July 27, 2025: “My Parents’ Wedding Night, 1937,” Day in Poetry, “The Vicar Visits McDonald’s”

I spent most of the day in poetry.  Thinking about it.  Planning for it.  Reading it.  Writing it.  After playing two church services this morning, I didn’t have anything else to do except prepare for a workshop I led this evening.

I’m not lamenting the fact that my day was rather uninteresting.  Most of my days are jam packed with interesting.  Interesting can be exhausting.  As the husband of one of my best friends once said, “There’s nothing wrong with sameness.”  That’s right—I embrace boring.  Boring brings blood pressure down.  Allows for naps and binge watching bad movies and TV shows.  It’s healthy.

And, for me, the best poems are the ones that transform something boring/ordinary into something inspiring.  It’s all a matter of perspective.  I don’t have to jump out of an airplane or dive on the Great Barrier Reef in order to have an astounding day.  Sitting in the middle of a patch of wild blueberries can be pretty astounding, as well.  Every day doesn’t have to be Christmas or a wedding.

Sharon Olds writes about an extraordinary day in her parents’ lives . . . 

My Parents’ Wedding Night, 1937

by: Sharon Olds

Today, I thought of that blood, rippling out

like the blood that seeps up out of the side

of a trout when the pressed-down blade breaks through,

tough salty sweet fish

of my mother’s maidenhead.  It was in the dark,

the harsh-shantung blinds drawn down, the

ruffled curtains unloosed at the waist.

She was naked with a man for the first time,

the intricate embroidery silks of her

pudenda moist upright alert

terrified, thrilled, each hair

reaching out and curling back, she was

there in the bed like her own parents,

there at the center of the world.  Now

she was the loaf laid into the pan

raw and being fed now into the bright oven.

And I thought of my father, over her,

ivory-white face and brilliantine hair,

up on his elbows like a man pulling himself

out of the ocean onto the beach.  The war

had not yet begun, they lay and slept

in blood and peace, no one knew what was coming.

I leave them wrapped in that sheet, double larvum, 

they sleep with their mouths open like teenagers

in the smell of champagne and cruor and semen, 

they rest but I go back and back to that moment,

looking at it until I get more used to it,

like my childhood God watching Adam and Eve in the garden—

the first springing wrinkle of blood, I

see it as a castaway sees the leap of

life pouring out of the turtle’s throat where the shell severs it.

You see, a man and a woman in bed on their wedding night isn’t anything mind-blowing, except for the couple.  People have sex all the time.  Generally, there aren’t going to be parades or fireworks each time someone engages in an intimate act.  (That would be horrifying and hilarious at the same time.)

For me, sitting down with my journal and fountain pen always feels amazing.  I’m happiest when I can spend time writing something—poems, essays, blog posts, whatever.  Last night, I went to a fireworks display in my hometown.  What did I bring with me to keep myself occupied?  My journal and fountain pen.  (I know, I know.  You’re probably thinking I’m pretty lame.  However, out of that time sitting on the grass, waiting for darkness to fall, I was able to get a rough draft of a poem written.)

I’m never bored because I’m always thinking about my next writing project.  Hence, I’m always on the lookout for life’s tiny miracles.  A fragment of a robin egg.  Polished stone.  Surprise rain shower.  Fresh tapioca pudding, right off the stove.  All miracles.  All worthy of poems.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary person, based on the following prompt from July 26 or The Daily Poet:

Write a poem that is a study of a human being in motion.  Describe your chosen person’s action and imagine their thoughts.  Suggestions for whom you might study:  a waitress, a postal worker, a lifeguard, a conductor, a chef, your mom in the kitchen.  Here’s an excerpt from Joyce S. Brown’s “The Waitress at Atwater’s” to get you started:

Perhaps

the spilled ketchup

annoys her, or

she sees in the shiny surface

some scene she would rather forget.

