February 13, 2025: "Exclusive," Agape, "Mercy Is a Wound"

Love is a strange verb, full of nuances. I can love my wife or son or daughter, and also love pizza. Or I can love the poetry of Sharon Olds, and also love silence. The Greeks divided love into four categories: Agape (unconditional love), Eros (romantic love), Philia (brotherly love), and Storge (familial love).

Sharon Olds writes about Storge . . .

Exclusive

by: Sharon Olds

I lie on the beach, watching you
as you lie on the beach, memorizing you
against the time when you will not be with me:
your empurpled lips, swollen in the sun
and smooth as the inner lips of a shell;
your biscuit-gold skin, glazed and
faintly pitted, like the surface of a biscuit;
the serious knotted twine of your hair.
I have loved you instead of anyone else,
loved you as a way of loving no one else,
every separate grain of your body
building the god, as you were built within me,
a sealed world. What if from your lips
I had learned the love of other lips,
from your starred, gummed lashes the love of
other lashes, from your shut, quivering
eyes the love of other eyes,
from your body the bodies,
from your life the lives?
Today I see it is there to be learned from you:
to love what I do not own.

I love the conclusion Olds reaches in this poem about her daughter--the necessity for parents to love their kids, knowing full well those kids will eventually leave to search for their own versions of love.  Love can't really be owned.

I know this love post is early--Valentine's Day is tomorrow.  But there's no such thing as too much love, is there?  Plus, I didn't want to write another post tonight about Agent Orange and his partner, Apartheid.  (By the way, there are terms for the love of the Felon in Chief:  racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia.  If you want a blanket term that covers all the bases, just use stupidity.)

I want to talk about my puppy tonight, who truly is the poster child for agape.  It doesn't matter to her whether I've taken her for a walk, ignored her, or spent two hours scratching her ears and belly.  She will always crawl into my lap and lick my face until I start laughing.  In short, she loves unconditionally.  

We should all experience that kind of devotion every day.  Love that doesn't expect anything in return but more love.  I'm a pretty blessed person, because I have a lot of agape in my life--from my wife, daughter, son.  And puppy.  Of course, as the old saying goes, the price of great love is great sorrow.  If you love someone or something deeply, you will eventually experience the grief of losing that someone of something.  That's how it works.

 Saint Marty wrote a poem about puppy love for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Choose a word and its antonym then write a poem that contrasts the two extremes.  Consult a dictionary or thesaurus to find all the synonyms for your opposite words, or simply rely on memory to construct your lists of opposites.  Pairing possibilities:

bright/dim

light/heavy

large/small

extrovert/introvert

Mercy Is a Wound

by: Martin Achatz

Mercy is a wound sometimes, the way

you take your old dog to the vet when 

she loses sight, control of her

bowels and bladder, when she looks 

at you with marbled eyes, sniffs

your palm because she can't rise

from her pillow, presses her 

hot tongue to your skin to make

sure you are her person, the one

who fills her water dish, scratches

her ears, invokes her name in morning

light, like she's answered prayer.

Let's say her name is Mercy,

and let's also say she knows 

she's so close to darkness

she can smell its clay in the air.

Pick Mercy up, carry her

to the car, wrap her in a blanket

if she shivers.  When you're

in the exam room with her, say

her name over and over:

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.

And when the needle makes her

yelp, say her name again, quietly,

your lips right by her ear until

her eyes close, breathing slows,

paws cease twitching.  Tell her

she has been mercy in your life,

a Band-Aid or cool breeze 

on difficult days.  When you bring

her home, put her in the ground

under her favorite pine.  Visit her

as much as you can until winter

comes with its cold, wounding

blanket. 

February 6, 2025: "Poem to My First Lover," Firsts, "My Mother Contemplates the Integrated Circuit"

Obviously, there are firsts for everything:  first child, first job, first tooth, first convicted felon to be elected President of the United States.  (That would be a hint for any MAGA Republican to stop reading this post.)  Firsts can be fun and exciting, or painful and terrifying.  

Sharon Olds writes about a first in her life . . .

