January 5, 2025: "Nevsky Prospekt," Last Day, "Walt Whitman Reads a Poem at the Inauguration of Donald Trump"

I woke this morning, the last day of my holiday vacation, confused and panicked, thinking I had Rip Van Winkled myself into Monday.  For several moments, I lay in bed, full of dread, cataloguing a list of duties and responsibilities in my head.

Then, my wife reminded me it was only Sunday.

I've never dealt well with transitions, moving from one state of being to another.  Ask anyone who knows me well, and that person will most likely tell you that I'm a creature of habit and routine.  I eat the same breakfast every day.  (Crackers, hardboiled eggs, grapes.)  Watch the same movie over and over for days, sometimes weeks.  (My current obsession--Ken Burns' documentary on the life of Mark Twain.)  Write in my blog about the same poet for an entire year.  (Mary Oliver two years ago.  Billy Collins last year.  This year, Sharon Olds.)  

So, having to establish a new routine after these two weeks of downtime is going to be r-o-u-g-h.  In a week, I start teaching two classes for the university, and, in two weeks, the Felon in Chief becomes President of the United States again.  Can I have some Xanax with a chaser of Prozac, please?

Of course, I have poetry to calm my agitated heart and soul and mind.  When I write, I gain some sense of control over my life.  I don't feel quite so overwhelmed with my pen and journal in my hand.  Usually.

More about the dead from Sharon Olds . . . 

Nevsky Prospekt

(July, 1917)

by: Sharon Olds

It is an old photo, very black and

very white.  One woman

lifts up her heavy skirt as she runs.

A man in a white jacket, his hands

tied behind his back, runs,

his chin stuck out.  An old woman

in massive black turns and looks behind her.

A man throws himself onto the pavement.

A child in heavy boots is running

but looks back over his shoulder

at the black and white heap of bodies.

The wide gray stone square

is dotted with fallen inky shapes

and dropped white hats.  Everything else is

heaving away like a sea from the noise we

feel in the silence of the photograph

the way the deaf see sound:  the terrible

voice of the submachine guns saying

This is more important than your life.

The question Olds' poem poses is pretty simple:  what is something you would die for?  Olds is writing about the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, when the government cracked down in a violent way against protestors.  Between 1917 and 1923, seven to 12 million individuals died in the Russian Revolution.  That's a lot of people laying down their lives for what they believed in.  

Me?  I would lay down my life for my kids.  Any parent would say the same.  And I would do practically anything to ensure that my daughter and son have brighter, more promising futures.  The Iroquois have this concept called the Seventh Generation Principle, which basically means that decisions made now should result in a better world seven generations into the future.  It's a pretty powerful concept.

I'm not sure my blog posts are going to make that kind of difference in the world.  Or my poems.  Seven generation from now, I can predict with about 99.99% certainty that nobody is going to be interested in reading my Bigfoot stuff.  But I do recycle, conserve water, support Planned Parenthood, and vote in every election.  I'm not sure all that counts, but it's the best I could come up with tonight.  

Saint Marty has a new poem about the future, based on today's prompt from The Daily Poet:  

Write a poem in the voice of someone other than yourself that offers a glimpse or hints at another possible outcome or future.  Consider going back in history and writing about Abraham Lincoln deciding to stay home from yet another play, or write from the present about an event that has not yet happened or may never happen.  For example, write from the point-of-view of snowboarders imagining all of the snow in the world has melted from global warming or someone preparing for an event (a wedding, an earthquake, a funeral, etc.) that may of may not actually happen.  Allow history to rewrite itself or allow a new future for you or someone else to unfold.

Walt Whitman Reads

a Poem at the Inauguration

of Donald Trump

January 20, 2025

by: Martin Achatz

Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, Americans Everywhere,

At this bright winter moment, with the echo of cannon and gun 

in my ears, smoke stinging my eyes and nose, I wish

to tell again of a vigil strange I kept one night beside a boy 

(for he was just that, with unwhiskered cheeks)

who surrendered his youth, life, kisses unkissed, for me,

for you, for friend and enemy, for Jew, Gentile, dark-skinned,

light-skinned, for the crust of his mother's biscuits, brute

embrace of his father's arms, for all things we hold dear.

