PoetryPause Blog – Matthew Ashbrook

On a bluff in California,
A tidal pool below,
Naked people frolicked
On drifting sand like snow.

We watched the sunshine gather
And kiss the unchained souls
Whose freedom of expression
Discarded weary roles.

Unfettered from the consequence,
We answered freedom’s call
To dance among the sagebrush found,
In sand our names would scrawl.

Beneath the glare of sunshine found
Abundant at the shore,
We shared the secrets lovers know,
Transformed forever more.

for christina valdez

A long time ago,
In a world put away,
When youth was the order
And night was the day,
There was a young girl
That I knew by her smile
And a way she could place
My affections on trial.

Each day we’d walk
To a cozy spot near
And while away hours
In a dark atmosphere.
She excited my senses
And tangibly touched
The inner mechanics
Of the secrets I clutched.

Her charms were assorted,
Was laughter’s delight
And I easily melted
In the heat of her light.
She offered her body
But another’s was mine –
Temptation took Adam
But I stuck with the wine.

Translucent her spirit
As she orbits my time
Through years that have passed
In these lines I have rhymed.
I frequently wonder
What’s come of this girl,
In memory she’s kept
Like an oyster’s sweet pearl.

People have apartments,
Condos at the shore;
Homes up on a hilltop,
On streets in Baltimore;
I live in mobile housing,
A home without a bed;
I’m self-contained and living
Alone inside my head.

I speak with voices captive,
That only I can hear,
That dwell within the recess
Behind the inner ear.
The ever-present presence
Of ghost and wraith alike
I’m never lost from comfort
From those that I dislike.

I travel where I’m thinking,
No planes or cars or trains;
No passport is required
And no confining chains.
I live in mobile housing,
A home without a bed;
I’m self-contained and living
Alone inside my head.

Sure he is different,
Has too many feet
And his body is covered in fur;
A tail and stripes
And ears that will stand
But no matter, it doesn’t deter
The sharing of all
Of the bounty that’s found
Of grains that we now feast upon
For all of the critters
Who squeak and will hoard
To food, like chickens, are drawn.

He’s got the same needs
The common desires
Like birds of feather possess;
But empathy born
In the spirit is lost
By many more prone to aggress.
So the world at large
Would improve its own lot
If lessons like this we’d embrace;
When a chipmunk appears
Don’t laugh at his ears,
Accommodate him in your space.

Verona Park
On an arched little bridge
Drawn over a creek
Beneath the north ridge,

I stood with a soul
That awakened a heart
That had died in decay,
Asunder, apart.

The Mayor of Clifton
Presided that day
And we exchanged vows
As the sun slipped away.

My children attended,
My parents as well
We joined in the marriage
Of life’s carousel.

To Westchester County,
Where her family would wait,
To welcome the pair,
To honor and fete.

A decade surreal
Would follow then haunt
When she packed up her things
And left nonchalant.

Disappointment and hurt
Blew in on the wind,
Though change is expected
It will leave you chagrined.

I fled to the woods
To fill in the hole
That she left in her wake
And rekindle my soul.

Found comfort in fauna
And friends I’d acquaint;
From strings of Gibson,
In the music I paint.

She frequently visits
My thoughts now and then
And lives inbetween
Ihe lines that I pen.

I’ve hit a dry spell, nothing deep
Is stirring in my soul;
A vacancy to occupy,
No embers in the coal.

Waiting for a falling star
That’s on some cosmic quest
To stop a while and occupy
A soul that’s dispossessed.

No influences good or bad,
I’m stranded on a dune
Staring through the interval
Between the sun and moon.

More questions than are answers
With every interchange
Whether physical or ghostly,
The mundane or the strange.

The only truth that serves us
Is the one we manifest
From every interaction
With which our lives are blessed.

But the motivation driving
That which we engage
Is nothing but a question
Our reasoning must gauge.

Our senses run the data
Then feed the CPU
That’s deep within the vortex
Constituting ‘you.’

Measured and deciphered
By elements of chance
And experiential factors
We conjugate a stance.

Then act upon the outcome
Our thinking has produced
To find that more than often
In error, what it’s deduced.

She was tall
And she was lean,
Freckled with
The Irish gene.

Quick to smile,
Quick to laugh;
At thirty-one
She joined my staff.

For a decade
Side by side
Up and down
On every ride.

A melody
Upon the staff;
In the end,
A Bell Curve graph.

Books and movies,
Songs and verse
Start and end,
It’s nature’s curse.

And that was that,
The whole in half –
No more freckles,
No more laugh.

He’s carved out a spot,
A nest for his bones;
Removed all the twigs,
The sticks and the stones.

A surface as smooth
As a road freshly paved
And scented the spot
To assure it’d be saved.

In the dappling of sunlight
He peruses his realm;
A confident dog
In charge, at the helm.

We all should find fortune
This canine has found;
A place to call home
To which we are bound.

Where resting comes easy
And fears are at bay;
A place we can ponder
Our birth and decay.

The musty scent of an old pool hall,
Where smoke still hangs in the air and all;
The fabric worn from the table tops
By years of use and pool hall props.

Where rough-hewn men would wield the cues,
The corner juke-box boomed the blues
And blue jeaned girls in halter tops
Nursed the beverage brewed from hops.

The faded posters, parched and dry,
Reflect the time of times gone by;
Farah Fawcett, Indian bikes
Long before the friends and likes.

An ancient pack of Marlboros sits
Upon the counter where time quits;
Yellowed now like those who smoked
The cancer sticks that smokers choked.

Remnants of the seasons passed,
Preserved in dust like sculptures cast;
The juke box silent like a muse
Still can fill a room with blues.