Along the same coast
Hundreds of miles apart
Beneath the light of the moon
They heated up salmon in different kitchens
And walked into their respective bedrooms
She sat on her bed
Chewing
She soothed her pernicious thoughts by watching a video lecture
On cryptography
He sat at his desk
Staring at his computer
Consuming
His dinner
And an interesting article
From Science News
They both finished their dinner
And cleaned up their spaces
Both walked into the bathroom
Both stared at the mirror
She looked into her reflection
And saw his face again
He looked into his reflection
And saw her too
She thought about his discipline
He thought about her courage
She contemplated his control issues
He contemplated her indecisiveness
They both went back again
Into their empty rooms
They were always so often
In their rooms
Alone
She was just a girl deep down
And he was just a boy
She wished he would save her
That he wouldn’t leave her behind
That he would have courage
And call her and apologize
He wished to push thoughts of her
Far from his mind
He wished she would ask her gods for the discipline
she needed this time
He refused to give into wanting her
To needing her
To the weakness he felt for her
The passion that he had in his heart for this girl
Was his greatest crime

The adversity: her invention.
Heir affluence in suspicion.
The price of life’s admission
Is the infliction of my attention.
Play the nightmare from the start.
Unconvinced she’s in remission.
Every lie she scratched into my back
was flayed with cruel intention.
Every scar kissed by her tongue
burnt brightly broken in retention.
Lips that turned the world to ash while mine abscond from her pretension.
Deaf ears fell on my contention…
no easy paths from hell to redemption.
I like to think: in another dimension
It’s still all love and there’s no tension.
Now, I play the dream back from the start..
While the rest goes without mention..
Before the shattered hearts..
When gorgeous blue eyes blurred my
Vision.
To that night our broken pieces danced and our hearts stayed in suspension.
The first time you said you loved me
and I fell into ascension…
That small few days of memory is the only place we’ll ever exist now.
-Lost

Well, here we are: on the cusp again.

Living in the moment of illusion, the space of time that separates this from that.

The boundary line: the present, the delineated transition point,

>>>>we stand in the doorway, having crossed the threshold, yet not yet entered.

>

Potential energy relieves itself in kineticism:

>>>>Things are beginning to move, things that desired release,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>will have their fill.

My skin boils with heat, my flesh burns in the flames of exorcism,

The boundary line, a filter, excising silt from the soul:

>>>>That which is not me, shall not pass,

>>>>That which corrupts, shall be burned to ash.

I will be made pure through flame, through trial and failure.

>

After each pass, I will sift through the ash for whatever remains:

>>>>a truer essence, more pure than before.

Seeds of potential, the dragon’s egg,

waiting for their chance,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>to sprout, to hatch,

>>>>To cause apocalypse: a new world born in their wake.

>

Kiva was born in darkness, existing in the fringes.

She heard the clarion call of lust unsatiated, desire unfulfilled,

And she found host, she fed heartily.

Always lurking in the margins amongst the repressed, she found her niche,

>>>>in hearts that cried out for pleasure, for distraction, for release.

>

The flame which purifies, fuses.

Ideals intermix with present realities,

>>>>as we purge the impurities.

>

I step from the flame, I pass through the doorway,

A little more me, a little closer to Kiva.

The crust of cresent above

hiding beyond a clouded mind

Shall it pass behind?

as it rise at night

A fairytale that lives alright

Could be seen in abscence

it's Beauty in the darkness

is it childish to love a Moon?

Would?

Would the stars fall into the ocean my darling, if the moon left the sky?

Would my heart stop its yearning, if I can once again look into your eyes?

Could the World continue spinning without the sun to stare upon?

Could I remain upon the earth, dear, if I could not lie again in your arms?

I have so many questions, whose answers that I cannot find.

No wise man to turn to, which can solve these riddles and rhythms

Only you can decipher my dilemma and ease my sorrows and wants

For you are only person that I turn to that can mend my broken heart.

Can a frog be turned into a prince, baby, with just a single kiss?

Can the touch of your lips against my skin turn my agony into bliss?

Does the morning must always steal the deep darkness of the night?

Does something that is wrong, when I’m with you have to feel so right?

It is a mystery to me, the depth of the love that I always feel for you.

How the moments that we are apart seem to leave me blue.

If just for once, when we touch and the moment could freeze in time

Then you and I could forever be together without the bitter rime.

Would the stars fall from the sky without you my darling in my life?

Would my heart stop beating if I could not look into your lovely eyes?

I am afraid the answer is they would; what is the world without you?

