October 16, 2025: “Know-Nothing,” Making a Difference, “Let Them Eat Cake”

I like to think I make a difference in the world.  Maybe a small difference, but still a difference.  It’s why I’ve been a contingent professor at a university for over 30 years.  And why I play music at three (sometimes four) different churches every weekend.  And why I write poetry.

All of those things, I believe, can have an impact, maybe bring a little light into a dark world.

Sharon Olds meditates on the difference sex makes in the world . . . 

Know-Nothing

by: Sharon Olds

Sometimes I think I know nothing about sex.

All that I thought I was going to know,

that I did not know, I still do not know.

I think about this out of town,

on hotel elevators crowded with men.

The body of knowledge which lay somewhere

ahead of me, now I do not know where it

lies, or in the beds of strangers.

I know of sexual love, with my beloved,

but of men—I think there are women who know

men, I can’t see what it is

they know, but I feel in myself that I

could know it, or could I have been a woman who

would dare that.  I don’t mean what she does

with herself, or that she would know more pleasure,

but she knows something true that I don’t know,

she knows fucking with a stranger.  I feel

in awe of that, why is she not

afraid, what if she did not like

his touch, or what he said, how

would she bear it?  Or maybe she has mercy on pretty much

anything a stranger would say or do,

or maybe it is not mercy, but sex,

when she sees what he’s like, she enflames for that,

and is afraid of nothing, wanting to touch

stone desire, and know it, she is like

a god, who could have sex with stranger

after stranger—she could know men.

But what of her womb, tender core

of her being, what of her breasts’ stiff hearts,

and her dense eggs, what if she falls

in love?  Maybe to know sex fully 

one has to risk being destroyed by it.

Maybe only ruin could take

its full measure, as death stands

in the balance with birth, and ignorance with love.

To know sex fully, you have to risk being destroyed by it.  I think to know anything fully, you have to risk being destroyed by it.

For instance, I studied poetry in my MFA program.  As an undergraduate, I studied computer science and math.  I was good at calculus and programming.  I got A’s in all my classes (except for a bowling class—don’t open up that old wound!).  Yet, at the end of my fourth year of undergraduate study, the prospect of spending my life coding and debugging programs seemed like a death sentence.  I knew it would have destroyed me.  So, I made a switch.

I think I was a shitty teacher when I first started standing in front of students and pretending I was some kind of expert.  (I ate, drank, and slept with imposter syndrome.)  I think I’ve learned a few things in the three intervening decades.  Now, I would say I’m a pretty damn in a classroom.  But those first few courses I taught nearly destroyed me.

And I kind of stumbled into poetry.  My life goal was to be the next Stephen King.  Fiction was where it was at.  Sure, I read poetry and loved poetry, but I never fancied myself the next Robert Frost of Sharon Olds.  I wanted to write horror and make a boatload of cash.  You can all tell how that turned out for me.  As Neruda writes in his poem “Poetry”:  “ . . . Poetry arrived / in search of me, I don’t know, I don’t know where / it came from . . .”  

That’s a pretty accurate description of the arrival of poetry in my life.  I didn’t know what the hell I was doing the first few poetry workshops I took, and I had one poetry instructor, in particular, who told me I didn’t know what the hell I was doing (which caused an almost year-long battle with writer’s block).  Poetry destroyed my dream of being a zillionaire horror novelist, but, at that point in my life, I really didn’t care.

You see, as you get older, things that seemed really important earlier in life tend to evaporate like an ice cube at the equator.  Priorities shift.  Here is now my definition of a successful day:  everyone is healthy; no nuclear or biological weapons have been used on the planet; and, somewhere during the past 24 hours, I made the world a little bit kinder and gentler.

And if being kinder and gentler almost destroys me, so be it.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about kindness, sort of, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In 1793, Marie Antionette was beheaded two and half weeks before her thirty-eighth birthday during the French Revolution.  Write a poem that imagine a parade of Marie Antionettes or another famous French figure walking down a street in the city of Pairs, Wisconsin (population 754),

Let Them Eat Cake

by: Martin Achatz

She never said that, was the victim

of bad press and urban myth,

like the one about mixing Pop Rocks 

and Coke or turning out all the lights

and saying Bloody Mary three times

in front of a mirror.  In fact, the last

thing she said as she climbed

to the guillotine was Pardon me, sir.