The Vicar Visits McDonald’s

by: Martin Achatz

Maybe

it’s the smell

of candle wax

in the dark

sanctuary, its

sweet bee-ness,

that fills him

with an urge

to open his lips,

confess that he

imagined the woman

in the McDonald’s

drive thru 

Biblically

when he picked 

up his coffee

this morning, even

asked her for 

extra sugar

and cream 

to spend a few

more seconds 

in her presence,

although he usually

drinks his coffee

black, strong as sea

water, an act

of penance he

learned in seminary.

He has

Sunday’s sermon

to practice,

but all he

can think about

right now

are the McNuggets

he’s going 

to order 

for lunch.

He may even

supersize 

his French fries.

July 25, 2025: “My Father Speaks to Me from the Dead,” Day Off, “Why I Swore Off Porn”

I’m not sure I’d want to speak with ghosts.  I think it would be either really terrifying, or really annoying.  There are always things left unsaid when a person passes—unspoken “goodbyes” or “I loves yous” or “Don’t forget to unplug the toasters.”  I’m just not sure I’d want to be the conduit for all those messages from the beyond.

Sharon Olds’ has a close encounter with her father’s ghost . . . 

My Father Speaks to Me from the Dead

by: Sharon Olds

I seem to have woken up in a pot-shed, 

on clay, on shards, the glitter paths 

of slugs kiss-crossing my body. I don't know 

where to start, with this grime on me. 

I take the spider glue-net, plug 

of the dead, out of my mouth, let's see 

if where I have been I can do this. 

I love your feet. I love your knees, 

I love your our my legs, they are so 

long because they are yours and mine 

both. I love your—what can I call it, 

between your legs, we never named it, the 

glint and purity of its curls. I love 

your rear end, I changed you once, 

washed the detritus off your tiny 

bottom, with my finger rubbed 

the oil on you; when I touched your little 

anus I crossed wires with God for a moment. 

I never hated your shit—that was 

your mother. I love your navel, thistle 

seed fossil, even though 

it's her print on you. Of course I love 

your breasts—did you see me looking up 

from within your daughter's face, as she nursed? 

I love your bony shoulders and you know I 

love your hair, thick and live 

as earth. And I never hated your face, 

I hated its eruptions. You know what I love? 

I love your brain, its halves and silvery 

folds, like a woman's labia. 

I love in you 

even what comes 

from deep in your mother—your heart, that hard worker, 

and your womb, it is a heaven to me, 

I lie on its gentle hills and gaze up 

at its rosy vault. 

I have been in a body without breath, 

I have been in the morgue, in fire, in the slagged 

chimney, in the air over the earth, 

and buried in the earth, and pulled down 

into the ocean—where I have been 

I understand this life, I am matter, 

your father, I made you, when I say now that I love you 

I mean look down at your hand, move it, 

that action is matter's love, for human 

love go elsewhere.

I have had dreams/visions, like Olds, of waking up in strange places and speaking with a long-dead loved one—most of the time, one of my sisters or my mother.  I’ve found those dreams both comforting and disturbing, depending on the loved one’s words.

I always feel surrounded by my dead.  In fact, I sometimes talk to them.  Not in the Whoopi Goldberg Ghost way.  I just have one-sided conversations with them when I’m struggling with a decision.  My mother and older sister were always sounding boards for me when I needed advice.  

I do believe in ghosts/spirits/souls.  From a Christian standpoint, I was brought up to believe we all have souls that survive our fleshly time on this planet.  From a Stephen King fanboy standpoint, I will never knowingly step foot in a haunted house.  From a metaphysical standpoint, I have experienced moments of intense connection with the spirit of a place/person.  (I defy anyone to visit the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and not feel the weight of all the lives that were lost there.)

The image of my dearly departeds constantly floating near me gives me pause.  Think about everything you do on a daily basis.  Would you want your mother or father to witness all the things you do in a 24-hour period?  As a teenage boy, I couldn’t imagine my maternal grandmother watching me at night in my bedroom.  The very thought was enough to make me celibate.

Nowadays, I’m comforted by the growing list of ghosts who surround me daily.  (As you get older, more and more ghosts join that throng.)  It’s like I have my own team of angelic lawyers to argue my case with the Almighty.  If I’m doing something that requires privacy, I figure my dead are smart enough to practice some otherworldly discretion.

