July 4: Great Aplomb, Independence Day, Patricia Lockwood, "Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth"

The evening had passed festively enough.  The tree had been decorated with great aplomb and by ten-thirty everyone had left and the children were in bed...

Ives has just thrown his annual Christmas tree decorating party.  Everyone has left, and Ives is now in the afterglow of all the family and friends and fellowship.  Not to mention the food and alcohol.  It's an annual tradition, and Ives revels in it.

I'm not going to belabor this post with any kind of philosophizing.  It is Independence Day in the United States, and I have a community picnic and fireworks display to get to.  Earlier today, I went to two parades.  Bagpipes and firetrucks and class reunion floats.  It's an annual tradition for me and my family, like Ives' annual Christmas party.

Last night, my sister was flown down to the University of Michigan.  I have nothing really new to report.  The doctors are performing all kinds of tests before determining the best course of treatment for her.  I am hopeful.  That's the best I can say on this July 4, where freedom is celebrated.  For the first time in about a week, I feel hope.

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples a blessed Independence Day, wherever you may live in this world.

Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth

by:  Patricia Lockwood

Mind is a man I think.  I love men, they call me
a fatherlandsexual, all the motherlandsexuals
have been sailed away, and there were never
any here in the first place, they tell us.  Myself
I have never seen a mountain, myself I have
never seen a valley, especially not my own,
I am afraid of the people who live there,
who eat hawk and wild rice from my pelvic
bone.  Oh no, I am fourteen. I have walked
into my motherland's bedroom, her body
indistinguishable from the fatherland
who is "loving her" from behind, so close
their borders match up, except for a notable
Area belonging to the fatherland.  I am drawn
to the motherland's lurid sunsets, I am reaching
my fingers to warm them, the people in my
valley are scooping hawk like crazy, I can no
longer tell which country is which, salt air off
both their coasts, so gross, where is a good nice gulp
of Midwestern pre-tornado?  The tornado above me
has sucked up a Cow, the motherland declares,
the tornado above him has sucked up a Bull,
she says pointing to the fatherland.  But the cow
is clearly a single cow, chewing a single cud
of country, chewing their countries into one,
and "I hate these country!" I scream, and
their eyes shine with rain and fog, because
at last I am using the accent of the homeland,
at last I am a homelandsexual and I will never
go away from them, there will one day be two
of you too they say, but I am boarding myself
already, I recede from their coasts like a Superferry
packed stem to stern with citizens, all waving hellos
and goodbyes, and at night all my people go below
and gorge themselves with hunks of hawk,
          the traditional dish of the new floating heartland.

Okay, not everyone celebrates Independence Day

July 3: Agony of Memory, Having Fun, Guilty Fairy Tale, Patricia Lockwood, "See a Furious Waterfall Without Water,"

And Ives?  For his part, he did not like to be away from her [his wife] and yet seemed to enjoy his excursions upstate alone, now and then, in the winter.  The harshness and the monasterial nature of the place much appealing to his purgatorial side.  The days would go by, Ives occupied by his work, the evenings desperately lonely.  He wold have a drink or two, put on some upstate public radio station that played 1940s music, the mellow voice of Roy Rogers crooning some cowpoke song, or there might be a Bach oratorio on another station and he would sit by the fireplace listening, the choruses rising, and suffer in the wondrous agony of memory.

Memory is a plague for Ives.  His present is so stitched with sadness, and, yet, the happy memories of his past are just reminders of what he has lost:  his beloved son, his family, his perfect life.  Ives is simply incapable of being happy.  My guess is that Ives feels guilty, as if he's betraying his son by experiencing any kind of pleasure.

I understand Ives' dilemma.  Since the news about my sister's illness this week, I've felt obligated to feel sad.  Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States.  There will be parades and community picnics and fireworks at dusk.  I will go to all of these events.  I will enjoy myself.  Yet, at the end of the day, when I get home and put on my pajamas, I will somehow feel guilt because I was having fun while my sister is struggling for her life in a hospital bed.

The latest news on my sister's condition is that the doctors have finally admitted that they really don't know how to treat her.  They have done ultrasounds and MRIs, and they haven't found any tumors.  Today, the hospitalist said, "We're grasping at straws here."  So, they are referring her to either the University of Michigan or Mayo Clinic.  Soon.  Maybe tomorrow.

Thus, while I'm watching a parade of dump trucks and police cars on July 4, my sister will probably be on an airplane, flying to Ann Arbor or Rochester.

Once upon a time, there was a little sparrow named Gary who felt guilty about everything he did.  He ate a worm, he felt guilty.  He sang a song at dawn, he felt guilty.  He bedded down for the night in his nest, he felt guilty.  Gary the sparrow was never happy.

