A thrown stone finds its resting
place within the grass
the egg, more than a tombstone,
must shatter first into light
what is born must devour itself
in order to survive its darkness,
its promise and its threat.
Dandelion lanterns along the path,
soon blown out, are not a loss, no
seed is a loss. In the green light
of my first summers, seeing the wild
mass of morning glories swarming
secretly over overlooked places,
I knew I had inherited a lie.
When the spirit is wounded
and the wound is deep
be gentle—in this ache,
this flare of dying light, again
and again we risk everything.
Salt stained clouds foam up the sky
it is on an afternoon like this
we will begin again with nothing.
asha
Ontology of Clouds
Water Brother
When I see the brown hills lying
coldly in the sly distance
or the clouds having lost their ocean
looking for a place to weep
or the crystal drop on the still leaf tip
falls—
I remember the angels
perfumed and ancient as midnight
new as silver of the waxing moon
who first spoke to me of death.
At dawn I went to the hill that sleeps
and called their names
loudly
louder and louder
until even the snakes in their dens
shuddered
then softly I called them
quietly whispering each name
until there was no sound at all
but the tolling of a distant bell . . .
It was then they came—
sursum corda—
scratching the sky, reaching through
the timeless blue dream with their talons
clawing long blazing marks in the wind
and in that moment,
sweet inconsolable water brother—
one mad despised flower
with no petals at all/with translucent, golden petals
growing beneath the bridge/beneath the fig tree
laughing to itself
bird on the morning breeze
empty of everything but light
bloomed
asha
Re-beginnings
Seattle
Touched by your eyes, I quake. Whatever is good has ceased to flow.
I throw the poison mirror away. The walls close towards center.
Barely room to breathe.Morning comes and again I resolve to survive the day, overcome this.
We had planned to do that. Times have been better. My flesh hurts.
I plunge back into sleep.But the urge returns, jarring open my eyes. You aren't here.
What am I creating? Or am I just re-living-living the worst
old outcomes? There was a truth here. Sinking, my thoughts
become seeds seeking the comforting dark. Memories
are of no value. Where I am now I am safe—
between everything—away and alone
under a high cloud sky.
In this inner world of the closed flower there is a moment’s rest.
The wind and tide erase all. I do not speak the language here.
It is a comfort. I communicate through half tones, faint smiles.
Outside the petals, rain and finally a clear sky and distant
mountains asleep under their snow. Having held back
too long, I do not cry. We bend or break.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
The rain drenched petals creak.
I lower myself into the storm—
small boat, small wings—
to try the sea.asha
Return
to the disembodied
painted faces of the inner air
the stone voice speaks
the whorls upon waking weep
the swamp of singing reeds
the growing world
turns to listen
time
delirious with eternity
sleeps on
there is no answer
in the winter sun
birds are thinking
they do not reply
I have returned
from a long journey
I have changed
the end and the beginning
stir and separate my thoughts
it is noon at my place on earth
asha
published in Sein und Werden
Life at the top of the stairs
For Fleek
Having to be somewhere—
I found myself living on the landing
at the top of the stairs.
A thousand times a thousand times
I finished in my mind the unfinished
painting leaning against the wall.
The eight-legged one,
tiny Protectorate of the Shadows
and her silken sacks of eggs,
she alone knows the rest of the story—
asha
Yellow Shoes
When I had feet me shoes were yellow
ah yellow as pollen they were
bright as lemons
bright as me lad's smile
bold as his laugh
an oh how I danced in me shoes
all night
a swarm a bees
drunk from the flowers
sportin their yellow pants an boots
knew not as many turns as me lad an me
not haf as many
an when
in the slow river
a bare foot we went a wadin
me lad an me
an bare we were from toe to head
a hand an hand
me yellow shoes was glad to wait
all hodgepodge with his
for shoes has no need a feet
though feet has a need a them
but now
old as I be
I has no need a shoes
not yellow
not brown
but glad I am
glad as I was when I was a lass
for I got me me lad
an I rather him than me feet.
asha
—written at the behest of Lawson Fusao Inada
Augury for the Child
Even as a child
I knew I could possess nothing
so I renounced everything
but childhood itself.