Yes, this dearest comrade, this brave child fell, never to rise

again.  I remind you, gentlepeople, of this embracer now

embraced in rib, skull, femur, tibia, fibula by cold, cold

sod so that you might think hard of the hard cost

of pitting brother against brother, child against parent,

neighbor against neighbor, a war terrible fought to bring

us all together, one people, if such a thing possible after so bold

and bloody a conflict.  I commend to you today the memory

of his cold knuckles against my palm, his startled gaze

blind to the rising of another day.  Hold his chill fingers

in yours, stare into his sightless eyes, promise him this teeming

soil that now cradles his perfect, beautiful body is still

free for all--citizen, soldier, tired, poor, wretched, huddled--

whose lips are pressed, hungrily, like a newborn's, against 

the fresh and stinging bosom of this morning's promise.

August 4: "Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches," Anxiety and Worry, "The War in My Head"

Mary Oliver asks . . . 

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

by:  Mary Oliver

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches

     of other lives--

tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,

      hanging

from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer,

      feel like?

Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides

      with perfect courtesy, to let you in!

Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!

Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over

      the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint

      that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot

      in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself

      continually?

Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed

      with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left--

fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away

      from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is

      the mystery, which is death as well as life, and

       not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome

       with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine

       god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the

       present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

     in the night.

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

☼☼☼☼

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult

than the wakening from a little sleep.

☼☼☼☼

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said

      to the wild roses:

deny me not,

but suffer my devotion.

Then all afternoon, I sat among them.  Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red,

hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

☼☼☼☼

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,

     caution and prudence?

Fall in!  Fall in!

☼☼☼☼

A woman standing in the weeds.

A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next

      is coming with its own heave and grace.

☼☼☼☼

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,

      upon the immutable.

What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daisies,

and I would bow down

to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down.  Under the peach-light,

I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.

I float.

I ramble my way home.

Amazingly, I didn't have to work today.

Yet, I still found myself distracted with anxiety and worry.  Perhaps, I'm that person Oliver addresses when she says, "No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint / that something is missing from your life!"  Put on your jacket, she instructs, and go out into the world.  Become a part of it.  Sit among the thorns and listen to the roses sing.  Become a weed sitting among the weeds.  Touch the faces of the daisies.  Put your foot in the door of death and be amazed.

This struggle is nothing new to me.  As I said last night, I've been feeling acutely overwhelmed by life in the last few days.  That's one of the reasons I took today off from the library.  To let go.  Relax a little.

Yet, the whelm followed me, and here I sit now, treading water and looking for a lighthouse to guide me back to safe harbor.

Now, Oliver's advice for these kinds of feelings is to go outside and become part of the world.  Last night, I led a poetry workshop based on the poems of Wendell Berry.  One of Berry's most famous poems, "The Peace of Wild Things," pretty much offers the same advice:  "I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds."

I tried today.  I really did.  I didn't find the wood drake or great heron.  Or the peace of wild things.

Saint Marty did, however, write a poem about peace.  Maybe that was the lighthouse he was looking for  today . . .

The War in My Head

by:  Martin Achatz

When I find myself at my desk

weeping for the war in my head,

I reach for my pen, my notebook,

squeeze all my wild thoughts out,

fill pages and pages until

I find armistice.  Today, it was

a piece of chocolate 

melting on my tongue, 

quieting all the bombs

of the world.

July 25: "The Loon," Insomnia, "Blue Jay"

Mary Oliver has trouble sleeping . . . 

The Loon

by:  Mary Oliver

Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive

strikes me from sleep, and I rise

from the comfortable bed and go

to another room, where my books are lined up

in their neat and colorful rows.  How

magical they are!  I choose one

and open it.  Soon

I have wandered in over the waves of the words

to the temple of thought.

                                        And then I hear

outside, over the actual waves, the small,

perfect voice of the loon.  He is also awake,

and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out

to the fading moon, to the pink flush

swelling in the east that, soon,

will become the long, reasonable day.

                                                  Inside the house

it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight

in which I am sitting.

                                       I do not close the book,

Neither, for a long while, do I read on.