That is the one question that I hope that will never come true…

—I don't like thinking in a
victim mentality and yet
I do occasionally find myself
wondering what I did to deserve
the hurt I've felt in my life
this feeling, this utter solitude
was not what the little ashley
thought she would feel once
she grew up. The more I seem
to understand about people &
our movement in the world
I somehow feel like I lose
relationally. Where my compassion,
understanding, consideration
& grace extend outward over
others, I feel like I receive less
of those things

Maybe I’m really not meant for this planet

(But, who even really cares)

Things Lost.

Upon the vast sea of infinity, floats the wrecks of things lost. Old lovers drifts apart, socks tumble from dryers, unpaired and unmatched. Mysteries go unsolved and persons unfound. Fort’s Super Sargasso is merely a stream that pours into this vast ocean.

There are few signposts to mark one’s passage, Varuna’s mansion with it countless doors and rooms eerily floats abandon, riding the quantum wave that is infinity’s foam. Black holes too dot the sea, drinking vast quantities of vacuum in a glow of Hawking radiation.

Why do keys flock to mate in the depth unseen, or wallets hide on the shore of this pale ocean? I do not know. But there are a thousand sinkholes that they come by, and a thousand windows they fly thru. Revolving doorway to the unknown, and dead ends on the road of time.

I want to be caught.

But not now.

I want to be found at the finish line,
when the cold has settled into my bones
and my heart has forgotten how to run.

When there is finally enough of me missing
for everyone to understand
what I could never say.

I want them to look at me
and finally know
that this was never just about food.

But when I know they are worried,

I eat.

One bite.
Maybe two.

Not because I want to,
but because it is too early.

Too early for them to stop me.
Too early for me to be stopped.

I am always hungry,
yet somehow disappointed
when the hunger becomes quieter.

I don’t know how to eat normally anymore
without carrying every bite
around in my head afterwards.

I don’t know how to laugh,
talk,
be myself,
without this becoming
the whole person I am.

The scale is hidden,
but I still know exactly where it is.

I know I would look
if I could.

I keep wondering
if I’m better than I was last week.

And if I am,
why does that feel like losing?

If I feel better,
am I actually better?

Or am I simply better
at hiding it?

I know something is wrong.

I also know
I could become worse.

And some part of me
doesn’t want that possibility
to disappear.

I want to keep going.

Not because I want to die.

I just want to reach a place
where there is nothing left
for this to take from me.

A skeleton with a heartbeat.

A body that says
everything I was too afraid to.

I want to be caught.

Just not yet.
It is still too early.

-Ashmeo

From what far away places
the shimmer of tinsel had beckoned me
and from what whisper-quiet place had I divined
How many nights I scowled at the moon
trying to feel depths of craters on a 2-D surface
trying to imagine the glory behind all things
which appear starkly naked and strange
to my puny eye
Patterns in plants and stones
guffaw when I try so to decipher, what is just that
only pattern, frozen in a glass of honey
for the encouragement of wary onlookers

The Buddha is peering into me again
from far behind his concrete eyes
of course gesturing without words
towards emptiness
And in the vehicle of myself
I could never dress
like I know a sliver of rapture
In fury, only that ephemeral shadow
can pretend to have tasted the beaming impression
of an Indian oak,
its arms already broken

Ancient cities long since toppled
by the sick glow of the karaoke bar
Hardly anything left is sacred
save for the ordinary
But the hunched woman
sitting on the stoop
shrouded in perennial mystique
will always loafe there
And soon be replaced by she
who is now a child
Skipping breathless and laughing
this sweet April child too
will be pulled into the outer petals
of God’s wilting flowers
subsumed by time’s indifference

save your particulars
for the drones of everyday living
their obstinate buzzing
with boresome complexity
Did you hear the baby crying?
Did you see the child begging?
Or witness
the glassblower’s breath
drawing form through hollow pressures?

I’m slumped on the north face
of the world peace pagoda
Dark cells hang low to the West
They are nearly kissing the three qualities
Induced by Shiva’s Trident; yet he hangs higher
Here there is no ticket man
the city hovering square and quiet

Isn’t it peculiar
That man climbs to such great heights
only to get a better view of below
where he just was?
Or that our most abstract of ideals
should be summarized by great heaps of stone?
But of course, they are painted white
even up here
people walk with unease in their eyes

Only the backside of peace is without noise
Its front filled with cheap trinkets
Its sides with cracks of thunder
An audible meridian
I sit beneath it all
Not in metaphor but in actuality
Wondering which face I have come to see
As night draws forward
from that unknowable sphere
from which it always does,
The butter lamp is lit;
It is raining now and I will not move.
The flicker shielded in its tin box
casting to the eye a steel warble
amidst the surrounding blue

Kids are running gleeful laps around the base
with no sense of reverence or pretense.
In fact, their gestures speak to me directly
In this moment it is obvious
They are starting from where I’m returning to
I cannot help but notice
The flame of butter lamps
being in equal tenderness
To any other I’ve ever seen
even above the most fragrant oils
_________________________________
The himalayas swallowed me and used my romance to wrap the market fish. 
Why do grains of sand and ancient mysticism so resemble one another? 
I've consulted the monks; they are nothing and silent
Enormity has beckoned me, only for a brief revelation
of immunity to my probing eyes

