Writing Life
My god a raft
Naked lazy backstroke
Beneath me water
Washing over his chest
I lie back
Under my back
The veil
Clear and sweet
I feel his muscles work
Droplets on my lips
As each arm
Raises and lowers
Behind us
Honey sweet
Drought-rain sweet
Crisp the veil
My dewy face
His heartbeat
Never not water enough
For god to swim in
Never a pleasure veil
Thinner than this
Rapid flood trickle
The stroke
Backward
Nude
Feet last
Easy
-M. Ashley
“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
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
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
He laid back into the arm of the sofa
and let me strip him to the waist.
I worked the buttons of his dress shirt
methodically, counting
(there were so many buttons)
I felt
I would never reach the shirt tail
never release him
fully,
(until I did).
His skin was cold and seemingly
lit of its own. It was
the sickly purple gray of a hot
oncoming
(interminable) night.
His chest and abdomen
all full of little scars.
He opened his languid arms, wrists
still buttoned
(and bound)
into the shirt as I bowed
to kiss
the ancient wounds.
“Like you,” he said
(graciously)
“I know something of war.”
-M. Ashley
When nailing down eternity
two pieces of wood will do
bound together by dusty
centurions on shit duty.
Try also iron nails
in a bottle of piss with
fishhooks, sulfur,
and the dirt from a murderer’s
grief-less grave
dug from the dirt patch behind
the green cemetery
not good enough
for a proper fence but bound
by torn green tarp shrouds instead
tacked haphazardly to decayed
chain link.
-M. Ashley
Golden Sexuality sits by an open window
his hair shining, his lean legs crossed.
He considers the hills wearing their shadowy green
the glacier-strike lake they curve into
born cold, gone balmy, rippling life.
He remembers stag chases
trysts in the leaves—the fleshy
shock and shudder discovering
exposed roots with his bare back.
He sinks his consciousness into the water
the fingertip tendrils of his god-form first
followed by the instinctually flexed shoulders
still warm from the running catch
hollow chest where the feral heart echoes
root-wounded back
crossed legs
golden, shining hair.
-M. Ashley
If you tell the truth
Knowing
No one will believe you
Thereby
Intentionally obscuring
The truth
Did you lie?
Is a lie a lie or
Does a lie have lie-ness?
Is truth on the lips
But a lie in your heart
Merely
A lie that can’t commit?
If the root is a lie
But the tree is true
Where do the limbs lie?
Is it the letter of the lie
Or the spirit?
Lie with me, Spirit–letter
Lips and limbs.
-M. Ashley
The Star is the center. All
Things revolve around it—the
Room, dimly lit—the flashing
Optics—gilded mirrors that
Turn on time—doors pulling
Themselves open and closed—
Gears, wheels, sprockets,
Springs—gods, humanity—
All dizzy things.
-M. Ashley
We are the gods of piss and bile—
dead skin that flakes from the body
mingles with dust and sweat
makes a sweet filthy paste
worn in the groin and under the breasts.
We are the gods of ashes—
rendered fat that drips from
a wide-eyed sacrifice,
pristine bone, survivor of the fire,
that glints and pings against
the grinder blade
makes the stuff for sausages.
-M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 