Poem to My First Lover

by: Sharon Olds

Now that I understand, I like to
think of your terror—handed a girl
mad with love, her long, fresh
raw body thin as a pared
soap, breasts round and high and
opalescent as bubbles of soap,
laid across your legs, 18,
untouched. I like to understand your
terror, now, the way you took her,
deflowering her as you’d gut a fish,
leaving in the morning with talk of a wife.
          Now that I
know about the fear of love
I like to think of her white-hot body
greenish as a fish just landed, quivering and
slapping on a rock--fallen into your
lap, man, shuddering like your cock,
a woman crazed with love, hot off the
press, sharp as a tool never used,
blazing across your thighs and all you could
do in your fear was firk out her cherry like an
escargot from its dark shell and then
toss her away. I am in awe of terror that will
waste so much, I am in love with the girl who went
offering, came to you and
laid it out like a feast on a platter, the
delicate flesh—yes, yes,
I accept the gift.

If you think I'm going to write about my first lover in this post, you're going to be disappointed.  Not that I'm against writing about such topics.  Far from it.  However, that's not what's on my mind tonight.

What is on my mind tonight, you ask?

A lot of things--from the Republican dismantling of democracy in the United States to my next book of poems, which I'm currently revising.  I've lived through a lot of big things in my lifetime, from the Challenger explosion to the ending of apartheid in South Africa.  Thanks to COVID, I can add a global pandemic to that list.  

Now, I live a privileged life because I'm white and have a penis.  Personally, I don't have to worry about racism or antisemitism or sexism.  Basically, I won the lottery for living in the United States.  That doesn't mean I support racist, anti-Semitic, or sexist ideology.  The only thing I actually hate is hatred.  (And Adam Sandler films.)

Yet, here I sit in my house in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States, watching racist, anti-Semitic, sexist Republicans destroy my country.  I guess that's a first for me.  I've never witnessed a coup up close and personal, and it's terrifying.

Plus, I'm ashamed to be a white man in present-day America.  I don't want to live in a country run solely by old Caucasians with limp dicks who think the world owes them something.  The strongest influences in my life have all been women.  I grew up with five sisters.  My mentor in college was a woman from Louisiana.  Most of my closest friends are women.  I have benefitted greatly from my relationships with all of these strong, smart, independent females in my life.

So, on behalf of my gender and race, I apologize to all of the women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ friends and family, Muslims, and Native Americans in my life.  You are important to me, and YOU are what makes America great.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about one of the most important women in his life tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1959, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit.  In honor of all things microchipped, write a poem in the voice of a stereotypical 1950s American housewife as she puzzles over circuit diagrams and contemplates possible uses for this new invention.

My Mother Contemplates

the Integrated Circuit

by:  Martin Achatz

October 1953

She studies the diagram the way

she studied my father's body

on their wedding night, all his

curves and lines and muscles

and promise, a fleshy scrying orb

playing some home movie not yet

made, her surrounded by kids

on a beach, all of them slick

as baby seals, pulling her toward

the waves and sand.  Perhaps

she understands the schemata, 

how it's a map to microwaves,

television, Sputnik, Apollo 11.

Maybe she glimpses a future

where I'm sitting with my notebook

and pen, writing this poem

about her strapped into

the seat beside Armstrong,

countdown commencing,

engines igniting, rocket

rising, rising, rising, rising

through troposphere, stratosphere,

meso-, thermo-, exosphere,

launching herself to the distant

bright moon of me.

February 4-5: Waters Purified, Dark Period, Striking a Match

Merton waxing eloquent on his return to France, the land of his birth:

How did it ever happen that, when the dregs of the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality--how did it happen that, from all this, there should come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, the commentaries and histories of Bede, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, St. Augustine's City of God, and his Trinity, the writings of St. Anselm, St. Bernard's sermons on the Canticles, the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf and Langland and Dante, St. Thomas' Summa, and the Oxoniense of Duns Scotus?

How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons, or a carpenter and his apprentice, can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grow up at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars on the campuses of American universities?

When I went to France, in 1925, returning to the land of my birth, I was also returning to the fountains of the intellectual and spiritual life of the world to which I belonged.  I was returning to the spring of natural waters, if you will, but waters purified and cleaned by grace with such powerful effect that even the corruption and decadence of the French society of our day has never been able to poison them entirely, or reduce them once again to their original barbarian corruption.

Merton's point--or wonder--is valid.  It seems that, at the darkest moments in history, from the most violent or corrupt of times, spring some of the most enduring works of art.  Merton's list bears that out.  More recently, think of Allen Ginsberg's Howl during the Vietnam War in America.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward at the height of Soviet oppression, Anne Frank's diary scribbled during the Holocaust.  It seems that, when the human race is at its worst, artists and poets and writers rise to their very best.

