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.
Tag: Poetry
Dogs (NaPoMo Day 5)
Dogs have races. Dogs have war.
Dogs have Shakespeare.
I think someone ate a dog in some
Shakespeare play.
I got that from a movie where a teacher
taught Shakespeare.
Simulacra upon simulacra
the coolest concept in sociology.
I see a dog in a meadow. He is well cared for.
Sometimes when we think of dogs
we get a pain in the pit of our stomachs because
we think of dogs being mistreated.
Innocence makes us fear guilt.
Little children sing creepy songs in horror movies
give us the chills.
Serial killer has the heart of a child.
Animals are innocent.
Shark seeks food and procreation
the height of evolution.
Lamb of God doesn’t bleat
on the bloody altar.
-M.
Around the World in 20 Taboos
Cow meat. Shellfish.
Touching pork and alcohol.
Red lipstick on strict Baptist women.
Entering the temple with your street shoes on.
Walking on your mother’s white carpet
with your street shoes on.
Genital piercing. Genital mutilation.
Showing your face. Showing your ankles.
Cutting your hair.
Sex. Porn-a-plenty. Masturbation.
That one kink no one talks about.
Having other gods before me.
Cooking cabbage in the office microwave.
Dishonoring the corporation.
Tattooing little children blue with bush thorns.
Cultural relativism.
-M.
(The prompt was “taboo.” I knew at some point I would find a use for my sociology degree.)
Controlled Substances (NaPoMo Day 4)
My pharmacist’s assistant boyfriend
gained weight.
It brings us closer as our fingers
touch over the Hydrocodone
and our wrinkles show
and our noses shine
under the fluorescent lights.
I say in a low voice
You know they’re for my mother.
He leans forward and says
so gently
I know. I remember you.
I tell him they’re for my mother every time
to prompt his sweet nothing.
I am unashamed. I flounce
out of the pharmacy with my narcotics
and swing my hips with purpose.
-M.
(I’m starting a little late for National Poetry Month’s 30 in 30. I owe you three. I’m on it.)
Ghost of San Berdoo
Serrano, Latino
Sunburned dark
Jeans
baggy T-shirt
train soot gray
Trenchcoat
patched leather
slain ranchers’ tack
115 degree morning
blacktop risen
shining
son of god
Round shoulders
Clinging glass
windshield clear
beer bottle green.
-M.
God Nature
Young Son Virile Boy
Humps his way through the underbrush
Eats out every night
Comes home for dinner
Head grows into the crown
Granddad Limp Limb
Back in the cave
Waits for ointment and
His good bitch to come back
Dad gone
to town for pussy and heartburn
Where’d all the good ones get to?
Loin cloth at the dry cleaner’s
Drags dick and briefcase along the jagged path home
-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.
Blood Magic
In the wake of receiving new eyes—
ball and white, red and black—
my intellectually adoptive grandmother
has departed her own gnarled hand,
likely moved on by neglect.
In her place the Scottish hag
Cailleach of my blood,
the same gnarled hand but missing
ring and pinky.
A red leather bracelet
sewn to my wrist—involuntary surgery—
whispers sanguinely to the half
of my innards that still
belong to the ragged dead hung on
my right ankle as I exited the womb.
-M.
Nailing Down Eternity
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 black tarp shrouds instead
tacked haphazardly to broke-down
chain link.
-M.
Prayer for the Empire
To the god who loves to roll and nuzzle
into mortal filth the way a dog does
warm grass in a shit-strewn dog park
I offer my sea-less Empire.
The zit-faced babies in their wife-beaters who hang
at the shop across the street
from the central high
who jump the ostensibly smart kids
for quarters to buy snacks
meet in secret over their five finger discounted
bongs and pay homage to you
unknowingly.
You’re in the joke that isn’t funny
sober.
Beloved,
Empirian Theos—
the grasping palms of the Northside
panhandlers with hole-y stories
who live in apartments more lush
than mine—these belong to you also.
Preside over the dying orange groves.
“Infected mosquitos here. Hydrocephalus risk,”
your inviolate scripture between the scruffy rows.
Haunt
our landmark abandoned mall—
commerce’s inbred cousin.
Spin the carousel’s lame horses
that rock drunkenly on their tarnished poles
and whinny in the night for a bullet
between the painted eyes.
I offer our fame to you also—
Sammy Davis Jr. lost his eye here
in the dirt of a precarious fork
in the road out. It has rotted away
now, no doubt, brain food
for gila monsters, but the animus
would make a fine moist orb atop your scepter
with no eyelid to blind it to our resigned demise.
Watch over us, oh God of the Dark
and Disparaged,
I pray.
-M.
M. N. Ashley 