And as a child
I knew knowledge
could not be enough,
that only a homing instinct
would be much use after all.
So abundant
are the moments of truth
diamond drops
cupped in the uncountable
small green hands of morning—
even now I do not wish
to turn back from love.
Knowing I will forget
again and again
how to laugh
and how to cry
and what you mean to me,
and knowing
that each moment of love
finally presses its body
in wet fallen fragrant petals
against the stone to dry
I must welcome strangers
and imperfections.
I have seen hope
like spring return
again and again
and the sleek and shiny
lights of rain
dancing everywhere.
Even now
it is wise to trust.
asha
After Death
As moon hidden by morning
as water enters earth
as the blossom’s beauty quivers
falling from the fruit within
as night embraces effaces erases light
and light
being diminished or absent
speaks only in dream
I went to the river saying,
River,
here are my voices.
Return them to the sea.
After death—
I entered River’s mind
and River’s song
which fills the twilight
replaced the sun.
After death—
seeing through River’s eye
knowing night by many names
I journeyed far to reach and kiss
the pulse of earth and sea.
Returning—
new mind
a spring rain
slowly descending black bark trees.
Returning—
young among the old
new moon asleep on the sea.
Returning—
I moor my ship
upon the wind’s voice.
asha
Music Theory
for John Chance
In the beginning was Theory and the Theory was made flesh
so that we could find our way home. I walk slowly
through the points of rain.
In the beginning was sound and it was everything, against all odds.
“Never was there a time you and I did not exist, Arjuna.”
I am a ball of wings rolling toward you. Theory become flesh.
The music is in the gaps.
I enter the lobby. "I've come to see my uncle," I say.
"Where will you be waiting?" says the lady in the glass cage.
"The waiting room", I reply. She will not meet my eye.
I am announced through seven miles of hallways.
He appears, hollow and weary on his cane.
It is not a walking stick to navigate the world of the living.
It is a handrail to the grave.
He is an unanswered question. We step out into the mist and stop.
I watch him openly, as one watches a child, the insane, or the dead.
“Listen to the trees,” he says, rolling his eyes up and back.
“It is good to be alive; to share a little company now and then.”
asha
Blue Period
I painted a moon to look at
and gave it a wild sky to rule
then sat down and listened
to the night blooming flowers open
rhythm upon rhythm
I painted a blackness to sleep in
and forgot myself
among the
disinterested
layers of easy paint
I painted an empty room for clouds to fly over
I painted a silence and fell to dreaming . . .
asha
Torn Page
What do I begin with this ongoing
omni-directional conversation of ours,
these fever dreams where meaning
evaporates just as everything is about
to make sense? So many doors but—
turn back and the hall becomes a maze.
Going forward solves nothing.
I begin again where I fail to be.
The fever breaks. I am in a strange room.
I am no longer afraid. The white sheet,
which is the wind, caresses me naked.
Fire cools me. Everything is in reverse
and unraveling. Finally, I can breathe.
A hummingbird flits through my rib cage,
pauses on my sternum. I have no sugar.
I know the passing hours by their colors
and sounds, and I with them—
an ancient tooth in the tide, visible—then gone.
asha
Confessional
Come my dear deformed ones
who live after the fire,
my darlings blistered and raw,
whose eyelids have burnt off,
who sleep with open eyes.
Come you jackals of pain.
But there is a screen between us,
the confessional screen.
I can barely see you in the gloom.
A spider is caught in my side, a fly in yours.
I grab the mesh with my six legs and squint in.
You are dressed in black, sweating.
I lick the wire to taste your salt.
I hand you a tiny drum, ask you to accompany me
as I confess. You weep.
I hand you a violin, ask you to play for me.
My dreams walk behind me with hollow footsteps.
There are so many echoes I cannot sleep.
You are reading a magazine.
You hand me a gun so I can shoot myself.
I watch your booth fill with water.
You are circling mindlessly in the middle of it,
awaiting my confession—but the land is miles off.