I know that, at times of struggle in my life, I have turned to my work as a means of consolation.  Writing helps me make sense of the senseless, find beauty in ugliness.  The impulse to put pen to journal pages is, for me, an act of hope.  It's sort of like striking a match in a dark room.  Suddenly, all that is important and true shines for a few brief seconds.  Those matches have to be lit.  The light has to shine.  If it doesn't, we're all sort of doomed by the brutality of the world.

In my country, I'm living through a pretty dark period.  Nationalism is running rampant.  Compassion and humanity and charity are in short supply.  Racism, homophobia, xenophobia are on the rise.  Families are being torn apart, literally and metaphorically.  I find it difficult right now to strike any kind of match, shed any kind of light, because the darkness is so deep and entrenched.  It has brought out the very worst in everybody.

Yet, I think it's important to keep writing, painting, playing music, creating.  It's how we're going to get through these Dark Ages in the United States of America.  Maybe, 40 or 50 years from now, some diary is going to be published.  It will have been written by an adolescent Central American girl being held in an internment camp somewhere in my country at this very moment.  It will be about her longing for her missing parents.  About the teenage boy in the internment camp with her, how she longs to kiss his lips.  The randoms acts of kindness she may witness during her days, things that give her hope and sustain her will to survive.  That diary will be a testament to the indomitable spirit of a human being in the face of inhumanity.  It will be beautiful and heartbreaking.

Saint Marty just struck another match in the darkness.

November 20: Terrible Old Man, Selfish People, Throwing Up Blood

Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in the gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.

Starbuck could easily be thinking of Ebenezer Scrooge, Mr. Potter from It's A Wonderful Life, or Donald Trump.  As the first mate notes, the terrible old man is all about self-centeredness and ego.  A person who only thinks of himself and his purpose.

I don't understand selfish people.

My daughter's boyfriend is in the Boy Scouts.  Two summers ago, he was participating in a can drive to raise funds for a camping hike he was going on.  He went to a house and was confronted by an old man who decide to berate him for the Boy Scouts organization's decision to be more inclusive, accepting LGBTQ scouts/leaders and (GASP!) girls.  The old man was downright ignorant and mean to my daughter's boyfriend.

Prime selfishness.  An adult verbally abusing a young person to make himself feel superior and smart.  Of course, all this old man succeeded in doing was prove that he was a homophobic misogynist.

That's what all selfish people do--they expose their own fears and failings.  Lack of human compassion.  Racism.  Antisemitism.  Homophobia.  Misogyny.  Islamophobia.  Just plain lack of kindness and goodwill.  Selfish people are the bullies who shove you into high school lockers.  Who refuse to help coworkers who are sick.  Who, when you say "I was throwing up blood all last night," respond with something like "I got a paper cut last night, and then I peeled an orange and got some juice in the cut and it hurt really bad."

If you can't tell, there's a story behind this post that I won't share.  All I will say is kindness and compassion are pretty easy things to indulge in.  They make lives better, and they make you feel better about yourself.  Sure, selfishness may initially make your life easier.  You won't have to work late for a coworker or visit somebody in the hospital or drop your last dollar in a Salvation Army Christmas kettle.  However, in the long run, being selfish will alienate friends and family, irritate acquaintances, turn you into a Republican, and make you wear a MAGA hat.  Who wants that?

Sure, if you say "yes" all the time, you will be taken advantage of from time to time.  But I'll take that chance.

Saint Marty will always err on the side of kindness.

June 26: General Friction, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Racism

It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.

In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and which no single man can possibly lift- this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the strongest point anywhere above a ship's deck. The end of the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted to the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over the whale; to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their long spades, began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nailheads of an old house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the water, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the "scarf," simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top; the men at the windlass then cease heaving, for a moment or two the prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and every one present must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard.

One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen weapon called a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously slices out a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into this hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for what follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman, warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate, lunging, slicings, severs it completely in twain; so that while the short lower part is still fast, the long upper strip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready for lowering. The heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one tackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other is slowly slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room. Into this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long blanket-piece as if it were a great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction.

Sorry for my absence the last day or so.  I wasn't on the open sea, stripping blubber from a dead whale.  (I get seasick in the rain.)  I find the description of this process a little disgusting and horrifying.  However, I have to place it within historical context.  There was a time and place where the blubber of whales was used for many necessary items, like oil lamps, soap, leather and cosmetics.  Of course, things have changed a great deal.