I took the day off work, so I’ve had a lot of time to write and think today, which can be both good and bad.  I worked on my poetry manuscript, and I practiced church music for this weekend.  At the entrance to one of the churches, there’s a lovely flower garden with statues of angels and Jesus and Mary.  The temperature was close to 90 degrees, and blooms were vibrant and fragrant.  I stood outside for several minutes, just inhaling and thinking how much my mother would have loved the scene.  It almost felt like her ghost was standing right beside me, admiring the orange and while petals.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem about good and bad choices, based on the following two prompts from The Daily Poet:

July 24:  Write a poem in which the title begins with “Why.”  Examples:  “Why I’d Like to Meet My Maker,” “Why I Would Never Dye My Hair.”  In her poem “Why She Would Take Off Her Shoes Before Jumping From the Golden Gate Bridge,” Annette Spaulding-Convy writes:  Maybe the water / / is a temple and She doesn’t want / / to bring the road’s dirt / / inside.  Push to move past expected responses to strange and imaginative ones.  For extra credit, compose your poem in couplets.

July 25:  Write a poem wherein you swear off something or someone.  Examples:  caffeine, booze, porn, Sex in the City reruns, a toxic boyfriend or girlfriend, a drug-addicted child.  Tell us specifically (with concrete images) why you are saying goodbye to a bad habit or toxic alliance, then show us how your decision will change your life for the better.

Why I Swore Off Porn

by: Martin Achatz

It was challenging in high school, like getting

someone to buy me beer from White’s Liquor Pantry.

The girls always looked sad, as if

Charlotte hadn’t saved Wilbur in the end.

And the guys always looked like Darren Vanhoff

who tried to drown me in swim class.

There were too many grammar errors—

modifiers dangling in inappropriate places.

Princess Leia, in her metal bikini, strangled

Jabba the Hutt with her BDSM chains.

They’re aren’t many good words that rhyme

with it:  corn, shorn, mourn, forlorn, 

and Gorn, that lizard man Captain Kirk

fought in between getting it on with all

those alien pole dancers in sequins, 

trying to save their worlds from oblivion.

Everyone in the pictures and videos have

mothers, fathers, little brothers, maybe goldfish.

Hi, my name is Martin, and my turn-ons are someone

washing my dinner dishes, afternoon naps, salted caramels.

July 23, 2025: “Waste Sonata,” Wasted Time, “Yellow Brick”

I don’t like wasting anything.  I don’t like wasted food or wasted paper or wasted time.  Especially wasted time.  I plan my days out so that I can make maximum use of every second I’m conscious.  I was talking to a poet friend this morning, and I asked her if she ever felt guilty about taking time to draft a poem.

“Only if it’s not productive,” she said.  “If the writing goes well, that time is always justified.”

Sharon Olds writes about human waste . . . 

Waste Sonata

by: Sharon Olds

I think at some point I looked at my father

and thought He’s full of shit.  How did I

know fathers talked to their children,

kissed them?  I knew.  I saw him and judged him.

Whatever he poured into my mother

she hated, her face rippled like a thin

wing, sometimes, when she happened to be near him,

and the liquor he knocked into his body

felled him, slew the living tree,

loops of its grain started to cube,

petrify, coprofy, he was a

shit, but I felt he hated being a shit,

he had never imagined it could happen, this drunken

sleep was a spell laid on him—

by my mother.  Well, I left to them

the passion of who did what to whom, it was a

baby in their bed they were rolling over on,

but I could not live with hating him.

I did not see that I had to.  I stood

in that living room and saw him drowse

like the prince, in slobbrous beauty, I began to

to think he was a kind of chalice,

a grail, his love the goal of a quest,

yes!  He was the god of love

and I was a shit.  I looked down at my forearm—

whatever was inside there

was not good, it was white stink,

bad manna.  I looked in the mirror, and 

as I looked at my face the blemishes

arose, like pigs up out of the ground

to the witch’s call.  It was strange to me

that my body smelled sweet, it was proof I was 

demonic, but at least I breathed out,

from the sour dazed scum within,

my father’s truth.  Well it’s fun talking about this,

I love the terms of foulness.  I have learned

to get some pleasure from speaking of pain.

