Get Your Premium Membership

Best Poems Written by Matthew Ashlock

Below are the all-time best Matthew Ashlock poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

View ALL Matthew Ashlock Poems

Details | Matthew Ashlock Poem

I'Ll Admit My Debt To You

Damn your hands and soft skin
Shamelessly proclaiming
Barefaced and audacious 
You keep my tongue on a leash

But how I take my share
Always hanging on your estimations
Where there is place enough for laughter
Never tasting the guilt with the guilty

In spite of this, on clement feet 
We watched the throbbing stars
Good or bad I cannot say
But you must draw a conclusion from this
If you can

Again, whatever it is
I cannot bare it.
This is my news:
I alone am responsible
This is right, and it should be

I have trouble imagining all of this
For I do not pray anymore
With all these auspicious new complexities
The sky has grown deaf

And I find comfort in the briefest ways
Jangling and unyielding remembered echoes speaking
In base aphorisms of forgotten amusement
Oh how time has a rusted wit

Copyright © Matthew Ashlock | Year Posted 2007



Details | Matthew Ashlock Poem

Three Sentences

1.  

You lay on your side, facing away, the mattress moving slowly under the weight of 
our breath, as I counted the knuckles of your spine, and listened to the sparrows 
making their spring home in the roof’s gutter.


2.

Listless as hovering smoke, with nervous words molesting my tongue like an 
exploded taste bud, I lingered still, on the bar stool, watching mirrored 
reflections, while shouldered beside people I knew would never be my true 
friends.


3.	

The thin light of morning sifted through the windbare arms of the maples and 
then pooled on the sidewalk in ways that seemed too simple and serene for me 
to fully understand.

Copyright © Matthew Ashlock | Year Posted 2007


Book: Reflection on the Important Things