When the angel comes
Will I know to step back
Will I have love
Or will I have lack?
-M.
Tag: Religion
All Dizzy Things
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.
I Dreamed of Sacred Orange Trees Last Night and Want to Make More of It than It Is
Squeezing for juice the
Oranges of the gods sounds
Like a holy testicle trap
A love so large
Deity by the balls
Happens. Praise the gods
And pass the juice glass.
Mercy is a soft hand and
Goes both ways.
-M.
The Star
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.
Natively Unquiet
Tell me about silence.
If you threw the Empire State Building into a raging sea, no one would know the difference. Deepak Chopra said something like that, advocating for meditation. I bet the people of New York would know the difference–their skyline sadly quieter again.
But not silent.
There is no such thing. Like time and god, it’s something we conceptualize, track our lives by, aspire to. But there is always some sound. There is always some imperfection. Our own breath. Our own heartbeat. The mortal body regulating itself as it slowly, calmly perishes.
And that’s not a bad thing. Humans will never be gods and humans will also never know silence or be silent. We are the creatures we are, natively, and we are an unsubtle, noisy lot.
When I try to be silent, movies related to the logistics of eternity flicker across the insides of my eyelids. I’ve learned (sometimes) to watch and not participate, like seekers of silence and stillness are supposed to do, but even when the films are silent films, there is still the sound of the flickering, still the hum of electricity to projector that bolts through the physical brain. The slapstick of memory and trauma and dream and inspiration plays itself out and I laugh. As silent as I am, as unmoving as my belly and throat are–still there is the laugh.
That’s probably the foundational sound of the universe–the breath and heartbeat sound even she can’t get away from when she curves back into herself to resettle before birthing herself, from herself, again.
-M.
I’m All Wet Anyway
I am suggestible unembracing
my suggestibility without
context often getting my nose
stuck in best-selling
books on god—a new
understanding every day an
oracle in chapter-long
spurts until Heaven
gets too drippy and
I find myself
all wet.
-M.
(Day 1 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit, Take Two)
Mending
A baby blanket the size of
A grown woman’s
Bed—the grown woman
Lying in her god’s lap in
Pain
They go to the bathroom
Together one of those
Weird couples who go to
The bathroom together
Because
She cannot walk or stand on
Her own
Or sit or lie or do
Any other thing on
Her own when that
Pain comes to take
Its tax
Oh my god I’m in
Agony
The Great Destroyer we
Don’t believe in together has
Wrapped me skin and
Bone in thick veils of
Agony
Her god offers her a bit of
Cookie and promises her
This bit of cookie the
First food she’s eaten in
A day
Will be the pleasure of
A prayer
And not make her
Sick it’s a big promise—a
Promise only a great god
Has the heart to make
And keep
-M.
(Day 21 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit. Three weeks! Three weeks on a bit of a sad note, but three weeks nonetheless. I wasn’t going to write today. I thought I needed another P day, but I’m glad I sat down with my book and did it anyway. It’s always better to write than not to write. How often we need that reminder.)
Blessed
Safe in his hundred arms
Enfolded we sweat away
My freedom hearts as
One ticking thing a
Lifetime of un-spread wings
This poem is unfair
To a god who loves me truly
Enough to cut off my
Oxygen sometimes
-M.
(Day 20 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit. For those of you following along, yesterday was actually day 20, but I had to take a P day for personal reasons. Nothing like getting back up on that horse with a little of the good old god-angst. I hope everybody has a great weekend.)
The ALL That IS
All I said
All I said
All I said to ALL That IS
Volumes volumes volumes
Unrecordable
All She said
All She said
All the ALL She said
Don’t
Be afraid
-M.
(Day 13 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Mortality Beyond Divinity
Gods misunderstand
Death—Death himself
Deathless misunderstands
Forever destruction—forever
Loss—a self that decays inside
Itself until it disappears.
A god, from a full-
Bodied god can become a
Lesser-bodied god—an
Insignificant pinpoint of
Flickering ether, but still
Sovereign though infinitesimal and
Over unbounded time can
Gather unto its own flickering
Ether substance—body new
Come to body that was and
Will be forever
Body new come to body eternal that
Misunderstands body new
Come to dust
Depersonalized as dust comes
To gather to itself
A noisome film
On the cradle ledge of an infinitely
Born and born and born
Infant god
-M.
(Day 12 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
M. N. Ashley 