I did not do it on purpose after she stepped

on her executioner’s toes, words

that I hope clotted his heart until,

years later, he dropped dead while 

feeding his chickens one morning, the ghost

of the young queen greeting him

on the other side, a plate in her hands

holding a piece of lemon chiffon cake

with buttercream frosting the color of pearl.

October 15, 2025: “The Promise,”. Anniversary Dinner, “Beaver Moon”

Greetings, faithful disciples!

No, I didn’t write a blog post yesterday, which was my 30th wedding anniversary.  “Why?” you may ask.  Because, my wife and I celebrated our three decades of matrimony tonight with an anniversary dinner.  (Last night, I hosted an event at the library, so we didn’t have time to raise a glass to our years of endurance.  Make no mistake—marriage is as much about enduring the storms as it is about making love on a Hawaiian beach.)

Sharon Olds writes about enduring love . . . 

The Promise

by: Sharon Olds

With the second drink, at the restaurant,
holding hands on the bare table,
we are at it again, renewing our promise
to kill each other. You are drinking gin,
night-blue juniper berry
dissolving in your body, I am drinking Fumé,
chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are
taking on earth, we are part soil already,
and wherever we are, we are also in our
bed, fitted, naked, closely
along each other, half passed out,
after love, drifting back
and forth across the border of consciousness,
our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand
tightens on the table. You’re a little afraid
I’ll chicken out. What you do not want
is to lie in a hospital bed for a year
after a stroke, without being able
to think or die, you do not want
to be tied to a chair like your prim grandmother,
cursing. The room is dim around us,
ivory globes, pink curtains
bound at the waist—and outside,
a weightless, luminous, lifted-up
summer twilight. I tell you you do not
know me if you think I will not
kill you. Think how we have floated together
eye to eye, nipple to nipple,
sex to sex, the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it—you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.

It’s a surprising confession on Olds’ part, but one that I completely understand.  Nobody wants to see someone they care about suffer.  So, the speaker of the poem promises to kill her lover if a lion has him in its jaws, metaphorically speaking.  

When my wife and I first started dating, I told her about my fears of growing old alone, with no one to hold my hand or put a damp cloth on my fevered forehead.  Her response was this:  “I’ll be there with you.  We will throw handfuls of peas at each other and have wheelchair races in the hallways.”. I think that pretty much counts as a promise to kill each other.

My wife and I went to our favorite Cajun restaurant tonight for our anniversary.  Our 17-year-old son came with us.  She and I both ordered seafood risotto, and our son got jambalaya.  (I also ordered a chocolate martini and a double gin and tonic.)  For appetizers, we got hush puppies and cheese grit cakes.  When the server came by to offer us dessert, we were all stuffed to the eyeballs.

I remember some things about the day we got married.  It was a cold and wet.  I’d traveled with a friend from Kalamazoo the day before, and autumn was in full bloom—orange and gold and crimson all the way.  After the reception, Brian (my best man) drove us to our hotel.  There was a basket of chocolates in the room, and a heart-shaped jacuzzi was right by the bed.  

Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you all the intimate details.  (If you want that kind of story, I check out Pornhub.)  What I want to tell you is that there was a moon that night.  It was waning gibbous, but still large and bright as a pearl.  And I felt like the luckiest person on the planet.

A lot of things have happened since that night.  Lots of waxing and waning.  And our love has survived all these storms and eclipses.  Thirty years’ worth.  We’ve hiked volcanos.  Seen lava pouring into the Pacific Ocean.  Met Alec Baldwin.  Saw Lily Tomlin on Broadway.  Voted for the first African American President of the United States.  Voted (TWICE!) against a man who wants to be the Adolf Hitler of North America.  Made it through a global pandemic.  Raised two wonderful kids.

But some things never change.  The moon is still rolling across the heavens.  The Simpsons is still on TV.  And my wife and I are still in love with each other.

Saint Marty has a moon poem for you tonight, based on the following prompt from October 1 of The Daily Poet:

You may have noticed the harvest moon of September, but October with its large O looks like a moon.  Write a poem about the moon using multiple O words.  Words with capital O’s look even better. Make a list of some words that begin with O and go go go.

Beaver Moon

by: Martin Achatz

November’s moon belongs to

the beaver, its “O” coasting

in pond and stream water

where that furred construction

worker has slapped and dammed

a home for himself, trapped

all that looming light so that

he can go for midnight 

glides through stars and comets,

become a constellation of tooth

and tail.  Tonight, I’ll stand

under the bowl of heaven, ogle

the bright lunar hole above,

imagine myself coasting with

the beaver through the black

current of night, our bodies

threaded, spooled with light.

