Author: M. Ashley

I am an essayist and poet. My work has been rejected by some of the finest journals in America. Fortunately, it also gets accepted from time to time and has appeared in equally fine journals such as Word Riot, Inlandia, Brew City Magazine, and SageWoman, among others.. In 2002, I won the Academy of American Poets Prize for Vanderbilt University.
 For no good reason, I possess an unnecessarily dark humor which is why being third generation California Inland Empirian delights me so. My gods are weird. I once won $350 for writing a smartassed essay on “why the wise use of water is important in my daily life”. I am undoubtedly the Greek god Hermes’ special snowflake. I’m pretty sure I got into college via a series of fortuitous clerical errors.
 When I had to grow up and get a real job, I decided against it and stayed a writer. I have worked many odd—and I mean odd—jobs to support my habit: PR writer for country music hopefuls, resume massager, WalMart fitting room attendant and switchboard operator, and telephone psychic, just to name a few.
 I am also albino. That's why my psychic gifts are so strong. I traded in my pigment for magical foresight, because that's how it works. It gets all technical. Trust me. That's totally how it works.

Accidentally a Social Work Grad Student

~ M. Ashley ~ 1 Comment

I never wanted to be a social worker. I never would have considered it. The very idea never would have crossed my consciousness. But here’s how it happened that, through no fault of my own, I sit here today on the eve of entering graduate school to become, clearly, a world renowned social worker.

My undergraduate degree is in sociology. That was also not on purpose. I started undergraduate school in 1996 at Vanderbilt as a secondary education major wanting to be a high school math teacher, (the very idea these days that I would actually teach math makes me shudder. What a near miss that was!). Through the course of my education, I decided that my heart was much more with the humanities and I changed my major to English/Creative Writing.

Then everything went to shit. 

In my third year at Vanderbilt I ended up entrapped by some very bad men and before the year was out I was being trafficked. I’m not going to go into all the ins and outs here, but suffice it to say that it is impossible to earn a degree at a rigorous university while simultaneously being brutalized and trafficked for sex. I made it another year like that then had to drop out. It is a thorn in my soul to this day.

But let’s not dwell on that for the moment.

Fast forwarding to 2013:

I was seven years out of the trafficking, moved back home with my loving mother, and attempting to finish my degree. I chose the online sociology program at California State University, Chico because 1) it was online, and 2) they took the most transfer credit of any other affordable programs I came across. I had three and a half years at Vanderbilt and I wasn’t about to lose most of that to a transfer process that made no sense. So sociology it was!

I thought: Could be interesting. How humans behave. How society behaves. And why. Could be fascinating.

It wasn’t.

It was horrendous. The classes were pure indoctrination with professors that actively graded you down if you didn’t agree with them. Truly torturous. My best friend was finishing her degree with me and we joke to this day that we blocked most of it out. I’ve looked at my transcript a few times and it isn’t as funny when I see lots of classes on there that I truly do not remember. Just. Bloody. Awful.

So, as you can see, the very idea of getting embroiled in that world again was the last thing on my mind.

And so was graduate school. 

I live on a government benefit for the disabled as I have albinism and have been legally blind from birth. Graduate school might as well have been on Mars for how financially accessible it seemed to me.

But there was something in me that wanted to go, though not for anything sociology related. I had dreams of being a post-secondary English professor at a community college, teaching writing to kids who really need the help. The idea of that lit me up tremendously. I wanted it so much in fact that I sat reading tarot cards on it one day, (I’m a little witchy), and I heard my god friend whisper in my ear, “If you had the money to pay for graduate school, would you go?”

“Yes!” I said.

He replied, “Good to know,” and I thought that was the end of it.

But then…

One day in 2022, I got a bee in my bonnet to investigate the Department of Rehabilitation which helps people with disabilities find work. I got in touch with the man who headed the blind services department—we’ll call him Crispy Crespy—and at first I really hated the guy. It seemed like he was only interested in placing me in some job, any job, dead end or not. I told him I wanted to be a post-secondary English professor and he squashed that right off the bat. He said those jobs are hard to come by, not secure, and you usually have to work several schools to make ends meet, no one school giving you full time. (He wasn’t wrong, but damn dude.) Then I had the brilliant idea that I could be a court reporter. He squashed that too. He said they hardly ever work in courtrooms anymore and have to travel a lot, so no no no. (He wasn’t wrong, but damn dude, again.) So I told him I would do some research and get back to him. 

