For Love of Solitude / Literary Tattoo

My first tattoo

Sometime before father's day - my three daughters, knowing I had been thinking of getting a tattoo, decided that if I really was serious, they would go-in-together and spring for the cost of it.  I had been toying with the idea for sometime, and debating what it would be. I was certain I wanted a literary tattoo. Sometimes these are represented by characters from literary works, and other times they may be lines from a piece of literary work. I had actually made a list of several possible verses, Among the possible lines, I considered some from T.S. Elliot, W.S. Merwin, Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, and Kelli Russell Agodon.  I decided on a line from one of Agodon's five poetry books. 

My daughter, Meghan, who has many tattoos herself took on the task of getting me set up with an appointment and after waiting several months impatiently - our appointment came to pass last Saturday afternoon. 

I had decided on a line from one of Kelli Russell Agodon's 5 books.  I have read them all, and they are each one in their own way, incredible works.  The book that has always held a special place in my heart was Hourglass Museum, published in 2014 by White Pine Press. I think what has always been so significant to me about this book its relation to making art (including writing) and the very creation of it.  

The line I chose for my tattoo that you can see pictured below, cones from a poem titled, Line Forms Here.

I want to acknowledge the Tattoo artist, Racheal Cross, owner of The Ink Parlor, who I trusted to skillfully create my tattoo from a stencil that was made from Kelli Agodon's own handwriting of her own work. I felt having her own handwriting was so very cool and I am glad I elected not to just go with a print font -- this makes it so much more personal to me. I Have known Kelli for more than 20 years, and she has always been an inspiration and has driven me where my own writing  is concerned. She is also co-founder with Annette Spaulding-Convy of Two Sylvias Press - 

I want to say something about the significance of this line.  A number of people have asked me about why this one? While the Hourglass Museum really spoke to me in so many ways, this line itself encompases the very state of mind that poets so often need to be in to find their ideal working environment. Writing, and indeed poetry is a very solitary human condition that I love because it affords us the way for us to pull from within own own soul and that is what produces the best writing we can offer the world. 

Verse to skin - just after the tattoo was finished

 Today - 4 days post

Photo taken today Wednesday 11-11-26

Bringing the Tattoo to life 

Line Forms Here

1. Open on Mondays

In the middle of my museum--

and by that I mean, my life

--there is loss. 

Sometimes I nap

through the saxophone solo,

sometimes my body curves

around the notes like a bird

trying to protect her nest

and by nest I mean art,

I'm longing for something I cannot name.

Your time spills

into my writing.

My bookshelf overflows

with future commitments,

dates with strangers I'll never meet

in person.

Memory replays the past--

our lives spent walking  the dog, the other

dog, the dead dog we still talk about.

Now, it's hard to stay up past ten.

I'm a jazz performer who's misplaced her song.

The voice in my head tells me to count

my blessings.

Why does tenderness make me uncomfortable?

Why do I talk about things I cannot change?

II Flash Photography Prohibited

I place solitude in a frame on my desk

and call it, The one I love.

I am cutting acquaintances from my life

without written apologies. I'm burning

bridges to keep the crazy ones

from following me home. 

Maybe if we were something special...

No, there are peopleI cannot live without,

people who make me bracelets

out of clay beads and burn the toast. 

I try to give them my time.

I try to give themmy right,

so they don't have what's left. 

it's a game of balance where the mousetrap

rarely catches the mouse.

It's not about loss, but about  freedom.

...if only we were in some useful occupation.

It's knowing the saxophone solo

comes eventually, and understanding

museums and families are struggling. 

At night when my prayers turn

to wishes, I ask the constellations:

Protect me from what I want.

With permission from Author - 

Hourglass Museum 

by Kelli Russell Agodon

(c) 2014 - White Pine Pres

Buffalo, New York 

I Must Clear the Head to Write Again

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Friday Free Write from 12-05-25

How Does the World Celebrate an End of Genocide

by Michael Allyn Wells

Confession Tuesday - It Tastes Funny Edition

Confession Tuesday -

Bless me reader, It's been a week since my last confession...

A week and no new rejections. No new submissions. Sure, some writing including a couple things with some promise.

I confess I stopped for a Diet Coke at Casey's on the way home. The vwet nice lady at the case register waved me off and said you are good. Very nice of her, Unfortunately, it is very watered down and like an addict I'm drinking it just the same.

Working on some ideas about my voice - I confess, very rough so far but it will get there.