October 13, 2025: “True Love,” Wedding Anniversary, “Mary Olivering”

It has been a quiet, calm Monday for once.  Nothing terrible happened, except for the alarm going off and waking me up this morning.  Most of my faithful disciples know that I’m not a big fan of Sundays or Mondays.  I find them depressing.  Today, I was pretty much by myself in my library office.  All . . . day . . . long.  And I’ve loved every second.

Now, I’m not a misanthrope.  Every once in a while, however, I need to retreat and recharge.  Today was a recharging day.  Tomorrow, my wife and I will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.  We dated for five years prior to tying the knot.  That means we have been a part of each other’s lives for 35 years  I wish I could say it has been all rainbows and unicorns, but I live in reality, not a rom-com.  True love ain’t pretty.

Sharon Olds meditates on . . . 

True Love

by: Sharon Olds

In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I hobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes
muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
body a sex—surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.

It’s such an intimate, tender moment Olds describes here—one of those stolen moments most married people with kids will recognize.  Yes, Olds and her husband ended up divorcing eventually, but every love story (successful or failed) is made up of these kind of sweet, stolen times.

I’m a lucky guy.  I found the love of my life pretty early, and I got to spend my life with her.  Sure, we’ve had some touch-and-go periods because of mental illness and addictions.  We even separated for a year.  Yet, to paraphrase Elton John, we’re still standing.

And we have two beautiful, smart kids—one in medical school, one about to graduate from high school.  We are well beyond the quickies-when-the-kids-are-asleep phase.  Currently, we are in the hey-we-can-take-an-afternoon-nap phase.  (For my younger disciples, let me say that EVERYONE eventually realizes that naps are God’s greatest creation, with sex coming in a distant second.)

Falling in love is easy.  Staying in love for close to 40 years?  Now, that takes some seriously hard work.  People change over time.  It’s inevitable.  One passion gives way to another passion.  You give up computer science to study creative writing.  You take a temp job at an outpatient surgery center to pay the bills, and you end up temping there for 25 years.

Life has a way of throwing you curve balls.  It’s simply a matter of finding the right person to stand behind home plate with you.  I was lucky enough to hit a home run.

Saint Marty wrote a sort-of love poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1962, Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opened on Broadway.  Write a poem where you take the name of an author and have it reoccurring in your poem in surprising ways.  If you don’t know where to begin, use the image of walking into an old or used bookstore and reaching for a book.

Mary Olivering

by: Martin Achatz

I always return to you, Mary Oliver, when I hear

the oar train hurtle through 3 a.m. on its way

to Lake Superior, return to those peaceful Mary moments

of marsh and heron, snakes luxuriating in puddles

of sun, bears muzzling honey from tree trunks.  Return

to the grove of Oliver trees you planted, nursed,

pruned with so much joy and grief that I can still

smell your cigarette smoke as I wander through

the orchard, squeezing each Oliver on the branches

for ripeness.  Some yield to my pinches, almost blush,

as if I’m at a middle school dance and just pressed

my lips to my crush’s neck, incanted her name—

Mary, oh, Mary, yes, Mary!—as Simple Minds flooded

the gym and everyone’s bodies swayed, arched

in adolescent desperation.  

I bring my pail of Olivers home, whip up some  

pancake batter, stir them in delicately so they won’t

bruise or burst.  In the morning, when my wife

stumbles into the kitchen. I will hand her a plate

piled with Mary pancakes.  I’ll watch her fork

pieces between her lips.  As she chews, I’ll sit beside

her and wonder what we’re going to do with the

wild and precious day ahead.

October 12, 2025: “Am and Am Not,” Five Star Bars, “Picnic Rocks”

Yes, I am still alive and thinking. (I could have said “kicking,” but I thought the allusion to the Simple Minds was a little too 1980s.).

In the last month or so, I’ve found myself overwhelmed by almost everything—the current political situation, teaching, my work at the library, my daughter’s move downstate. Emotionally, I’ve been running on empty for a while, and, every time I’ve tried to sit down to type out a blog post, I’ve found myself too distracted and/or tired. Perhaps I’m soul weary.

Sharon Olds writes about the state of her soul . . .