I hung up the phone and intended never to talk to him again.

But then…

I was involved in a twelve step program for eating disorders that year and one of the things we did was outreach calls for support, both making and receiving. I hated it, but I desperately wanted to get over my eating disorder, so I did it anyway.

One fine morning my phone rang from some unknown number and, grumbling and grudgingly, I picked up the phone thinking I was doing outreach service. It was Crispy Crespy. He said, “I see you have a bachelor’s in sociology. Why don’t we send you to graduate school for social work?”

I just about dropped dead in shock. Practically panting I said, “Absolutely!”

And that’s how this whole ball got rolling. Not because I ever intended in a million years to be a social worker, but because I accidentally ended up with a sociology degree then accidentally picked up a call I never would have picked up had I known who it was.

It does not escape my attention that I was picking up a call to do service and was thereby entered on a professional path all about service. Spooky.

It also didn’t escape my attention that my god friend had heard me, really heard me, and gave me this amazing, unbelievable gift that I never would have anticipated in a million years.

And more on that: 

In 12 step, the phrase Higher Power is used a lot and abbreviated as HP.

Crispy Crespy went on in that phone call to say that he wanted to pay for all new glasses (I hadn’t had new glasses since 2016), and an accessible computer. I enthusiastically accepted.

I got tested for my new glasses a few weeks later and a little while after that the computer man came to my house. I was expecting just a laptop, but I saw him unloading box after box from his car. I walked out to greet him and asked, “Are you moving in?”

He laughed and said no. That was all my computer equipment.

Crispy Crespy had granted me a new (used) laptop, printer, a 27” monitor, and a fancy rolling computer bag. Wow!

Now here’s the kicker:

I opened up the computer box and do you want to guess what brand it was?

HP.

The printer too.

HP.

I almost fell on my butt laughing. Here I was picking up that outreach service call to do my HP’s work and I ended up with new vision (the glasses) and a whole host of computer stuff all initialed with a flourish: HP!

Kind of knocks your socks off, don’t it?

So why am I just now on the eve of starting graduate school having been approved in 2022?

Well…

In 2021, my dear mom broke her leg and became bed bound. I was taking care of her full time and every ounce of my strength was consumed with that. 

In 2023, she got very ill and was in and out of the hospital for months then, when she did finally come back home, she required even more care.

In 2024, she went back into the hospital for months and this time did not return home. She died in April. In March, exactly a month before she passed, I suffered a perforated ulcer brought on by all the stress, and had to have emergency surgery. The recovery from that was long and agonizing and I really wasn’t back on my feet again until the end of August.

I applied for social work graduate school at California State University, Northridge in December 2024 and, much to my shock, was called in for an interview in March. Two weeks later, much to my even greater shock, I got the notification: I was in! 

It still blows my mind. 

We got an email a week ago that said out of 250 applicants for the online program, they only let in 51. That floored me. I had no idea it was that competitive. I’m grateful I didn’t know beforehand the admission rate was only a little over 20% or I may not have applied.

But I did apply, I did get in, and I will be starting on August 25th. Eek! And yay! And Eek!

I decided to start blogging about my experience as a social work student and in the social work world, as I will have an internship at a continuation high school beginning the week of September 2nd. I hope the blog will be maybe a little enlightening and a lot entertaining. By all accounts, this is a wild world I’m entering and I couldn’t be looking forward to it with greater excitement.

Until next time when I will probably be blogging about the bumpy yet often hilarious journey my pre-academic and internship career has already been.

See you then.

-M. Ashley

When You Think You’re Clean (poetry)

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Taoists say there are 36,000
Goddesses and gods that reside in
The body. And they leave if
You don’t wash with the dawn because
They are disgusted. Sometimes
I am disgusted with my body to
Myself for all it has been touched and
Touched and spewed on so I
Don’t shower regularly enough unable to
Abide the touching of myself.

Or I remember the many times
My pimp almost drowned me in
A claw foot bathtub for some
Low earning insubordination and
How drowning makes your head feel
Huge and tight–a meat balloon ready
To burst meat and blood and
Offal all over the white tiled
Bathroom walls and it’s so
Hard to bathe regularly too.

But I wash my hands after I go
To the bathroom every time and
I hear all 36,000 goddesses and
Gods who have fled my filthy body to
My clean pink and pruny hands
Rejoice in the little cold baths
With honey soap and
A gentle toweling.