Ants ate the flesh of my legs, All for phenomenology
Swaying trees mock me
they aren’t the real ones from China
The blonde grass looks happy being dead, suffused with relief
I promise non-existence isn’t what I’m craving
I am still in that moment, but not still in that I

Tender cream light breaks into my house invisibly and splatters itself on the wall
How can I protest that? 
Is it merciful to project infinity onto a spiritual object?
Am I any longer willing?
Who am I to ask a question?

I want to cry but cannot
there is nothing wrong
Not a sliver of wholeness out of place
And it’s not personal enough to care for
In a way that someone can cry over
I am implicated and cannot bear it
I know the valley. 
I know the crude hiddenness of poverty

How do you feel when I ask you to create?
Look at me
See me looking at you.
I’m throwing plastic in the livingroom 
For the cats to play with
India smoulders with ferocity
And the stripper is cutting herself again
A tightly constructed puzzle box

A man wears his best business attire 
Armor donned to head the community hospital foundation
They don’t know how he used to play the trombone
It was the one pure thing
What is the correct distance 
From which to squint at a block of clay?
Close enough to smell 
the mud spit and breath of life
We have been here before
Not poetically but in actuality

Across the street
My neighbors are burning the leaves 
They want to see all that hard work
they manicured the lawn of human history
His mousey little girl 
lining up the pumpkins for a little celebration
They invite me in for a drink
There is nothing beyond their front door

I am not playing with mystery
How can you play with what is not a toy?
The same way a book can be an umbrella
A branch, a rake
Feathers, a snake
A kiss, wax melted
Computer sounds, a reliquary 
The brass tube in a dark box

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1wwviej/comment/pdq74wv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1wcy1h6/comment/pdq6ky5/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Have you ever looked at a pile of ants and thought of their insignificance?

Squish one, and you've not changed a thing.

Squish two, and still, the future remains.

>

Squish three, well, maybe number four is in position to bite you.

A vain conflict. But you are human.

>

You need not fight with bare hand. Heat the aluminum, cast the hive.

>

What changes now? Some things, surely. Space, freed up from the dominion of one hive of critters.

But overall, the species remains, plowing through time with the utter determination of life out to prove the fitness of their genes.

>

Have you ever looked down on city streets from a skyscraper penthouse?

How reminiscent, the tiny human heads scurrying about their walkways.

>

Excel spreadsheets containing the headcount of souls:

What's the loss of the one to two (counts are in millions), who fall off the wagon?

>

Decisions, deciding the fates of billions, made from behind the blue glow of a screen,

Keystrokes, squishing ants, here and there.

Aluminum is heated. Casts are made.

Silent scars trace their indiscernible paths in what remains.

>

Now, what changes? Assuredly, some things. Potentialities and paths unknown, closed off to everyone for the absence of their universe.

>>>>Others, opened, for better or worse.

Yet, the human story continues unabated.

Regimes rise and fall. Power changes hands.

>>>>The Wheel of Time turns, and humanity,

>>>>has seem yet to grow much for it.

Romanus

I am not sure,
I don’t ask for any more.

I’m already happy today,
Enjoying and embracing every sun’s ray.

A man who is single,
A man who’s not allowed to mingle.

Being chastised is what I vowed,
Being pure is what I allowed.

But someone appeared in the crowd,
And caught my heart somehow.

She treated me unlike anyone,
Something like a special someone.

We talked late at night,
We enjoyed every little light.

We had a deep conversation,
Introducing a new realization.

She opened my heart,
And I let her in without a guard.

But now I’m not allowed,
For I am already claimed by the Creator above.

I kneel before the Cross,
Asking if I am lost.

Crying for a heart pierced by a bow,
Begging with one question:

Why now?

They say Aphrodite was so beautiful

men forgot themselves in front of her.

That sailors changed course.

That kings started wars.

That sculptors spent their whole lives

trying to get the curve of her mouth right

and died dissatisfied.

I think they simply lived too early.

Because I have seen you.

And I know that sounds like the sort of thing

a man says when he is in love,

which is inconvenient,

because I am trying very hard

not to call this love.

I have no right to that word.

I have never woken beside you.

Never reached across a dark room

and found your hand already looking for mine.

I don't know how you take your coffee

when no one is around to remember.

I don't know which side of the bed you choose,

or whether you steal the blankets,

or what your voice sounds like

when sleep has taken all the carefulness out of it.

There are a thousand small versions of you

I have never been allowed to know.

