Writing Life
One feminine hand one
Masculine hand wearing
A heavy gold watch ticking
She sat down inside me
Settled down inside me
Her heavenly blue
Robes enfolded me as
Heaven IS and enfolds
Her, Her head all my head
My thoughts all Her
Thoughts She the Law the
Law Love
She said
Don’t
Be Afraid
-M.
(Day 14 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit. I made it to two weeks! -Victory lap-)
All I said
All I said
All I said to ALL That IS
Volumes volumes volumes
Unrecordable
All She said
All She said
All the ALL She said
Don’t
Be afraid
-M.
(Day 13 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Gods misunderstand
Death—Death himself
Deathless misunderstands
Forever destruction—forever
Loss—a self that decays inside
Itself until it disappears.
A god, from a full-
Bodied god can become a
Lesser-bodied god—an
Insignificant pinpoint of
Flickering ether, but still
Sovereign though infinitesimal and
Over unbounded time can
Gather unto its own flickering
Ether substance—body new
Come to body that was and
Will be forever
Body new come to body eternal that
Misunderstands body new
Come to dust
Depersonalized as dust comes
To gather to itself
A noisome film
On the cradle ledge of an infinitely
Born and born and born
Infant god
-M.
(Day 12 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
I wrote a poem today but you’re not going to see it. I feel like hell and today’s poem shows it. But I wanted to be accountable, so here’s me being accountable and running a haggard eleventh lap with one seriously shitty poem tucked under my shirt. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all to see.
-M.
(Day 11 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
I am grateful for gum
But only for myself and
The highbrow few who
Know how to chew
Silently
Everyone else? A crack
Or a smack should get you ten
In the pen where open-
Hearted and closed-
Mouthed missionaries
Teach by parable how to
WWJD it
In regards to absent-
Minded yet tasty and
Socially acceptable cud.
-M.
(Day 10 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Dragging the little tree’s
Corpse behind me a
Diatribe to the heatwaves
Rising from the cement
It’s not you, little tree
Doing what little trees do
Maybe even trying to
Shade the porch in
Your little tree ugly
Intrusive volunteer way.
It’s not you little tree
It’s the gardener
Who let you grow
Lets the rose bushes
Grow too
Evil arms that reach and
Grab in the walk
Blind to anything
Apparently
But mow and go—
Especially go.
-M.
(Day 9 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Wire and crimson crepe paper
Feathers flexed
Full span against the
Hurricane that doused the
Firestorm from which the
Wearer of the wings
Was born
-M.
(Day 8 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Draw and quarter my life
all lies
all the same their shelter
pooling in the gaps between
limb and limb
and limb
and limb
-M.
(Day 7 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
I respect you less because
You love me unconditionally
I don’t respect you at all
You went in for a kiss and
I gave you my neck
Enough perfume to keep
You panting for another year
As if you needed a reason, dog-
-ed devotion is an un-sexy face
You let me shatter you
And I shatter you
A matter of course like college boys becoming
Sadistic prison guards when
Given the go-on by closet sadistic
Psychiatrists in the name of a science
Doomed to perpetual infancy, grow
A pair
And some hair and tell me to
My face I’m a bitch
Be a goddamned man
Stop dotting your hearts with
I… I… I… am not worth it
Have made myself not worth it
On purpose you shake
My linear foundations
One pulsing emotion that you are
I look down on you
for that too.
-M.
(Day 6 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Dear god, I would prefer
You not
Carry me over the rocks
I would prefer
You let my feet touch earth
Once in a while
A smothering love
That atrophies my appendages—
Hobbles my run and walk
Is no proper penance
For absenteeism and
Hard neglect
And me allowing it—
The crippling love
Is no proper forgiveness
Find another way
Find another way
Find another way
-M.
(Day 5 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
M. N. Ashley 