October 23: Glowing Pumpkins, Nate Pritts, "Forever War"

My daughter now has her driver's license.  I will go pick her up from dance class in a few minutes, and I will let her drive home.  Then I will let her take my car to go to her boyfriend's house, tell her to be home by ten o'clock.

It's hard letting go.  There's another aspect of parental control that is simply slipping through my fingers.  I know that I will stand on my front porch and watch her disappear down the street.  I will be surrounded by Halloween decorations.  Glowing pumpkins and skulls.  Spiderwebs.  Strings of colored maple leafs.

My daughter and I have been putting up those same decorations since she was a little girl.

Saint Marty isn't ready to see his daughter drive away.

Forever War

by: Nate Pritts

In studying the anomaly
it was determined that holiday decorations
look sad out of season,
that there's no excuse for the mistakes
of my people.  Red paper hearts
on the front door into April,
a cauldron that doubles as a planter
in summer.  Always the starscape
to help keep me honest, to remind me
that distance is easy to cross.
The analytic belt I'm equipped with
reminds me of an indescribable autumn
from one hundred generations ago
though even last year
I was someone else.
I was faced with a choice.
Proceed with the same core
or blow it up to restart
& maybe go further.  Most of my programming
has survived into this new battle.
I can smell faint ocean
salt on the breeze & I have different
reactions for its presence or absence.
Now is the time to overcome problems.
I debate the finer points of being desperate,
of wanting things to remain
as they are, though they can't.
I'd rather not go into details
since specifics make me queasy,
like in pictures when people put their heads
too close together.  How can they stand
such forced intimacy?
I take off in search of my home planet.
My resolve is stronger than ever.

January 10: Flies and Bugs, Poetry Workshop, Fairy Tale Fly

"Why not?  It's true, and I have to say what is true.  I am not entirely happy about my diet of flies and bugs, but it's the way I'm made.  A spider has to pick up a living somehow or other, and I happen to be a trapper.  I just naturally build a web and trap flies and other insects.  My mother was a trapper before me.  Her mother was a trapper before her.  All our family have been trappers.  Way back for thousands and thousands of years we spiders have been laying for flies and bugs."

Charlotte is a spider.  In order to survive, she spins a web, traps flies and bugs, stuns them, and drinks their blood.  As she says, she's not entirely happy about her way of life, but she can't argue with thousands of years of heredity.  She was built to be a trapper.


I, on the other hand, have a different gift.  I'm a poet.  I spin words into poems, and hopefully those poems are good enough to trap a few readers.  I don't drink my readers' blood.  I don't make a living as a poet.  I don't know anyone, personally, who makes a living as a poet.  Most poets I know are teachers.  That's how they make their living.  Poetry doesn't put flies on the table, so to speak.

I'm teaching a six-week poetry workshop starting next week.  It's a community schools class.  Adult enrichment.  I'm excited to sit in a room filled with people who love poetry.  Don't get me wrong, though.  I'm doing this to make some money.  I found out tonight that only two people are currently registered for the workshop.

That could change over the weekend, obviously.  Most people procrastinate.  There could be two or three or ten more poets out there who will register by Monday.  Or not.  I'm trying to remain optimistic, because I'm tired of being a pessimist.  I want to start 2014 on a high note.

I will teach this workshop, whether I have two or twenty students.  I want to be around poets and wannabe poets.  Perhaps I'll only make $20 for teaching this workshop.  So be it.  Like Charlotte, I need to provide for myself with the gift God gave me.  That happens to be poetry.  I will spend this weekend believing that I will catch a few more flies.

Which reminds me of a story about a fly named Gobert.  Once upon a time, a fly named Gobert livdsed in a bakery.  He loved spending his days in the sunlight, finding a gooey cinnamon doughnut, and getting his feet sticky.

One day, Gobert flew into a spiderweb and got stuck.  Before he knew what was happening, the spider swooped down, stunned him, wrapped him up in a cocoon, and drank his blood.  Gobert never knew what hit him.

Moral of the story:  flies are disgusting, and register for my poetry workshop.

If you do that, Saint Marty will live happily ever after.

Blood, anyone?