Am and Am Not

by: Sharon Olds

When I’m tilted forward, brushing my teeth,

I glance down.  We do not know

ourselves.  My cunt, like a hand, stroked him,

such subtle, intricate movement.  Central

inside me this one I am and am not,

not only like a palm, more like a snake’s

reticulated body, rings of muscle—

like the penis outside-in, its twin.

Who is it?  I lean against the sink, mouth open

and nursing with Colgate, nixie palate

scoured with pond-mind, it is my sould

in there, elastic as an early creature

gone out on its own again, is it my

soul’s throat?  Its rings ripple

in waves, as if it swallows, but what it

swallows stays, and grows, and grows,

we become one being, whom we hardly know,

whom we know better than we know anyone

else.  And in the morning I look down.  Who?  What has—

what?!  Seeing just the skin of the belly—

she is asleep in there, the soul, vertical

undulant one, she is dancing upright in her dream.

So, let me take care of a little business here.

First, in my post from September 17, I told you about my puppy being attacked by a neighbor’s German shepherd.  My puppy is fine.  We filed and police report, and the owners of the German shepherd felt horrible and paid for our vet bill.  As of this evening, our puppy isn’t showing any lasting signs from the bite on her leg, and she’s walking just fine.  (A blessing.)

I recently celebrated another Saint Marty’s Day (last Sunday).  It was a good weekend, eating some of my favorite foods and attending an art awards ceremony where some of my friends were recognized.  My daughter sent me some of my favorite candy bars—Five Star Bars from Lake Champlain Chocolates.  (All blessings.)

Last week, I worked on an article for a local publication—an interview with one of my writer friends who’s just published two new books (a collection of poems and a collection of short stories).  I’ve known Jonathan for over 30-plus years, and he’s just the kindest, brightest soul.  It took me a few days to pull everything together, but the article turned out really well, I think.  My friend really liked it.  He said in a text that “it is dazzlingly beautiful as a piece of writing too!  You’re one hell of a stylist!”. (Blessings.)

In the midst of all these blessings, the United States federal government has been shut down by President 47 and his flunkies.  He’s also deploying the military against citizens in Democratic American cities, and he’s in a full meltdown over not winning this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.  (I didn’t win the Nobel Prize in Literature, either—it went to a Hungarian writer—but you don’t see me shutting down a country because the Swedish Academy made a mistake.)  Basically, things are rapidly decompensating into authoritarianism.  Plus, Diane Keaton died yesterday.

Am I worried that ay criticism of the current White House administration that I publish on this blog may get me a one-way ticket to an El Salvadoran concentration camp?  Not really.  (My kids seem more worried about that than I am.). And I’m still going to attend a No Kings 2 protest this coming weekend.  Now is not the time to be silent, and I’ve been pretty quiet these last 25 days or so.

Sometimes souls need to be handled with care.  That’s what I’ve been doing the last month or so.  Trying to take care of myself, physically, mentally, and spiritually.  I’ve suffered some bouts of insomnia, and, for a little while, I thought I was sliding into one of my blue funks.  (I’m not.  Don’t worry.). So, I’ve been allowing myself to watch familiar movies and TV shows, reread favorite books, and eat more than a little chocolate.  

I’m going to try to be more diligent about blogging regularly.  When I don’t write, I can slip into sadness and depression.  Don’t want that to happen, especially since the days are getting shorter and the weather is turning cold.

So, I am back.  For now.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today, based upon the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about going on a picnic on a rainy day, a stormy day, during a hurricane, a snowstorm, or some other weather event not conducive to sitting outside.  For a twist, have the poem include either a positive outcome or a positive moment during what might be viewed as a terrible day,

Picnic Rocks

by: Martin Achatz

On July evenings, we drove to Presque Isle,

parked at Picnic Rocks, brought out

our bags of KFC or Burger King, found

some bench or empty plot of sand,

sat and ate in the hubbub of swimmers,

waves, and gulls, to escape the heat

that sat on our shoulders like sunburn.

You collected stones, put them in 

buckets, brought them home to your

bedroom.  After you died, we found

Tupperware after Tupperware of these

momento mori, pieces of volcano

and basalt chewed smooth by

Superior and guided to that beach

where Charon might drop off or pick up

lost souls.  I remember a few weeks

after, how I could almost feel you

beside me at Picnic Rocks, searching with your

ghostly fingers for just the perfect stone

to pay your passage across those endless, blue waters.