But to die, like this.  To grow old and die

a child, lying to herself.

My father was not a shit.  He was a man

failing at life.  He had little shits

traveling through him while he lay there unconscious—

sometimes I don’t let myself say

I loved him, anymore, but I feel

I almost love those shits that move through him,

shapely, those waste foetuses,

my mother, my sister, my brother, and me

in that purgatory.

Waste is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.  Sharon Olds cherishes the little shits in her father’s body, even if she struggles to say “I love you” to her father.  Her father is not a shit, she says.  He was a man who is “failing at life.”  His main fault, it seems, is disappointment with his life choices.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I really don’t like wasting time.  Every morning, I plan my days out, using lists and numbers and checkmarks.  That list was fairly short today.  I attended an art bookmaking workshop in the morning, and I hosted a library concert by one of my favorite local bands (Ramble Tamble) in the evening.  Plus, I got to hang with one of my best friends at the concert.  In between all that, I drafted a couple new poems, as well.  

I’d call that a pretty productive day.

Of course, I could have gotten a lot more done.  That’s always the case.  I rarely cross off every item on my daily lists.  If there are more than two or three unfinished tasks at the end of the day, I count that as a failure.  As I sit typing this post, I still have three unfinished chores.  Therefore, by the rule I just stated, I’m a big, fat loser today.

I’m okay with that, because I have drafts of two new poems from workshop this morning.  That means, by my poet friend’s rules, I have had a very productive day.  I’m going to stick with that.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about time and nature, based on prompts from two days in The Daily Poet . . . 

July 21:  In celebration of Tess Gallagher’s birthday, spend some time in the outdoors, even if it means taking a walk to the post office or stepping out to retrieve the mail.  Gallagher, reflecting on exploring vast amounts of territory in both the Pacific Northwest and the Ozarks, states “it builds something in you.”. Whether it’s an appreciation for bird song or a fondness for cottonwood fluff, let the natural world build something in you today, then share about it in a poem of ten lines of ten syllables each.

July 22:  I often find my best poems while driving, but only when I pay close attention, viewing road signs, billboards, restaurants, and movie theatre marquees with fresh eyes.  Who lives on the street names Never Give Up Road?  What does a store called BIGLOTS! tell us about the age we live in?  Wipe the nothing’s-new-under-the-sun sand from your eyes, and get into your car (or motorcycle or bike), and make a poem out of what you find.

Yellow Brick

by: Martin Achatz

Each day, I drive into sunrises, lick

yellow brick light with hungry eyes.  Today,

I spotted a roadkill doe in the ditch,

her legs snapped, neck angled strangely, as if

she was still leaping milky streams, charging

through cedar swamps after shadows of winged

monkeys chasing the emerald heart of day.

If she only knew, if she only knew

all she had to do was click her hooves once,

twice, thrice, and think of sweet, ripe blueberries.

July 20, 2025: "I Wanted to Be There When My Father Died," Date Night, "7 Reasons We Need Superman Right Now"

So, it has been a fairly busy weekend.

I mowed the lawn yesterday because of rain in the weather forecast.  (It never rained.)  I played two church services, one yesterday evening and one this morning.  I wrote a few poems.  I led a poetry workshop tonight that ended a little over an hour ago.

The highlight of last couple days was going to see the new Superman with my wife last night.  Then we went to one of our favorite restaurants/pubs where we had a couple drinks, ate some chicken nachos and breadsticks, and decompressed from the stress of the last couple weeks.

Sharon Olds comes clean about her feelings over her father . . .