Sunday I started on Ozempic. I have Diabetes, and I was taking. two oral diabetes meds and an Insulin pen. We dropped on of the oral meds as I started Ozempic. I confess it has been really strange. My stomach mostly feels kind of full all the time. Sometimes a bit of nausea. Nothing I eat really tastes right. I had a bowl of Maple Malt-O-Meal for breakfast and that was the first thing that. kind of tasted normal. It was enjoyable and that is a first since Sunday.

I confess I am wavering between a salad and stuffed peppers for dinner.

It's 78 in the house and that's not because that is my preference. That is because of our fascist energy company that feels compelled to not cooperate with my desire to feel comfort.

Thought for the day....

" We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know." W. H. Auden

Till next time, stay safe-

Michael

Two Stories and a Genocide

"Who gonna do it?"

That question reverberates in my mind every night.  As a poet, I ask myself whose story is this to tell? I'm not among those constantly wandering in search of safety for the next few hours. Wondering then, where to next? I'm not clutching my stomach to pain of emptiness in a body wasting in the drag on it as it as it tries to pull some kind of strength from nutrients that aren't available.  

I'm not having to close my eyes as I step over body parts that are barely distinguishable. That every breath I take is filled with a mixture of dust, of soot particles and the sulfur of explosions. The smell of death that is always an undercurrent. I know of these things but I don't actually live then, so it's not really my story to tell.

The story that is mine to tell is none the less painful. It is the story of a mixture of anger and sadness. It is a frustration that even as a poet I cannot seem to find the correct word to convey that sadness because sadness is not. good enough. It's more than that... it's not even despondency, it's overwhelming, it's grief. It is seeing so many photos and videos that they have become a collage of images in my brain.  And as this goes on, my anger grows and it is hard to keep it under control because it is American Tax Dollars, Billions of them that has been feeding this ugly vial right-wing Zionist government that has made the decision to choose genocide on the people of Gaza. 

That anger is fermented by the inability to stop our government's ongoing support of Netanyahu, of Bezalel Smotrich, of other Israeli government leaders and the IDF who are executing a campaign of ethnic cleansing so that they can clear the Palestinians out of Gaza and the West Bank, one way or the other and finally take their land as their own, just as they have been illegally doing in the West Bank now for years.

There is a deep pain, deep sadness, unspeakable outrage that America has played a roll in this. The deaths of women and children. The Starvation. The inability to say to the Palestinians, this was not my wish. This was not collectively the desire of the American people. It was the inexcusable actions of many who thought they were doing something they should do, because they have tried to defend Israel for so many years they didn't see that their actions were doing to a  whole nation of Palestinians. There is no excuse for these misguided actions. 

So, my nights are filled with the anger of our involvement. With the sadness for a whole generation of Palestinian children what are being lost to death, to being maimed, to being orphaned, to a lifetime of trauma, as well as the remainder of the civilian population of men and women who suffer this unspeakable genocide. That is the story I must tell. 

The story of the Palestanian people and the story of the Americans who have not asked for the roll in their genocide are parallel stories. Different, yet the same. They are stories that must be recorded for history.  Each must be told. 

Confession Tuesday - E.T. Edition

Confession Tuesday - ET edition

confession Tuesday

Grab a cup of coffee and come with me to the confessional...

Friends, it has been one E.T. movie with the grand kids, one rejection of three poems, 8 days of Grind poetry, one discontinued conversation on Medium with a fellow who was stuck on telling me I was repeating Hamas talking points on Gaza, and I explained after many different conversations that he sounded like a genocide apologist, and I was through wasting both of our time, Blogged on Dante and Rodin, am convinced that Trump's presidence will be crippled by the Epstein dibockle and he will not be able to shake it, the start of reading a new book, and a full week since my last confession.

The book I am reading is Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahrar Mandanipour. It's his first book to appear in English translation. I am finding it fascinating. I confess that I find it so inventive in its approach to telling the story.

I confess, I believe Trump's presidency is toast. He will not be able to recover and further Democrats will sweep a new majority into the House, and perhaps the Senate as well.

Blogging on Rodin and Dante and the inseparable link between the two over the Inferno and the Gates of Hell, and I confess I need to delve into Dante's Divine Comedy.

The war in Gaza has taken a toll on my sanity. I confess that I never thought the actions of Israel could be so brutally inhumane. But they are, and

honestly, I have acknowledged this as genocide a lot longer than many.

Oh, what will I write about on day 9 of the Grind? I confess I have no idea presently,

I confess I forced my grandkids to watch the movie E.T. on Sunday. Every child needs to see that movie. It has so much to say about empathy. I believe it is an excellent teaching moment.

That's about it for this week. Thanks for handing out with me as I talk about the good and the bad of the week.

Until next time...

Peace and be safe~