Category: Poetry

An Aging God Considers His Birthplace

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Golden Sexuality sits by an open window
his hair shining, his lean legs crossed.
He considers the cave-riddled 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 his instinct-flexed shoulders
still warm from the running catch
his hollow chest where the feral heart echoes
root-wounded back
crossed legs
golden, shining hair.

-M.

Lie

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

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 freshly turned
picking the teeth of a death trap.

-M.

The House on Doheny

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

I saw you bought that house I loved
on the hill, off IS9larv01mt5zs1000000000Doheny, hard to get to

during rush hour or when the veins of LA
burst and bleed all over West Hollywood

up Sunset
and gush through the Bel Air gates.

The skin of my inner wrists
with her oxygen-blue undertones

(soft contemporary design)
is up for sale too.

Ten million or best offer
(like the house on Doheny)

plus, realistically, another million or so
to meet your execting standards.

How deep, my Darling,
are your lightless pockets?

-M.

Stranger

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

He offered me a cigarette from a gold case.
“Try one of mine,” he said,
and maybe didn’t mean the cigarette.

It could have been laced with psychedelics, but
his deal-striking face
by the blue flame he lit me with
lulled my terror of the monstrosity
it might become later—
the teeth with which he would tear at my inner thighs.

I watched the cherry crawl up the paper—
promiscuous death in her wedding whites.

-M.

Desert Storm at Eleven (poem)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

2243636-3239456630_c064f895b6In the back bedroom at the little
fold down desk eating my snack
of a Ding Dong and room temperature
Diet Cherry Pepsi
annoyed at the immovable maps and
call-in bomb-dodging journalists
soaking up the screen where my
Beverly Hills Teens and She-Ra should be.
Especially She-Ra.

She
more than the bomb-dodging journalists
was type for the writer
I wanted to be one day.

-M.

Bossy Bird (poem)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

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
collecting tufts of red dog
hair from between the fence slats
to make their nests luxurious—
and sound proof.

-M.