No matter how loud I shout, you can't hear me.
You press your eyes against the screen so hard
their jelly oozes in through the openings.
A thousand images hatch in the dim space,
writhing over one another. Some live. Some die.
Your eyes have a fiendish fervor.
You hand me a clock that runs backwards.
You give me an hour.
AN HOUR!
Already the clock is disappearing in my hands,
images clogging its gears—legs, feelers, screams.
It’s a horrible sight.
You stand up.
Vanish.
Then call back,
"Sing the Alleluia Chorus three times.
Bathe in blood. Give your teeth to the poor".
asha .
New Madhuban
For Gajendra — West Virginia
this forest,
planted for a loaf of bread
and a dollar a day,
is a solemn place
the hill
it has taken possession of
drops sharply
to a holler
too steep for pasture
a place where small skeletons
slowly turn to stone
this is a good place to be alone
the sun seldom finds entry to this grove
is a stranger here
off his path
its probing beams
only deepen the darkness
and threaten to ignite the brittle trees
one may only be here . . . carefully
this forest has no need of company
birds know it
they do not nest
or sing
here
there is no undergrowth
nothing pierces the needle mat
but the pines themselves who
have shed their lower branches
becoming heartless
pitch-steeped trunks
with shattered limbs
that offer no place to rest—
who comes here must stand alone
who comes here to dream—
must dream
indifferent as the dead.
asha
Reconstruction
One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story.
I've done it before. One world, one sentence at a time I will
reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original order has been
lost amid a countless succession of beginnings. I rely on you
to restore the details. One word, one sentence at a time I will
reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original has been lost
but I promise to stay true to its drift. One word, one world
at a time. Forgive me. The original version of this story does
not exist. One world, one sentence per time, this is the drift.
The notes are scattered. No. Not scattered. The notes—hastily
jotted down, scribbled on scraps, scrawled in notebooks, penciled
on flaps, saved in a succession of files—are lost. They were
seldom read. They were never read at all. They cannot be collected.
The words, disjointed, were set down and abandon. No. Not abandon.
It is a story in threads and tatters—images, ideas, phrases, paragraphs,
the disembodied alphabet reverberating, returning haunted—
but I digress.
asha
Dead Reckoning
For Joe
WINTER
In the evening we
carry down our dead
they leave our hands willingly
above
Dog Star watches
cold, white
as on ancient evenings,
Dog Star—
bringer of rain.
SPRING
Listen to the grass
leaning
soft green
through the fence
singing.
Listen to the green
crawling
slowly
away from the yard
where the bones lie—
under their feet,
under the dandelion's,
the yellow dandelion's feet—
listening.
SUMMER
Sometimes we take
our measure from the dead
as from a stone that
sits unchanged
amid the changing seasons
like a departed shore
the dead mark
how far we’ve come
through mystery
and how far
we’ve yet to go.
FALL
—Solve et coagula
The small things go first
over the blue salt
edge of the world
followed by a
deconstruction
of their tracks
by the wind
that covers
and uncovers
the same finger bone
my own
where it fell
in confusion
trembling
at the slow moving
wheel
of the desert's rim.
asha
La Tormenta
Yucatán Peninsula
for Lee
for Lee
This is how the world was
lightning on the rim
and a small boat
moving away forever
lantern swinging
over a veiled sea.
We had the world to ourselves.
I was the veils,
You were the boat.
You were the lantern.
I was the swinging.
You were the lightening.
I was the waves,
You were the sea.
I was forever.
We were the horizon.
You were moving away.
We were the storm.
asha
Border Crossing
... excerpt from Obra Inconcluso — Mexico
Leaving my language behind, I enter the labyrinth. Its streets are narrow and old and crowded with small fruit-colored buildings made of mud and stone. Here dogs speak in tongues and saints make deals with passers-by. I am greeted by a cockroach who kindly explains their price, plastic flowers and bottled flame. I see within the wicker shadows of their tiny huts how each saint stands stoic and faithful before their candles and the litter of past offerings; blackened, shattered glass and dusty clods of petals and wax but, at the hour the church bells ring, they wince in their solitude. I ask the cockroach if anyone else is in the business. The dogs, she answers, adding that I best consider carefully before choosing among them. Before I can ask more she scuttles off, disappearing into the crack of a flame red wall.
asha
Reminiscence
I am sure it was you
looking back at me
hand reaching out.