One day, as Gary was sitting on a tree branch, cleaning some bugs out of his wings, a little boy came along with a BB gun and shot the little sparrow.

Gary fell out of the tree.  As he was falling, Gary thought, "I feel so bad about having to get the grass all dirty."  He hit the ground and died instantly.

Moral of the story:  Sparrows are pretty stupid.

And Saint Marty lived guiltily ever after.

See a Furious Waterfall Without Water

by:  Patricia Lockwood

Never has an empty hand been made
into more of a fist, and Waterfall Without
          it swings so hard it swings out
of existence.  How will anyone get married
now, with no wall of water behind them?
How will Over Niagara Falls in a Bareel
marry Across Niagara Falls on a Tightrope?
Over the Falls would have worn a veil.
Across the Falls would have tied a tie,
hand in hand they would have poured
down the aisle to the sound of rustling
          silks.  Later they would make
a gentle elbow in the water, later
they would pour into a still round pool,
and dance for three minutes to what they
called music.  Niagara Falls is a family
member.  He is drunk for the first time
in a hundred years.  "I don't call that music
I call that noise," would have screamed
Niagara Falls, right through his aquiline
family nose.  All of Niagara's ex-lovers
are here.  The World's Steepest Dive
stands up and says, "I've been diving
          so long now, and when will I hit?
When will you be there for me, Niagara?"
First Woman Behind the Falls stands up
so everyone can see her, so everyone
can see what has happened to her looks.
"You took the best day of my life,
          Niagara."  The World's
          Longest Breath-Hold stands up,
she loves him, she drew in her breath
the first time she saw him and never
breathed out again, not ever.  The furious
waterfall without water he punches her
into tomorrow; the World's Longest
Breath-Held is longer now and she calls
to him from the future, "You're here,
          you're roaring again where I am,
Tomorrow."  Finally his first love the U-
Shape stands up.  Stands up and she says,
"Niagara."  The sound curves down and up
again, even the shape of her voice is a U.
"I don't call that music.  I call that noise,"
says the furious waterfall without water,
trembling at the very lip, unable to contain
himself, and there he goes roaring
                                           back into her arms.

Even Niagara Falls feel guilt

July 2: Painterly Skills, What's Best for You, Patricia Lockwood, "Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness"

Certainly he would have been a printer if he hadn't been so interested in drawing.  He took classes whenever he could and had the good fortune of studying with George Bridgeman for figure drawing and Max Bechman for painting at the Art Students League.  Although he had never been the most talented of artists, as he'd tell his son, Robert, years later, he had a highly developed work ethic.  A conscientious and self-effacing laborer, ever humble before his craft, he never thought he'd have any money and figured out, as a young man, that he would always live humbly, "without means," practicing his illustrative and painterly skills into his old age...

That's a pretty realistic dream for a would-be artist.  A life of struggle and near poverty.  Jobs that almost pay the bills but give him time to paint or sketch.  Ives isn't really about money or fame.  He simply loves the creative process. He works at it constantly.  Of course, when he marries and has children, Ives has to forgo the life of the struggling artist.  He gets a job in advertising to provide for his wife and kids.  And his dreams change.

The circumstances of life force everyone to make choices.  Dreams are altered or even abandoned.  Ives doesn't become Picasso, with paintings hanging in museums across the globe.  He becomes a mid-level advertising executive.  I always thought I would have written and published three or four books by now, won some literary awards, and maybe traveled a little.  That is not my life.

My sister--the one who's so ill-- always dreamed of being a nurse her whole life.  She graduated from high school, went to college and studied nursing, graduated, and got a job at a local hospital.  She worked midnight shifts, afternoons, and days.  She transferred to the operating room and found her passion.  She loved surgical nursing.  Eventually, she oversaw the construction of a outpatient surgery center, which she managed until about ten months ago.

Yet, my sister, who was also my boss for almost 17 years, taught me a very important lesson:  work is not life.  Family is life.  Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews.  That's where my sister has always found her greatest joy.  One of my sister's favorite sayings as my boss was, "You've got to do what's best for you."

So, tonight, after I put my son to bed, I'm going to sit down and work on a new poem.  My dreams have changed.  I used to dream about being the world's greatest poet.  Getting invitations to read and teach at Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge.  Now I dream about being the world's greatest husband/father/poet.  I want my wife and kids to have the best life I can give them, and maybe write some great poems along the way.

Saint Marty's doing what's best, for himself and everyone he loves.

Saint Marty is surrounding himself with love.

Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness

by:  Patricia Lockwood

     In the cities all the poets, and in all the cities,
bedbugs.  Fat with their black lyric blood!  Alive
at only night, and there and then not there.  Better
bedbugs than the ones that eat paper, say poets--
               the ones that eat paper are in out blood
and the bedbugs eat them up, rip rip, and out paper
creamily goes on whole, with not a single real space
between sentences in it.  They say come to the cities
and there
     become Great!  The poets have money to spend
in the cities:  they spend the newest American dollars,
the crisp-aired greenest American dollars, blazing
     with pictures of National Parks.  "The Old Faithful
Geyser almost gushes off the note!"  At last money admits
the power of poetry, at last money admits it is written
on--and this piece of paper almost gushes, so go to a city
     and spend it.  The poets in cities save their money
and travel to National Parks, and never sleep at night
there, no one sleeps in a National Park, they stay up late
and inseminate each other with memories of mountains
and glimpses of wildlife, and human reflections in stilly
chill lakes, and afterward they lie awake, miles away
from any city, miles away from their living mattresses
               where their absent shapes are getting sucked
for their blood.  Oh the bedbugs are happy; in bedbug prison,
the locked-up poet is writing his poems, in blood just like
the first time.  Oh the poets are happy back in the cities, there
are legible smears on their sheets every day, and a pricking
always on their skin like something is coming
for them through the grass, long green grass
                                                     of where they came from.

Amen to that.

July 1: Fantastic Dreams, God's Love, Patricia Lockwood, "When the World Was Ten Years Old He Fell Deep in Love with Egypt"

And in church he recalled certain recent fantastic dreams.  There had been a dream about ancient Egypt recently.  Of it he could remember this:  of riding across a desert in a chariot to attend a dinner party at a nobleman's house.  He driver was a Nubian slave.  In that incarnation Ives was a minor architect of some kind.  He wore a silken cape and a soft gold skullcap and gold bracelets around his arms.  He carried vials of perfume as a gift for his friends. . .

Ives has a lot of strange dreams and visions.  There's colored winds and spinning suns.  He's an Egyptian architect and a French monk and a Parthian.  Each incarnation of himself is searching for some kind of divine knowledge, and understanding of God's love.

I've been thinking about God's love a lot today.  Maybe "thinking about" isn't quite the right phrase.  More like "struggling with."  I'm not really seeing God's love in what's happening with my sister.  I don't see divine mercy or justice.  I don't really see anything close to what I associate with Jesus or the Big Guy in the Sky.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this post.  I'm angry.  Not thinking really clearly.  I'm thinking of the plagues God visited on the Egyptians, especially the final one, where all the first-born children of Egypt are killed.  I've always had a difficult time with that plague--how children are somehow punished for the sins of their parents.  I know God had to get Pharaoh's attention, but killing kids just doesn't jive with my vision of a loving Deity.

Okay, I'm not going to go any further with this.  I'm trying to figure out the mind of God, and that's not a healthy pursuit.  I'm confused and sad and pissed and tired and _____ (insert any emotion here).

Saint Marty needs to get to bed.

When the World Was Ten Years Old
 He Fell Deep in Love with Egypt

by:  Patricia Lockwood

Just as he fell in love with the dinosaurs,
just as he would fall in love with the moon--
no women in the world yet, he was only ten
years old.  A ten-year-old is made of time,
the world had forever to learn about Egypt.
He entered encyclopedias and looted every
fact of them and when he had finished looting
     there he broke into the Bible.  He snuck
into his mother's room and drew thick lines
around his eyes and those were the borders
of Egypt.  He carefully wrote in stiff small
birds, he carefully wrote in coiled snakes,
he carefully wrote in flatfooted humans.
The ten-year-old world needed so much
privacy, he learned to draw the door-bolt
          glyph and learned to make the sound
          it made.  I am an old white British man,
decided the ten-year-old world, I wear a round
lens on my right eye, the Day, and see only a blur
with my left eye, the Night.  When the sun shone
on him it shone on Egypt, all the dark for a while
          was the dark in the Pyramids, the left lung
of his body was the shape of Africa
          and one single square breath in it Egypt.
They never found all the tombs, he knew.  Anyone
might be buried in Egypt, thought the ten-year-old
world in love with it, I will send my wind down
into my valley, and my wind will uncover the doors
to the tombs, and I will go down myself inside them,
and shine light on all the faces, and light on the rooms
full of gold, and light on even the littlest pets, on the mice
and the beetles of the ten-year-old kings, and shine light
                              on even their littlest names.

Can you explain God's love to me?