Writing Life
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
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
Is he the black dog in the night when
it’s noon and all the lights are on,
or is he the star around which
noon and all the light revolves. To know
him with bare eyes is blindness. We see
him once, poorly, and never anything again
but the flash burned into our corneas—
the red, the lightening purple, the terrible
white. The half memory our only light.
And he would still not be
black dog in the night,
nor black dog at noon.
He would still be the light itself
and we irreversible, starless, dying.
-M. Ashley
The croupier god comped me a suite at The Palace, (offseason), and led me through the hallways personally, making smalltalk, explaining how the elevators work, keeping a steady pace while his scuffed rake dangled from a black elastic loop sewn custom into the lining of his white suit jacket. He opened the coded door for me, (first try), deciphered the thermostat, unstuck the drawers, programmed the remote to new, in-house channels, and turned the well-dressed bed down.
He said, “This luxury is where you lie.”
He handed me a gold card with my name embossed, black laurel in the upper right corner framing a female silhouette with an EZ-Read magnetic strip on the backside hovering over a hotlist of company-owned joints.
He said, “This is how we feed you for free.”
He strummed his swarthy fingers over an orderly row of three-score and ten play-worn purple checks arranged in an open, unfinished wooden box lined in remnant green felt and set on top of the empty honor bar.
He said, “And these? These are a very good start.”
-M. Ashley
As of today, this poem is ten years old. Crazy crazy crazy. Happy New Year everyone!
Gratitude, my love song to you
Love is patient and many-faced
Teaching me miraculous compassion
You sing it back to me
Love is patient and many-faced
May I, un-healed, go with you healing
You sing it back to me
May I, restless, with you bring rest
May I, un-healed, go with you healing
Safe and still my tempest past
May I, restless, with you bring rest
Just and safe my Now
Safe and still my tempest past
Teaching me miraculous compassion
Just and safe my Now
Gratitude, my love song to you.
-M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 