I say these things because I read a little news excerpt about the American Library Association changing the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award to the Children's Literature Legacy Award because of Ingalls' depictions and racial stereotypes in her books.  For example, in Little House on the Prairie, she described one place like this: "there were no people.  Only Indians lived there."  Because of passages like that, the ALA decided to strip away Ingalls' name. 

Now, I'm not going to weigh into the fray on whether this decision was right or not.  There is celebration and consternation.  I understand both sides.  I grew up with Ingalls' books.  Of course, being a white male, I didn't experience any kind of shaming in what I read.  I read them to my daughter when she was young.  And, as an adult, I was sort of appalled by some of the passages.  Even my daughter, who was nine at the time, noticed these moments.  I remember her saying one night, "I can't believe she said that."

I used Ingalls' books as a teaching tool at times.  Explained to my daughter the terrible kinds of racism that riddle American history.  It was better than me simply saying to her, "Racism is bad."  She witnessed it sort of firsthand through Ingalls.  I think, for that reason, it was a really good reading experience.

We can't expunge racism or homophobia or sexism that runs through some of the greatest works of literature, including Moby-Dick.  It exists.  It's a part of history.  Now, the question is whether we should celebrate it.  Certainly, it's present in the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  That can't be ignored.  And we all need to be sensitive to it.  It's a matter of putting things into context, as I did above.

I don't think the name change for this award is a terrible thing.  We all need to be sensitive to these issues if we are going to get better as people.  I don't think Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her books to dehumanize Native Americans or African Americans.  She was a product of her upbringing and time.  That doesn't excuse any of the racism that exists in her work.  But I think it's more of an indictment of who we are as people.

So, there it is.  Nobody is perfect.  I'm not.  Laura Ingalls Wilder was not.  Whether it's the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award or the Children's Literature Legacy Award, it still represents the same thing:  someone who has made a lasting impact with his or her writing.

Saint Marty is thankful for great writing, with all its flaws, because it reminds us all who we are.

August 15: Paul Lazzaro, Racism, KKK Ideology

Somewhere in there, old Edgar Derby was elected head American.  The Englishman called for nominations from the floor, and there weren't any.  So he nominated Derby, praising him for his maturity and long experience in dealing with people.  There were no further nominations, so the nominations were closed.

"All in favor?"

Two or three people said, "Aye."

Then poor old Derby made a speech.  He thanked the Englishman for his good advice, said he meant to follow it exactly.  He said he was sure that all the other Americans would do the same.  He said that his primary responsibility now was to make damn well sure that everybody got home safely.

"Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut," murmured Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest.  "Go take a flying fuck at the moon."

If you haven't already noticed, Paul Lazzaro is a pretty nasty character.  Petty.  Angry.  Mean.  Eventually, he will murder Billy Pilgrim, more than twenty years after the conclusion of World War II.  Lazzaro is an example of the kind of person who lives to hate.  Hate and revenge are his only reasons for being alive.

If Paul Lazzaro were alive today, he would have been in Charlottesville this past weekend, marching in a white robe and hood.  I have no doubt about that.  He wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to participate in an event that centered on violence and hatred.  In a way, I think that Paul Lazzaro is sitting in the Oval Office right now.

I have a confession to make:  I come from a background of racism.  I was born in Detroit in the October following the 1967 riots.  I only lived in the city a few years before my parents moved our family to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Therefore, I was spared the kind of rampant racial hatred that seems to pervade a lot of people of my parents' generation from Detroit.

Not that there isn't racism in the U. P.  There is.  One of my neighbors down the street just recently put a "Team Trump" sign back on his lawn.  And nobody has stolen the sign or defaced it with a swastika.  Both of those thoughts have crossed my mind.  So, either the other people in my neighborhood are extremely tolerant liberals, or they are Trump supporters.  Or they don't care, which I think is a little bit worse.

I know, as a white person, that I probably haven't done 99% of what I should do to combat racism and bigotry.  I try to raise my kids to be accepting and loving.  I don't judge people, unless they happen to have Trump signs in their yards.  When I teach, I talk to my students about acceptance and tolerance.  (I have been accused of being too political in my student evaluations on occasion.  Don't really care if I make a few close-minded young people uncomfortable.  That's part of the college experience--being challenged.)  I do my best, but perhaps that isn't good enough.