I knew you would come,
you waited there
just below the surface—
moon over my shoulder—Hello Moon.
the only way I remember you is sadly.
I hesitated as though it would be too easy
to touch your close-enough-to-touch face,
then there was no time left,
just a dream almost breaking through—
almost
one last touch
from the world
beyond the watery sky.
asha
Desert Crossing
This dark blood that binds us
cheats us of our truth, brother
only a desert's dead center
can compare
but this creeping emptiness
like a desert devouring itself
oasis after oasis
has a true ring, does it not
a solidness, a comfort
we survivors can depend on
come on, need me brother
without a truth
no heartbreak is enough
I seem like one going
to meet a lover
but behind my eyes—
sighing, shifting ashes.
asha
Skin Trade
Mother,
There is always a market for flesh
even now
sunlight in thorns
they are hungry for us
make ordinary what is not
dying
the innocent know this
they reach back
future to memory
faces repeating themselves
a lime-green inch worm
toiling over jumbled foot stones
in the membrane
the breathing cage
there is no short cut to the old cities
in the necessary air
I am sitting in a chair
imagine me
I move my right hand
move yours from the dirt
touch me
it is easy
this regeneration
a habit natural as spring
we the living have come to
expect it
you know it is a gift
the last thing
the dying pup saw from the heap
after they skinned everything
but her eyelashes.
asha
Pele
Somewhere nearby a fly is the last
friendly voice of earth where—
with broken pieces glinting
everywhere—
and unbraided fire hair
the literal eye shuts—
lured beyond by what
cannot be seen—
what has not begun
stretches out—
what cannot be imagined—
takes shape under my feet—
the bloody red sulfuric
sweaty birth of future worlds.
I never wanted to return,
she says,
never wanted to leave
the white plume—
the stinging rain.
But we come back
from the boiling point
of hurricanes. We—
walk back together
over burnished glass,
Anna Sadhorse
from the fire-eating sea
and me, back past
tiny ferns busy in their
grottoes digesting
the volcano
within the thin
moist shadows
caught in the upheaval’s
crust.
It has never been so fine,
here—where the foot
does the thinking
finds momentary
balance before
the body falls—
again forward
into unforeseeable
circumstance.
Pick any thread
from the loom of chaos,
she whispers. The wildest will do.
It is our job making sense of nothing.
asha
Animal Life
For every prayer
there is an equal
and opposite prayer.
She was curled
in the corner
and too starved
to flinch when
they tossed her
in the trash
where she died
three days later
pupless and
full of milk.
asha
Then and Now
The picture is from a photo album
my mother request on her death bed.
She is the girl sitting on the dock.
This poem is for her.
my mother request on her death bed.
She is the girl sitting on the dock.
This poem is for her.
Shall I bend or break...
That is the question.
I am like a word
that has been overused.
Daughter.
Sister.
Cousin.
Friend.
Student.
Girlfriend.
Boyfriend.
Member.
Stranger.
Mother.
Father.
Aunt.
Uncle.
Teacher.
Expert.
Ruler.
Grandmother.
Grandfather.
Confidant.
Castaway.
Enemy.
What do I purchase
in exchange for my integrity
and my freedom?
asha
Horary for Winter Solstice
Near the South Galactic Pole
between Cetus and Sculptor
beyond the universe of naked eye
the Silver Coin Galaxy
shimmers—
to its west
near the galactic equator and ecliptic intersection
the diffuse nebulae M20 and M8
stellar sphinxes,
guardians at the solstice point of our sun
shimmer—
on my earth
wild roses perfume this afternoon’s rain—
on my earth
in the 21st century after Christ
after countless way-showers and seed-sowers
the only revolution left
is love.
asha
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