Like Oliver in the poem, I suffer from insomnia.  Often.  My squirrel brain won't turn off at night until late.  Then I wake long before daylight with the same thoughts running up and down the trees in my head, and I'm even more tired than when I closed my eyes.

I met a poet friend this morning to do some writing.  Over the last couple weeks, I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to do much poeming.  I've been a little . . . overwhelmed with life.  Too much going on.  Currently, I'm being pulled in several directions at once, and I can't work up a whole lot of enthusiasm for any of those directions.

After writing this a.m. with my friend, I did feel a little more centered.  Like I could face the day without locking myself in the bathroom for a quiet panic attack.  My friend is always good for helping me find balance. 

I'm not out of the woods, and the squirrel in my skull is still chattering away.  However, my poet friend said to me as I was leaving her house, "I'm so glad you have Mary Oliver to keep you company."

Mary does have a way of putting Saint Marty's life into perspective.

Blue Jay

by:  Martin Achatz

                   Sleep and I have never been

best friends, more like neighbors

who greet each other at the end

of a work day, both of us

in our driveways, talking weather,

how the summer is quickly tipping

toward autumn.  In early morning dark,

I sit on my couch, stare out the living

room window at the sleeping world.

                    Night stretches 

on like some black Lake Superior,

no horizon in sight.  Then, 

as light finally begins to break

open the heavens, a blue jay flits

into a pine, sits there, gazes at me.  

I can almost see myself in the onyx 

of his eyes, as if I'm some painting 

he's come to admire.  He shifts his head, 

regards me from several angles, contemplating,

meditating, like I'm  the answer 

to his blue jay prayer. 

                    Or he's the answer to mine.  

December 6: Saint Nicholas Day, Norman Dubie, "The Czar's Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals"

Happy Saint Nicholas Day!

On this feast of Saint Nicholas, I think I have done the impossible.  I found a Christmas poem by none other than Norman Dubie.  And I have fallen in love with this poem.  It's one of those poems that make me want to give up writing poetry.  It's that good.

I have to teach this evening.  Student presentations.  It's the last regular week of class.  Next week, final exams.  I have so much grading to do right now.  I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.  This semester started off very slowly, but I feel like I'm in a full on sprint now.

That's why I love Norman Dubie's poem today.  It makes me slow down.  Take a breath.

Saint Marty needs that right now.

The Czar's Last Christmas Letter:  A Barn in the Urals

by:  Norman Dubie

You were never told, Mother, how old Illya was drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nights

He stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns

And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience

Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
And gave them that look of his; the hall fell silent

And violently he threw his hair to the side and up
Went the baton, the recital ended exactly one hour

Later when Illya suddenly turned and bowed
And his mutes bowed, and what applause and hollering

Followed.
All of his cronies were there!

Illya told us later that he thought the voices
Of mutes combine in a sound

Like wind passing through big, winter pines.
Mother, if for no other reason I regret the war

With Japan for, you must now be told,
It took the servant, Illya, from us. It was confirmed.

He would sit on the rocks by the water and with his stiletto
Open clams and pop the raw meats into his mouth

And drool and laugh at us children.
We hear guns often, now, down near the village.

Don't think me a coward, Mother, but it is comfortable
Now that I am no longer Czar. I can take pleasure

From just a cup of clear water. I hear Illya's choir often.
I teach the children about decreasing fractions, that is

A lesson best taught by the father.
Alexandra conducts the French and singing lessons.

Mother, we are again a physical couple.
I brush out her hair for her at night.

She thinks that we'll be rowing outside Geneva
By the spring. I hope she won't be disappointed.

Yesterday morning while bread was frying
In one corner, she in another washed all of her legs

Right in front of the children. I think
We became sad at her beauty. She has a purple bruise

On an ankle.
Like Illya I made her chew on mint.

Our Christmas will be in this excellent barn.
The guards flirt with your granddaughters and I see...

I see nothing wrong with it. Your little one, who is
Now a woman, made one soldier pose for her, she did

Him in charcoal, but as a bold nude. He was
Such an obvious virgin about it; he was wonderful!

Today, that same young man found us an enormous azure
And pearl samovar.  Once, he called me Great Father

And got confused.
He refused to let me touch him.