I have a friend who moved to New Zealand because Donald Trump was elected.  (My friend was probably going to move there anyway, but the election simply accelerated his departure.)  I don't think that abandoning ship is the answer.  It may have solved the problem for my friend, and that's great.  But I'm not sure I can simply walk away from rampant racism.  For me, that solves nothing.

However, I don't have any definitive answers other than telling people that I believe alt-right is simply a synonym for white supremacy.  It's watered down Ku Klux Klan ideology.  The KKK hasn't gone away.  It has rebranded itself and gotten a man elected President of the United States.  I will say that to anybody who cares to have a civil discussion with me.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for Heather Heyer and all the people who stood up for love last weekend in Virginia against the Paul Lazzaros of the world.

April 28: Difficult Subjects, Tyehimba Jess, "100 Times"

One of the jobs of a poet is to write about difficult subjects sometimes.  Subjects that may shock, transgress.  Mental illness.  Rape jokes.  Menstruation.  Lynchings.  Abortion.  Abandonment.  Genocide.  Police violence.

As I said in my previous post, and as Emily Dickinson said more than a century ago, my job as a poet is to tell all the truth, but to tell it slant.  Tyehimba Jess knows a thing or two about this.

Saint Marty's truth tonight is that he still has a shitload of grading to do.

100 Times

by:  Tyehimba Jess

I say “nigger” a hundred times before breakfast every morning just to keep my teeth white.
–Paul Mooney, Comedian

Of course, I was skeptical, but because there’s often wisdom in the hardest humor, I stood before the mirror one sunrise and began my morning chant. All repeated calmly for the first week, but with flavors added on as the regimen continued into the second. 50 with er and 50 with a. 1/4 as question, 1/4 as surprise, 1/4 as anger, 1/4 implying the complaining “please.” All alternately whispered, shouted, laughed, snarled—all in search of the ideal whitening formula. After four weeks I remained skeptical. However, perseverance paid off by the sixth, when colleagues remarked on my brightened, hazeless smile, when friends alerted me to a steely glint in my grin.

I doubled the regimen to maximize results. Week eight saw a 2/3 increase in brightening, with a luminousness approaching diamond quality, particularly in the lower incisors. The uppers were sun white, never leaving room in their shine for shadow. Side effects became audible as well as visual: a small echo became perceptible after each repetition in my mantra, such that the cadence assumed a wondrous worksong rhythm. Upon closer examination, magnifying mirrors revealed one (1) small, brown man peering into the side of each tooth’s mirror-smooth enamel, each one appearing only briefly before each utterance. Alarmed but intrigued, I enhanced my treatment. Various gesticulations were added to the morning litany. Sneers, chuckles, sighs, and facial contortions were enhanced throughout. As a result, the echo’s intensity increased from slight windy whisper to low murmur, to small and steady chorus each morning, a daily affirmation of my will to shine. A halogen glare burned from my mouth throughout the day. I’ve become a walking lighthouse of shine—the ritual has grown above and beyond and through me. I wake each morning to stand before my mirror, and before I open my mouth I hear the chant begin above and around me, as if I were in the middle of the mantra’s core, as if I’m one in a circle of prayer. I’ve found others who hear the chant with me, or they’ve found me, those who rise up with me each morning to stand before our mirrors with the diamond-sharp sound of ourselves polishing each tooth until we gleam—our number grows daily. We shimmer and shine inside the bulging head of our chant, polishing our glowing mirrors, staring into the glare until we shield our eyes.

March 10: Isms and Phobias, Natasha Trethewey, "South"

America has a lot of problems right now.  Racism.  Sexism.  Homophobia.  Xenophobia.  Islamophobia.  There are so many -isms and -phobias running rampant in my country that it depresses me, but we can't get around it.

Of course, the United States was built on the land and backs of oppressed people.  Native Americans.  African Americans.  Chinese Americans.  Mexican Americans.  That's a part of our history.  Can't get around that, either.

Saint Marty isn't a big fan of Gone With the Wind, either.

South

by:  Natasha Trethewey

          Homo sapiens is the only species          to suffer psychological exile.
                  —E. O. Wilson

I returned to a stand of pines,

                            bone-thin phalanx

 

flanking the roadside, tangle

                            of understory—a dialectic of dark

 

and light—and magnolias blossoming

                            like afterthought: each flower

 

a surrender, white flags draped

                            among the branches. I returned

 

to land’s end, the swath of coast

                            clear cut and buried in sand:

 

mangrove, live oak, gulfweed

                            razed and replaced by thin palms—

 

palmettos—symbols of victory

                            or defiance, over and over

 

marking this vanquished land. I returned

                            to a field of cotton, hallowed ground—

 

as slave legend goes—each boll

                            holding the ghosts of generations:

 

those who measured their days

                            by the heft of sacks and lengths

 

of rows, whose sweat flecked the cotton plants

                            still sewn into our clothes.