Personally I don’t think the goddesses and
Gods are so offended by human filth. I asked my favorite
God about it once and he
Agreed. He said, “You humans–
To a god, even when you think
You’re clean
You ain’t.”

Which is nice to know on days
When the ghosts of Johns and pimp
Make cleanliness in my eyes and
The 72,000 god eyes inside me
Next to impossible.

-M. Ashley

An Escaped Prostitute Prays to Her Mother (poetry)

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An Escaped Prostitute Prays to Her Mother
I lie on the grass
On the soft dark ground
Inhaling the breast smell of
My lush mother. I wonder
Mother is your body so dark and
Life-giving because my blood
Was once soaked into it?

I don’t want to write about tears but
I cried when my feet bled
Weakly
Trying to escape my bondage in the night
Scuffing over jagged pebbles hidden in
Your dark body my Mother.

I fell to my knees. My knees and
Palms bled too. Rich earth made
Richer and richer. My tears softening
The soil—a salt green growing things can use.

Tears and blood like fear sweat and breast
Milk and flowing water take the easy path.

I got free my Mother
Eventually.

And have come to lie down in the fertile
Place my body made with yours.

Mother and daughter feeding
Each other. Mother and daughter breathing
Each other—air also
Takes the easy path. Lungs larynx
Mouth nose whisper whimper scream
All are easy until they are hard.

All are small before they are great.

And I forgive you. Because
This night you are forgivable.

For witnessing without saying
I do. This night. I forgive you.

-M Ashley

Unsolicited Spiritual Advice: God Crack

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“…the place of mind in nature and the relationship between brain and consciousness.” -Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

I’ll tell you what: Right now my brain is starting a headache looking at this quote while my consciousness is in Aldous Huxley’s pants. Such a spiritual hottie. Great big juicy brain. Big glasses. All the vision. Sexy. Delicious.

A friend asked me if, spiritually, there was a “ghost in the machine” and I think there is some big philosophical principle there, but I took it as: Is there a ghost in this human flesh machine that’s running the show? And my answer is, of course! Who else would be running the show but a ghost? Dead humans are the geneses of ghosts, are we not, so surely we each have to be full up with at least one ghost to begin with. In there, pulling the levers. The consciousness operating on the brain.

There are psychiatrists out there who say they can reproduce the god feeling artificially with some sort of electronic doodad plugged into your brain. They take this to mean that the god feeling is a product of brain function and not at all inspired by something outside, like an actual god. But then, how do they think a god operates except by affecting the physical brain through the consciousness? The god-consciousness goes conscious and pulls on the god-conscious-feeling brain levers because it says, “Hey flesh machine! You have GOT to feel this!” So yes, nasty psychiatrists. The god feeling can be reproduced in the brain, but the gods do it by one little lift of a divine eyebrow where it takes you a room full of overpriced equipment and millions in grant money.

But let me not come out of my hair about it…

My hottie Aldous used peyote to try to get there. High, he got the god feeling by looking at a painting of a chair, looking at flowers in a vase, counting the pleats in has pants. (Him and those pleats, man. He goes on and on. But he was high at the time, so we forgive him, and his sheets of pleats.) He was a visionary, but on his trip, he didn’t see visions. He saw life pulsating in everything, which is to say the divine radiating out of everything, which is to say the omnipresent face of the divine. Can we say he saw gods everywhere? Each pleat having its own divine ghost the way each human has its own divine ghost?

I think we can. I think we can see it too.

Unsolicited Spiritual Advice:

If you have millions of dollars in grant money and a stash of peyote to get you to the god feeling, by all means use it (and invite me), but if you don’t, the door is not closed to you. Pray. Meditate. Commune. Dare I say, make a habit of it? The gods are vast, but the the vastness of their feeling can slip in through even the tiniest conscious crack.

-M. Ashley

Fantasy. Union. (poetry)

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“From fantasy comes union” that feels like
Ecstatic gratitude. Electricity comes to mind
But seems trite although there was literal
Lightning in my gratitude ecstasy. I danced
With my windows open in a storm drunk
On an almost full bottle of table wine

I couldn’t have fantasized it better this stormy union

It wasn’t what I expected. How silly to expect
Union to feel like freedom when really
It is the ultimate binding—the ultimate us
Together. We
Eternally.

I flopped down in my unmade bed
Left the last of the wine in a red plastic cup
Gathering rain and the reflection of lightning on
The dusty windowsill—dust made mud by the
Gods’ rain. I wanted IT so much. I was naked.
I wanted IT so much but
The Lover said I was just a little too
Drunk to have IT much
Just now.