I know they keep your letters from us. But, Mother,
The day they finally put them in my hands

I'll know that possessing them I am condemned
And possibly even my wife, and my children.

We will drink mint tea this evening.
Will each of us be increased by death?

With fractions as the bottom integer gets bigger, Mother, it
Represents less. That's the feeling I have about

This letter. I am at your request, The Czar.
And I am Nicholas.

September 9: Anxious Times, John Ashbery, "The Problem of Anxiety"

Sorry for my absence yesterday.  I'm still getting used to the obligations and needs of my fall schedule.  Last night, I found myself running from work to home to football game (where I watched my daughter play in the pep band).  Until I sat down on my couch at about 10 p.m., things didn't slow down.

I find myself filled with anxiety right now, mostly because of the changes in my day-to-day.  Teaching things and work things and poetry things.  I am like the metaphorical juggler, adding more and more bowling pins into my act.  Once I get used to it, I'm sure I'll be fine.  At the moment, it's easy to feel overwhelmed.

In these anxious times, Saint Marty needs to take some deep breaths, read some poems, and tell himself that the world isn't coming to an end.  Yet.

The Problem of Anxiety

by:  John Ashbery

Fifty years have passed
since I started living in those dark towns
I was telling you about.
Well, not much has changed. I still can't figure out
how to get from the post office to the swings in the park.
Apple trees blossom in the cold, not from conviction,
and my hair is the color of dandelion fluff.

Suppose this poem were about you - would you
put in the things I've carefully left out:
descriptions of pain, and sex, and how shiftily
people behave toward each other? Naw, that's
all in some book it seems. For you
I've saved the descriptions of chicken sandwiches,
and the glass eye that stares at me in amazement
from the bronze mantel, and will never be appeased.

August 15: End of a Long Day

I just got home from a poet friend's house.  I was proofreading the manuscript of her new book of short stories.  I am absolutely brain dead.  Tired doesn't even begin to describe how I feel.  After saying goodbye to my coworker/friend this afternoon, I wasn't really in the best of moods when I got home.  I went for a short run to try to shake off (or leave in the dust) my sadness.  It sort of worked.  My little editing session kept my mind busy for the rest of the evening.

And now, at the end of this very long day, I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep.  Or a mediocre night's sleep.  Heck, I'll even be satisfied with a fitful night's sleep, as long as I get to stay in bed past 4 a.m. tomorrow.

I don't want to think about going back to the medical office next week.  I don't want to think about all the work that's going to be stacked up.  I'm already a little overwhelmed as it is.  I don't need to get myself all wound up right before I head off to dreamland.  I've been having enough trouble getting to sleep these last few nights.

Saint Marty doesn't want to think about anything right now.  Except maybe Cheetos.  And pizza.

These could keep me awake

October 18: Trying to Remain Positive

Once more, I find myself in a little bit of a funk this afternoon.  I could attribute my mood to the fact that my blood sugar is currently 38.  For those people unfamiliar with diabetes or blood sugar levels, I will tell you that normal glucose levels are between 70 and 110.  So, 38 is more than a little low.

Don't worry, I have already drank apple and cranberry juices.  I have also eaten a blueberry Nutri Grain bar.  I will be fine.  However, as I've explained in previous posts, low blood sugars alter brain chemistry quite a bit.  For me, I tend to become very depressed, overwhelmed even.  Again, it's all about brain chemistry.  I'm probably the only person who can actually combat depression with food.  In a little while, this black cloud that is hanging over me will lift, and I will be much better.  At the moment, I can't quite get there yet, although I am doing much better.

I'm going to add a few more blessings this evening, like I did this morning.  It may help diminish the darkness a little.

Blessings.  Let's see.

How about my cousin, Grant, who is an internationally famous chef and has won about 5 million James Beard Awards?  Nope, that just makes me angry and jealous.

How about the Nobel Prize in Literature?  Nope.  Two words:  Mo Yan.  Jealousy again.

How about chocolate of any kind?  Nope.  I don't have any with me.

How about my trip to the Wisconsin Dells?  Nope.  That just reminds me that I don't have another vacation until January.

How about I just give up and wait for the sugar to kick in?

Saint Marty thinks that's a damn fine idea.