When the angel comes
Will I know to step back
Will I have love
Or will I have lack?
-M. Ashley
Who Am I, God, in the Order of Things? (poetry)
Category: Poetry
Considering His Birthplace (poetry)
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
There Is Something Just So Good About Wet Hair (poetry)
After the shower fruity
Shampoo smell released
Ascending from a turban unfurled
The Holy Spirit you kept
Under your hat.
-M. Ashley
Civilized (poetry)
If the ill-formed shadow-mass of “the civilized”
drives your wild heart to rage and howl
you know it goes on beating.
Though deprived of the lucid heat
of blood-hunts in broad daylight
it stalks within itself and becomes
its own series of revelations—
its own wastes
its own benighted hollows.
The sheep’s clothes hang heavy
but the flocks still fear you sleeplessly—
your shadow-cast
causes their lambs to quiver.
-M. Ashley
Writer’s Ecstasy (haiku)
Fresh box of 12 bold
pens. If only they smelled like
brand new Crayolas.
-M. Ashley
Wax (poetry)
Every two weeks I pay a college senior
(engineering major I believe) to rip
most of my eyebrows out of my face.
The right one always comes out higher,
arched more elegantly than the left.
“It’s the way your face is constructed”,
she tells me, as if an accusation of
the original engineer’s design.
I nod—a permanent inquisitiveness
in relief
over my right eye.
-M. Ashley
Bossy Bird (poetry)
There is always one
bossy ass bird. He digs himself
a naked hole in the dense
mockorange, puffs out his chest and
sings at 11. The sparrows who live there
too roll their eyes and go on
about collecting tufts of red dog
hair from between the fence slats
to make their nests luxurious—
and soundproof.
-M. Ashley
Sway (poetry)
We were meant to dance
I think
This is how the, “Push me.
Push me.” love rounds
Into something more like sway
With the long ache and
“Hold me up
Hold me up.”
-M. Ashley
This poem is about ten years old. One of my all-time favorites.
Is a Lie (poetry)
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
All Dizzy Things (poetry)
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
M. N. Ashley 