Low and lazy
The swagger eye
Pumped up in the gutter
At sunrise
Fly?
Fuck you. I fly
When I want to fly
So high, motherfucker
You’ve never seen so high.
-M. Ashley
Tag: Nature
Hibiscus Kissed
This January hibiscus bud
Kissed by absence of color
My albino fingers exploring the
Hard petals the shy face of
A goddess willing to be
Searched blindly by the blind
Whose blindness comes from
Looking too much into the light.
-M.
Photo Poetry: Perfect Winter
My neighbor’s yard man runs
the mower over what is essentially
prickly dirt. I stand watching
under a bare tree whose branches
curl a come-hither. I notice myself
conspicuous and pervy watching
the yard man, my fidgety hands in
my pockets. This would all be perfect
Southern California Winter—me,
bare tree, pockets, pervyness,
yellow yard, yard man outrunning
the mild chill. All perfect had all
these things not been dead
since Spring.
-M.
Scruffy Bird
Dying in paradise
he still has stories to tell.
They get caught in his mane
like spittle.
An aging Hippie.
A mountain man gone metaphysical
in a California town.
A youngster by the pond
watches the koi and willfully
deafens himself.
The scruffy bird goes on
chatters to the heavy
dropping rain.
-M.
Sunrise: From Nashville to Berdoo
Today I am grateful for the sunrise under which I started my morning writing. In the east it looked like the heavens and earth were on fire. In the west the clouds spread in great pink streaks across a periwinkle sky. These are all common things to say about the sunrise, I know.
I remember The Phantom Tollbooth and how one of the characters our heroes meet is Chroma the Great. He conducts the sunrise like music. Each rising color makes a tone or phrase of its own. I adore that book and I adore the movie and I adore the image. When I lived in Nashville I would sometimes (OK rarely) take a walk at this time of day and a little earlier. I didn’t have to worry about coyotes and other stray dogs trained to be killers there, not to mention actual killers. But in the hour or so before sunrise, I would walk along and look up at the sky and swear I could hear the planets singing as they moved both imperceptibly slow and unbelievably fast. It was as if I were a voyeur to their sacred praise of the gods and each other, crouched in the moist green, as I was, in a simple, working class neighborhood at the center of the Tennessee valley.
So I am grateful for the sunrise this morning and for the planets’ tender singing. It is wonderful to know they sing and praise and move on their courses everywhere, even over the concrete and brown grass, thirsty coyotes and other stray, unloved dogs.
-M.
M. N. Ashley 