 

I returned to a country battlefield

                            where colored troops fought and died—

 

Port Hudson where their bodies swelled

                            and blackened beneath the sun—unburied

 

until earth’s green sheet pulled over them,

                            unmarked by any headstones.

 

Where the roads, buildings, and monuments

                            are named to honor the Confederacy,

 

where that old flag still hangs, I return

                            to Mississippi, state that made a crime

 

of me—mulatto, half-breed—native

                            in my native land, this place they’ll bury me.

January 20: On the Third Day, Be Extra Kind, President Obama

And on the third day of wandering, somebody shot at the four from far away--shot four times as they crossed a narrow brick road.  One shot was for the scouts.  The next one was for the antitank gunner, whose name was Roland Weary.

The third bullet was for the filthy flamingo, who stopped dead center in the road when the lethal bee buzzed past his ear.  Billy stood there politely, giving the marksman another chance.  It was his addled understanding of the rules of warfare that the marksman should be given a second chance.  The next shot missed Billy's kneecaps by inches, going end-on-end, from the sound of it.

Roland Weary and the scouts were safe in a ditch, and Weary growled at Billy, "Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker."  The last word was still a novelty in the speech of white people in 1944.  It was fresh and astonishing to Billy, who had never fucked anybody--and it did its job.  It woke him up and got him off the road.

There's something oddly sweet about Billy's reaction to this sniper attack.  Billy, who never expected to be shot at as a chaplain's assistant, is stunned into immobility, not sure what his response should be.  He's only twenty-one years old, a virgin in more ways than one.  For Billy, the world is still a kind place.  A beautiful orange that needs to be peeled.

Today, Donald Trump became President of the United States.  You may be expecting a post full of venom, mean humor, jabs at Trump's racism and sexism and homophobia and Islamophobia, not to mention his bad hair and thin skin.  I will not be doing that today.  I will try to take a more Billy Pilgrim approach and hope I don't get shot at.

I have friends who have been urging me to be extra kind to everyone today--Hillary supporters, Bernie supporters, and Trump supporters alike.  I suppose the idea is to combat hatred with kindness.  To dispel the darkness with a little light.  I understand that impulse and appreciate the advice, for I woke this morning feeling fairly . . . unhopeful.  I have tried for most of the day to avoid television screens and media posts.  Haven't even listened to NPR.

I cannot promise that, for the next four years, I will remain silent about Donald Trump.  In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that won't happen.  However, I am trying, as Samuel L. Jackson says at the end of Pulp Fiction, REAL HARD.

So, tonight, I wish everybody kindness and understanding.

Saint Marty is grateful tonight for President Barack Obama and his family.  For eight years of steady, calm, moral leadership.

September 21: Serious Subjects, Richard Brautigan, "I Feel Horrible. She Doesn't"

If you can't tell by my last post, I'm trying not to take things too seriously tonight.

Sure there are things in this world that should be taken seriously:  poverty, hunger, disease, famine, war, racism, sexism, homophobia, addiction.  I will not be making jokes about any of those subjects.  They are worthy of earnest discussion.  Let's face it, though:  how many of us discuss poverty or homophobia over a large order of fries at McDonald's?

My daughter is not having a good night.  She just went to the AT&T store with my wife and sister to pick out a new phone, since her new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was recalled for having a tendency to explode.  Well, something went down that did not please my daughter.  A phone was ordered for her.  I'm not sure if it was the phone she wanted or not.  All I do know is that there were tears, shouts, and slamming doors afterwards.

I want to tell my daughter that, whether she gets an iPhone 7 or 6s, it's not going to bring about gender equality in the world or cure cancer.  She's taking it way too seriously.

Maybe Saint Marty should let her read a Richard Brautigan poem.

I Feel Horrible.  She Doesn't

by:  Richard Brautigan

I feel horrible. She doesn’t

love me and I wander around

the house like a sewing machine

that’s just finished sewing

a turd to a garbage can lid.

Speaking of turds . . .