Tag: Poem

When You Think You’re Clean (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Taoists say there are 36,000
Goddesses and gods that reside in
The body. And they leave if
You don’t wash with the dawn because
They are disgusted. Sometimes
I am disgusted with my body to
Myself for all it has been touched and
Touched and spewed on so I
Don’t shower regularly enough unable to
Abide the touching of myself.

Or I remember the many times
My pimp almost drowned me in
A claw foot bathtub for some
Low earning insubordination and
How drowning makes your head feel
Huge and tight–a meat balloon ready
To burst meat and blood and
Offal all over the white tiled
Bathroom walls and it’s so
Hard to bathe regularly too.

But I wash my hands after I go
To the bathroom every time and
I hear all 36,000 goddesses and
Gods who have fled my filthy body to
My clean pink and pruny hands
Rejoice in the little cold baths
With honey soap and
A gentle toweling.

Personally I don’t think the goddesses and
Gods are so offended by human filth. I asked my favorite
God about it once and he
Agreed. He said, “You humans–
To a god, even when you think
You’re clean
You ain’t.”

Which is nice to know on days
When the ghosts of Johns and pimp
Make cleanliness in my eyes and
The 72,000 god eyes inside me
Next to impossible.

-M. Ashley

An Escaped Prostitute Prays to Her Mother (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

An Escaped Prostitute Prays to Her Mother
I lie on the grass
On the soft dark ground
Inhaling the breast smell of
My lush mother. I wonder
Mother is your body so dark and
Life-giving because my blood
Was once soaked into it?

I don’t want to write about tears but
I cried when my feet bled
Weakly
Trying to escape my bondage in the night
Scuffing over jagged pebbles hidden in
Your dark body my Mother.

I fell to my knees. My knees and
Palms bled too. Rich earth made
Richer and richer. My tears softening
The soil—a salt green growing things can use.

Tears and blood like fear sweat and breast
Milk and flowing water take the easy path.

I got free my Mother
Eventually.

And have come to lie down in the fertile
Place my body made with yours.

Mother and daughter feeding
Each other. Mother and daughter breathing
Each other—air also
Takes the easy path. Lungs larynx
Mouth nose whisper whimper scream
All are easy until they are hard.

All are small before they are great.

And I forgive you. Because
This night you are forgivable.

For witnessing without saying
I do. This night. I forgive you.

-M Ashley

Fantasy. Union. (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“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

Soul Filling (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Crack open my soul and tell me
what’s in there, would you?
I am thinking of a decadent Easter
egg with filling too bright and
sweet to look at or taste. A Cadbury
egg gone berserk spilling out gooey
gold light.

Is this my soul or is it gooey
gold godly Ichor?

What’s the difference
anyhow?

-M. Ashley

Theos: Boxed (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

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

Lie (poetry)

~ 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 recently turned
picking the teeth of a death trap.

-M. Ashley

God’s Skeleton on the Sunset Strip (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

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

The House on Doheny (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

I saw you bought that house I loved
on the hill, off Doheny, 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
to meet your execting standards.

How deep, my Darling,
are your lightless pockets?

-M. Ashley

Unbuttoning (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

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

Gods of the Inland Empire (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Of the Smoggy Valley—mountains, desert, ocean—
whichever climate you like
within an hour.

Of the sacred gray arteries—bloody asphalt—
broken glass shimmering in the shoulders—jaw-dropping
overpass knots.

Of the train that no longer whistles
the graveyard where railroad men rest—
the abandoned Catholic hospital
where railroad men were born

Of gunshots in the night—the green and
black—the godly ghetto birds—
NightSun—criminals who cannot hide.

Of skinny backyard coyotes—un-collared dogs
left to roam the neighborhood—the scarred
faces of little children mauled on their way to school
making the national news.

Of the withering Empire
of “these gangs came from LA”
of “we’re number 1 again!—
most dangerous city in the US.”

Of everybody’s got to proud of something.

Of heavy lungs
Of visible heat
Of prostitutes who stroll anyway—
immigrant tweens who twist their ankles
spiked heels stuck in the melted asphalt.

Of “this way to Vegas”
Of “this way to the baptismal sea”

Of kissing the corpse’s mouth

Of lying with it
one more night.

-M. Ashley