The Lover is a gentleman.
I didn’t know that.

-M.
….sometimes, from fantasy comes union.” -Rumi

Soul Filling (poetry)

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Crack open my soul and tell me
what’s in there, would you?
I am thinking of a decadent Easter
egg with filling too bright and
sweet to look at or taste. A Cadbury
egg gone berserk spilling out gooey
gold light.

Is this my soul or is it gooey
gold godly Ichor?

What’s the difference
anyhow?

-M. Ashley

The Wisdom of Lavish Desire (creative nonfiction)

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“There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.”
-Lao-tzu

I get this out of a devotional book for a twelve step program. Well there you have it, I’m in a twelve step program. But the thing is that I disagree with the devotional quotes about half the time. All these old men, very rarely women, who thought they were so wise. This devotional is like an assemblage of ancient and medieval Twitter. Humans have been thinking, wrongly, they are so wise since the first human threw a bone in the air to impress the mysterious monolith. Or maybe that was a movie.

But now that I’ve complained about people who think they are so wise and we who desire so much to find people to be wise to us in our faces to give us direction when our wisdom fails us, let me tell you how much wiser than this guy I am.

Lavish desires is the IT! That’s the magic! It’s the juice, it’s the jazz, it’s the… I can’t think of another “j” word. It’s where it’s at. The gods tell me all the time to “ask ask ask.” There is no limit, not even the sky. The more we ask and surrender to the knowing our ask will be answered, the more they get to answer and the richer we all feel.

I’ve been trying to focus in my writing lately on concrete, physical details, because that’s the jazzy juice of writing. But how do I explain sensually what I mean about this lavish desire and bold asking that is the very opposite of calamity? What are some antonyms for calamity? Alexa says one of them is “blessing.” That’s exactly whatI’m talking about, I mean, right on the nose, but “blessing’ seems so benign. It’s more like BAM! BLESSING! Nothing banally benign about that.

But you don’t get the BAM BLESSING unless you ask ridiculously and desire lavishly.

Even the wording…

Every week in my white and gold planner that is the white and golden apple of my eye, in the section on the left side of the two page week spread—the section marked priorities that, frankly, I don’t actually know whatI’m supposed to write there—in that section, under priorities, the first thing I write every week is, “My gods love me lavishly at every single moment and in every tiny detail.” So you see this Lao-tzu guy stole my very word to say a very wrong thing.

The heavens drop golden plums—plums not apples now—in my lap almost constantly. More and more and more and more, better and better and better, and why? Because I lavishly desire golden plums constantly and greedily ask for them and BAM the BLESSING and, sensually, golden plum juice is sweeter than your best French kiss, and wetter. And why? Because I dared to desire lavishly.

So here’s the wisdom—my wisdom—that in this one and only case may be actually wise. Desire lavishly. Ask greedily. Receive the juicy plum. Celebrate with jazzy gratitude.

It would have been a better finish if “gratitude” had started with a “j.” Hey gods, give me a “j” word for gratitude.

“Joy.”

Yes. Joy.

-M. Ashley

Theos: Boxed (poetry)

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Roll up your sleeves
my golden god
these clavicles ache
for the cracking.

Your bare knuckles scrape
but are not scraped.

My blood spatters.
You stay freshly washed.

Dear god,
my kidneys have grass stains

and

I need an oracle
to locate my spleen.

-M. Ashley

Lie (poetry)

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One fourteen-year-old lies in another’s lap
face-up
squeezing the pimples on her
I’ll-die-for-you-sweetheart’s scabby
sunburned face.

I lie with you
naked back to the earth
dug deep
moist and recently turned
picking the teeth of a death trap.

-M. Ashley

God’s Skeleton on the Sunset Strip (poetry)

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Legally drunk on The Strip I slide
anonymous past the break-dancing boys
who sell CDs and their phone numbers
on the liminal bridge between
The Lion and The City.

Blurred, a bronzy man walks in front of me
gray skinny suit filled out to six feet, six inches at least
almost big enough to be the ancient god’s skeleton
found by archaeologists in an unmarked grave
somewhere in the backwoods of Greece.

On this night,
Caesar’s is the best he can do.

Its plastic emperors, audio-animatronic mythology,
and the gray-water fountain Evel Knievel jumped
wait to praise him

just north of the newest destructions—
about ten blocks shy of the lonely Stratosphere.

-M. Ashley