I Wanted to Be There When My Father Died

by: Sharon Olds

I wanted to be there when my father died
because I wanted to see him die—
and not just to know him, down 
to the ground, the dirt of his unmaking, and not
just to give him a last chance
to give me something, or take his loathing
back. All summer he had gagged, as if trying
to cough his whole esophagus out,
surely his pain and depression had appeased me,
and yet I wanted to see him die
not just to see no soul come
free of his body, no mucal genie of
spirit jump
forth from his mouth,
proving the body on earth is all we have got,
I wanted to watch my father die
because I hated him. Oh, I loved him,
my hands cherished him, laying him out,

but I feared him so, his lying as if dead on the
couch had seemed to pummel me, an Eve
he took and pressed back into clay,
casual thumbs undoing the cheekbone
eye-socket rib pelvis ankle of the child
and now I watched him be undone and
someone in me gloried in it,
someone lying where he’d lain in chintz
Eden, some corpse girl, corkscrewed like
one of his amber spit-ems, smiled.
The priest was well called to that room,
violet grosgrain river of his ribbon laid
down well on that bank of flesh
where the daughter of death was made, it was well to say
into other hands than ours
we commend this spirit.

Yes, Olds hates and loves her father.  Human beings are able to experience conflicting emotions simultaneously.  ("We shake with joy, we shake with grief. / What a time they have, these two / housed as they are in the same body."--Mary Oliver)  When my sister, Sally, died, I was not only heartbroken over her loss, but also grateful for the end of her suffering.  When my daughter moved downstate last weekend to begin medical school, I was not only excited for her, but also grieved for her absence in my life.

So, it was good last night to spend some time with my wife, holding hands, eating popcorn, watching the Man of Steel kick some Lex Luthor ass, and coming clean about our feelings over our daughter's move.  No surprise, we're both shaking with joy and grief at the same time.  

I wish the universe did have superheroes with powers to keep things on an even keel.  At this point in the history of the United States, it wouldn't hurt to have Superman around to stop wars, save innocent people from harm, and stop the occasional supervillain.  (Unfortunately, our current supervillain is sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.)  

I'm of the belief that any person can be a superhero.  I mean, Martin Luther King, Jr., didn't grow up thinking he was going to be the leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, let alone win the Nobel Peace Prize.  And I'm sure that Marie Curie, as a little girl, had no clue she would discover radioactivity and lead the way for effective cancer treatments (and also win two Nobels).  Martin and Marie were two ordinary people who became extraordinary heroes because of their circumstances.

I'm not a superhero, but I try to be the best person I can be every day of my life.  I don't always succeed.  Yet, the striving is important.  Human beings are incredibly flawed creatures.  We can save a child from a burning house, but we can also stand on the sidelines and witness genocide.  I'd like to think that, at the end of my life, my character strengths will outweigh my failings.  And, just maybe, I will have made some kind of impact on the world.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about superheroes for night, based on the following prompt from July 19 of The Daily Poet:

In admiration of Juan Felipe Herrera's poem entitled "187 Reasons Mexicans Can't Cross the Border," write your own list poem using "because" as your refrain word.  Examples from Herrera's poem:  

Because the north is really south, Because every nacho chip can morph into a Mexican wrestler, Because Pancho Villa's hidden treasure is still in Chihuahua, Because we couldn't clean up Hurricane Katrina, Because we have visions instead of televisions.  Some suggested ideas may be:  "99 Reasons to Grow Your Own Food," "54 Reasons It's Not Your Fault You're Fat," "88 Reasons to Say No without Saying No." 

7 Reasons We Need Superman Right Now

by: Martin Achatz

1.  Because most aliens on this planet just want to drive to McDonald's to get an M&M McFlurry.

2.  Because capes are back in style.

3.  Because truth and justice are endangered species, almost extinct in the continental United States, and the Smithsonian doesn't have room in its collections for 185,000 migrants.

4.  Because if he catches a cold, he could reverse global warming with a sneeze.

5.  Because eggs are expensive, and we need his blood to create a super chicken.

6.  Because all of our other heroes have been sent to concentration camps.

7.  Because we need a Fortress of Solitude to hide our neighbors when the white vans roll through the neighborhood.