Writing Life
Dear god, I would prefer
You not
Carry me over the rocks
I would prefer
You let my feet touch earth
Once in a while
A smothering love
That atrophies my appendages—
Hobbles my run and walk
Is no proper penance
For absenteeism and
Hard neglect
And me allowing it—
The crippling love
Is no proper forgiveness
Find another way
Find another way
Find another way
-M.
(Day 5 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
It could be anything
An orange peel
Sunset on a fractured path
Sunrise
On a fractured path
Cellulite on a fake-tanned
Thigh gone terribly wrong
Funky cheese
See here. See here. See here.
I’ve got my pointer out
Round the borders with every
Line-measure of words
But
Did you notice
Never on the actual
Thing
My frustration is quantifiable
I’ve made a chart
See here. See here. See here.
Just to the left of the
Glowing picture screen
Reader
I think we have both
Lost touch
It might have been longing
It might have been
Sunset on a fractured heart
Or some such
Trite shit as that
I give
Give up with me
Let’s call it
Funky cheese
Put our heads down on our desks
And take a nap
Poetry sucks anyway
-M.
(Day 4 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Campus communist relegated to
Literal red square, painted
Cockeyed on the sidewalk
Apathy! Apathy!
Everyone is occupied
He throws his hands and
Pamphlets up
-M.
(Day 3 of the 66 Day Poetry Habit)
A god in golden overalls leans
Out the driver’s side of an open
Lincoln in the drive-thru
Late night
Tries not to puke
Pukes anyway.
Smiles
Checks his watch
Pays too much for his tacos
Pays too much for our tacos too
Swerves off
We won’t forget it
Who could forget him
He won’t remember
How he got home
-M.
(Day 2 of the 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Artificial blue to beat the blues
No sugar in your cookie, Cookie
Cutter approaches don’t often
Help problematic inflammation in the gray
Matter of fact exercise
Is another lever we can pull
Me closer Dr. Beautiful
Blues—nothing artificial about you-oo
Tell me again
How the mental health benefits of exercise
Cap at thirty minutes so I can’t
Lap sad to death in the beautiful chlorine blue.
-M.
A soul heavy as wet July.
Steam rising from the grass
lazily curling and uncurling its come-hither fist
in blue efficiency streetlight.
Windows fog over
in droplet-streaming screens obscuring
the midnight hush-your-mouth in each
of a line of bricked and columned houses.
This is a city morally opposed to sidewalks,
where stoplights go down at eleven.
This is a city whose treacherous shoulders I trudged
for a decade in the dark.
-M.
She sheds herself
one rough skin at a time,
drops them dripping into the hamper,
and, naked innards walking,
drags the dripping hamper
to a sly-smiled laundress
who has her discount ticket pre-filled.
Heavy duty cycle, she says,
and remember,
hang is the only way to dry.
-M.
Holding yourself close to yourself
the record skips
the song is long over.
No room for the Holy Spirit
the nun with the flashlight will say
when she ejects you from the dance.
-M.
These beautiful men
These beautiful women
I was their bright angel
in a time of bright angels
in the time when I and my kind
were toppled to the desert god
the one and only
the perfect to our many
flawed and
unchaste.
Rapture is the word
closer to the word.
There
that makes me feel better
confessing now as a dear and
moral friend to the mortal race.
I came and came and
pigsty sex to me was
to them the quickening
touch of the holy hands and
body all sanctified
of an agent of their lord.
It is no excuse but
they were better for it.
In a way
I loved them all.
-M.
Mortal soul in
mortal vessel broken
spilled out on earth
Thick water on wanting
ground
too dry to drink
God puts his
lips to the dusty
puddle and is slaked
-M.
M. N. Ashley 