Writing Life
A single winking caterpillar
prances the perimeter lips
of a useless tongue
gone limp
and dry from shrieking,
gone swollen and lolling
out of the mouth,
gone self-bitten,
gone self-condemned,
gone bloody,
gone dead giveaway.
-M. Ashley
Hear me read it:
I don’t even want to be kind to this
Sad man. If my god were to come
For me in the same moment this
Sad man grabs for my hand in the
Parking lot, desperate now the date is
Ending—and my god were to show up
Between the parked cars all masculine in
Twilight purple, head to holy toe, I
Would wrench my hand away from this
Sad man and give myself to god rirght there–
Slut-in-the-parking-lot—while the
Sad man cries and watches me
Fucking my way to apotheosis, spread
Eagle on the hood of a dirty white Prius.
-M. Ashley
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)
M. N. Ashley 