejected by him, Margaret and her son ended up receiving asylum at the Friars Minor at Cartona. Even living with a bunch of monks didn't curb her sexual appetites. I'm not Dr. Phil, but I would diagnosis this girl with seriously low self-esteem coupled with the possibility of abuse at a young age. (Cue the dramatic Law & Order: SVU chords. Dah-dum.) Eventually, Margaret went home on a Sunday and tried to "mutilate her face" to atone for her sins, according to my book. Saved by a priest, she became a Franciscan nun, nursed the poor, established a religious order, built a hospital, and had ecstatic visions in which she spoke directly with Jesus Christ. (Talk about an over-achiever.)

The fact that astounds me the most about Margaret's tale is how really fucked-up her life was. I got the feeling as I read about her that there's quite a few juicy details that the circumspect publishers of my Illustrated Lives of the Saints chose to omit. But that's human nature, to gild the messier side of life or ignore it altogether. That's especially Christian human nature, unfortunately, as if the last Judas in the world was named Iscariot. (I've always had a soft spot for Judas in the Bible. It might be my co-dependent nature, but I just think that a few home-cooked meals and maybe a couple of visits to Nazareth's red-light district might have made him less cranky.)

The kind of open-book quality of Margaret's life and the cleansing power I've witnessed of student essays makes me want to throw open the closet doors in my house and drag every last femur, tibia, ulna, rib, and skull into the light of day. My wife read Margaret's story and said, "I guess there's hope for me yet." Honesty is a mighty force. It can purge the soul of a lot of infected and broken crap (like cleaning out the attic in anticipation of a move).

When my wife and I were separated, I spent a lot of long evenings thinking about sex, sex addiction, sex addiction and the Internet, sex addiction and the Internet and pornography. (I also spent a great deal of time missing sex and the close, sweaty proximity of another human being.) I've always had an obsessive nature. So, during those endless nights of naval gazing, I started searching on the Internet. At first, I told myself I was only looking for my wife, trying to find her, connect with her, protect her, hurt her, whatever her. Those searches led me to adult websites. Those adult websites led me to more adult websites. Those adult websites led me to hardcore porn sites: blowjob.com, ratemenaked.com, titsandass.com, eatmeraw.com, pussygalore.com. Some nights, I would logon at 9:30 at night and logoff at 2 a.m. (Keep in mind, I leave for work at 5:30 in the morning.)

I knew I had a problem. My rational mind knew I needed help. But the abandoned part of me, the part that felt like the ragged socket of a tooth in a five-year-old's mouth, was not willing to give up the empty pleasure of cyber connection. Then, one night, I spent over eight hours pointing and clicking. I dragged myself into work and knew I couldn't continue.

I didn't try to mutilate my face. I slinked into my counselor's office and confessed the whole shitty, sticky business, expecting judgement and disappointment and shock. (My counselor is a good friend, and I truly carried a load of shame the size of a blue whale into that session.) What I got from her, instead, was understanding, compassion, some tissues, and a hug. (Pretty much what Jesus would have given me.)

I would like to say from that day forward I never clicked a mouse in an inappropriate manner again. Like any broken person, however, I have to take it a day at a time. Some days are easier than others. Some days are harder. That's the nature of brokenness, I guess. This blog is just another step on the road to wholeness.

So, I stand before you today--Zuzu the Hermaphroditic Ape Girl With the Vestigial Tail. Show times are 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Drop by the tent for a visit. The bearded lady in the next stall makes a mean blueberry muffin, and the Alligator Penis Boy across the midway always has the coffee pot on.

And a poem that I forgot I wrote.  I'm not sure if it's any good.  You be the judge . . .

Visit at McDonald's

by:  Martin Achatz

We eat eggs and sausage,

     orange juice.  Talk about souls

in the fists of our bodies, held tight

     as a final breath before diving

down to find a lost wedding

     band in the silt of lake water.

We speak of things precious.  Oxygen,

     blood, laughter at funerals.

Hover like mosquitoes over pink skin

     full of corpuscle, leukocyte,

enough to nourish larvae

     to health and growth and swarm,

to gather in this swamp of love

     with gator and egret, the spin

of hurricane, flood of salt.

     In this morning light, we know

Our time together is short, an afterthought

     in the lexicon of divine or sacred or holy.

Yet we hold on to this:  us,

     at a table, in this place.

Saturday.  Labor Day weekend.

     A biscuit, fried potato.

Cup of coffee, half-full, cold.

     These things, these words.

Paid for with stuff found in a coat pocket.

     Pennies.  Dimes.  A quarter bright as creation.

February 8: Empty Web, New Poem, "Confession," New Cartoon

...Every day Wilbur would stand and look at the torn, empty web, and a lump would come to his throat.  No one had ever had such a friend--so affectionate, so loyal, and so skillful.

Wilbur spends a good portion of the last chapter of Charlotte's Web mourning the loss of his friend.  The end of this book is melancholy.  There's no way getting around it.  Yet, it's also a celebration of friendship.  That's why I love this book so much.


I think the best writing has elements of joy and sorrow in it.  My favorite poems.  My favorite novels.  It's something I strive to put in everything I write.  I don't always succeed, but I try.

I've got a new poem for you guys tonight.  It's something I've been working on for almost four or five weeks.  I read it to my wife, and she said, "It's awfully short."  Well, it is.  I have to admit that.  I'm not sure if it's done, but it's done enough for me to share.

This is Saint Marty's first poem of 2014.

Confession

In the dark, I taste again my love's body that first time.  Unmarried.  Young.  Neither of us thought of the future.  No.  It was all lip and shoulder, the press of body against body under a Lake Superior moon.  All hunger, want.  We fell into each other, kept falling.  Surrendered to gravity, the way a blue whale breaches the Pacific, scrapes heaven, then crashes downward into foam, wave, salt, mist.  No guilt or regret.  No reason to bless me, father.  I'll hold this moment on my tongue until you ask for it.  But I won't beg forgiveness.  Won't accept it.  I'll simply open my mouth, speak.  Let you know how I came to be this unrepentant sinner.

Confessions of Saint Marty

November 10: A Confession

I have a confession this afternoon.  I've been having really negative thoughts all day, wishing bad things for a person who really doesn't deserve bad things.

I really cherish the friendship of my coworker, you know, the one who just got a new job.  However, I've been hoping that she's absolutely miserable in this new position she's taken.  I know that casts me in a pretty nasty light, and I'm prepared to accept that.  I've always been pretty honest about all of my shortcomings since I started Saint Marty.  This admission is really difficult for me.

I've even been imagining scenarios where my coworker loses her new job through downsizing or outright closure of her new department.  At the very least, in my mind, I want her to miss important things in her children's lives:  first day of school, costume parades at Halloween.  The kinds of things you just can't get back once they're over.  I feel like a really terrible person right now.

I'm hoping to shake off these thoughts, but they keep cropping up in my head as I'm going about my business.  Don't send me angry comments on this post.  I'm punishing myself, believe me.

Saint Marty ain't feeling very saint-like today.

Father, forgive me...

September 23: About that poem...

Yeah, about that poem I promised to post today...Ummmmmmm...I gues what I'm trying to say is...I spent my poetry time sort of...Well...I put together a book manuscript for a poetry contest, and I...kind of...

Okay!  I'll admit it!  I didn't get a new poem written today.  I'll work on it tonight and have it for you tomorrow.  Okay?  Okay.

Saint Marty's glad to have that off his chest.
 

Confession's good for the soul