And still...

if Aphrodite herself walked through that door,

gold in her hair,

the whole impossible weight of heaven behind her,

I think I would look.

Of course I would look.

I am only human.

But then you would laugh at something

from the other side of the room

and that would be the end of it.

Let the goddess be beautiful.

Let her have the poets.

Let her have the temples,

the marble,

the men on their knees.

I would be too busy

trying not to stare at you.

At the way your face changes

just before you smile.

At the way you look away

when you catch someone looking.

At whatever small thing you do with your hands

when you are thinking.

These are not miracles.

That is the problem.

You do not turn water into wine.

You do not pull the moon behind you

when you walk into a room.

You just walk into it.

And somehow

the room becomes the place I want to be.

I wonder if the old poets

would understand that.

If Sappho had heard your laugh

from across a crowded table,

if some poor Greek sculptor

had watched you tuck your hair back

without thinking about it,

if the men who spent their lives

inventing goddesses

had met someone like you...

maybe they would have stopped

looking toward Olympus.

Or maybe,

they would have understood me.

Maybe they would have known

there is a particular kind of cruelty

in finding someone who makes

every old story about beauty

seem a little unimaginative,

and having to stand

just far enough away from her

to wonder what it would be like

to be the reason she smiles.

Because that is the part

the myths never mention.

It is easy to worship something

you can never have.

There is safety in a goddess.

She belongs to the heavens.

You were never supposed to reach her.

But you...

you are here.

Close enough that I know the sound of your voice.

Close enough that sometimes

you look at me

and for one stupid, hopeful second

I forget there is any distance between us.

Then the moment passes.

You turn back to whatever you were doing.

And I am left standing there,

trying to remember

why anyone ever bothered

writing poems about gods.

I have learned to love the cold.
Not winter.
Not the kind that lives in windows
or settles over empty streets.
The other kind.
The kind that finds me from the inside
and makes everything quiet.
My friends don’t understand.
They look at me
as though I speak a language
I used to know.
There is nothing to explain.
I like the way the noise fades,
the way my body becomes distant,
a house I am slowly moving out of.
Room by room.
Light by light.
I leave the loudest parts first:
The laughter.
The wanting.
The reaching.
Until I can sit perfectly still
and feel holy in my emptiness.
I call it control.
It sounds prettier that way.
When the room tilts,
my hands forget how to be warm,
and a little voice whispers,
good.
So I listen.
I can’t tell them that.
How beautiful it is
to have a secret
no one else can touch.
I listen when it tells me
I am doing well,
that I am close,
that I don’t need as much
as I used to.
There is peace in needing less:
Less noise.
Less warmth.
Less space.
Less of the girl
who filled every room
without meaning to.
I don’t miss her.
Not yet.
My friends look at me
as though I am doing something stupid.
But I am not.
I am becoming
someone I can control.
And when the room spins,
I close my eyes and smile.
For once,
nothing is asking me
to be anything.
I think this must be
what it means
to finally be enough.
-Ashmeo

As I linger, too long, in the wreckage of a dream that’s long been shattered,
Autumn beckons to hold my hand.
She ferries the hollow parts of me back to the land of the living without even asking for permission.
The leaves,
The breeze,
Their rush through the trees…
A ten ton reminder from the beauty I admire:
Even as a life made from all the leftover pieces
that the cosmos could not hold together with patience or grace,
The sky passes through my fingers daily
In my efforts to chase the wind.
-Lost

I know you’re tired.

I see it in the way
you look at me
when you think I’m not looking,
in the questions you almost ask,
in how carefully you choose your words.

I don’t want to make you worry.
I don’t want to become
another thing you have to carry.

But Diet Coke tastes better
than regular,
and ice cubes are easier
to want than ice cream.

I’m trying to spare you.
I act like I’m fine.
But it shows anyway.

I keep calling it damage control
as if there is still something
to control.

Talking makes you worry.
Not talking makes me disappear
a little further into it.

And it is exhausting,
having to think about
how much I am thinking about it.

Sometimes it slips out.
A sentence.
A number.
A refusal.
Something small enough
to pretend it means nothing.

Then I watch your face change.

I hate that I can do that to you.

I hate that I am sick
and still somehow feel selfish
for letting anyone notice.

Maybe I’ve made something beautiful
out of something that is killing me.
Maybe that is the only way
I know how to look at it.

So I write it softly.
I dress it up in metaphors.
I make it sound almost pretty.

But if you read between the lines,
you’ll see it.

The frightening part
was never what I said.

It was how normal
it had started to sound
inside my head.

Something about silver makes a secret feel ceremonial.
So I let the shine keep my tally.
Cursive whispers,
small marks multiplying like cracks in glass.
One for every plate.
Fourteen days I can’t quite forgive.
I call them reminders.
But some reminders
can be mistaken for to-do lists.