PoetryPause Blog - Matthew Ashbrook Posts

Profiling offends
The sensitive sort –
Often illegal
Or so says the court

But regardless we brand
And categorize
The people we meet,
The girls and the guys.

Economically often
And sometimes by race,
By language that’s spoken
Or features on face.

But a customs official
In faraway Spain,
Is profiling butts
As folks board a plane.

Though his method is odd
He successfully snatched
A mule with cocaine
By the butt there attached.

Unusually large
Was the traveler’s rear,
The official suspected
A rear more austere.

Intercepting the man
To inspect the large mass
He had him disrobe
To check out his ass.

His hunch proved to find
A neoprene suit
Outfitted with pockets
And coke you could toot.

So big-butted tourists
Had better beware,
Of a customs official
Who’ll at your butt stare.

Leave a Comment

The experiment nearly ended
On this dog that I’ve befriended,
The one I’ve nearly mended
From afflictions she’s contended.

A summer night I’m sitting
On the deck, the sun transmitting
Through sunshine heat emitting,
Relaxing thus permitting.

My dog is sitting nicely,
Unleashed but poised precisely,
Contained by rails concisely
Elevated, rather dicey.

Daytime quickly passing,
The evening is surpassing,
The bugs begin their massing
The two of us harassing.

Between the rails scramming,
Her hips between them cramming,
Onto the ground she’s slamming
Then on the lamb she’s lambing.
 
Vanished from the clearing
And to woods she’s nearing
Quickly disappearing,
No trace of her appearing.

Walking every trail
Like a cop I’m on her tail
Her fortitude is frail
I’m thinking I will fail.

Twenty minutes seeking,
Around a tree she’s peeking,
Toward me she’s soon streaking
In hopes of passed me sneaking.

I hold her leash descended
On it, my hopes depended
She stops, her flight suspended
In the moment apprehended.

To her leash she condescended,
Her liberty amended;
The taste of freedom ended
For this dog that I’ve befriended.

Leave a Comment

There was a young Frenchman of thirty,
A quiet man not very wordy,
  He discovered by chance
  On a roadway in France,
That his body was not all that sturdy.
  
Disfigured beyond recognition,
His car but a shell and transmission,
  His arms were waylaid  
  And his face torn away,
Mutilated, at best, his condition.

A surgeon both skillful and bold
Saw the hopelessness start to take hold.
  Deciding to graft
  A face to the shaft
Of his neck then upward unfold.

Then taking two hands from the dead,
Sewed them onto the stumps with a thread.
  Two hands and a face,
  The man had replaced,
But infection within him soon spread.

This week while the surgeon was cutting,
With surgical knives from him jutting,
  The pulse of his heart
   No blood would impart,  
And no longer the Frenchman goes strutting.

An effort beyond any reason,
The offer of hope simply teasin,’
  The remainder of days
  In a drug induced haze
Resulting in cardiac treason.

Leave a Comment

To attract some new business
At the Black Frog Café,
Leigh Turner avoided
The coupon cliché.

Exploiting the cold
Of his New England haunt,
A Skinny Dip Sandwich
On the menu would taunt.

To the patron who’d swim
All naked and nude
In the frozen lake offered
A free Dip for food.

Maine’s Moosehead Lake,
Four years they’d turn out,
To strip off their clothes
Get a sandwich and stout.

But then city fathers
Disturbed by the act,
Decided to curb it,
His license attack.

Afraid that nude swimmers
Would harm their small town,
Denied the renewal,
His license shot down.

No alcohol sales
And his business will die -
How’s this help a town
With few taxes get by?

The Skinny Dip Sandwich
v The Council Absurd -
Turner’s appeal
Is now being heard. 

Leave a Comment

She’s a beauty, she is,
All shiny and new –
She’ll turn on a dime
That’s what she’ll do.

Zero-turn radius,
That’s what she’s called –
A mower for grass
On the grounds growing sprawled. 

Two levers to pull
And to push control speed,
Pull one at a time
And you steer where you need.

A deck of four feet
And at 24 horse,
Your lawn’s like a fairway
At the finest golf course.

Awaiting I am
For the rains to subside,
So I can mount up
And take her for a ride.

Leave a Comment

There was a sky diving instructor,
Orchestrating each jump as conductor;
  Strapped to his chest,
  The student was pressed,
Clutched to a raptor abductor. 

From South Carolina Chip Steele,
A gentleman kind and genteel,
  Enjoyed what he did,
  It was hard to keep hid,
Each jump holding its own appeal.

A student, a first time contender
To jumping, to Chip would surrender;
  Strapped to his chest
  To each other pressed
 Then leapt from the plane into splendor.

The student soon noticed his teacher
No longer was moving his features;
  His body was still,
  Not involved in the drill,
Then prayed to his God and his preacher.

Recalling his pre-flight instruction,
Effected his speed’s quick reduction;
  The chute he deployed,
  To float overjoyed, 
Avoiding his certain destruction.

Unconscious his teacher lay prostrate,
CPR, though he tried, would be too late.
  Though a heart attack killed,
  The lesson fulfilled
So the student still paid the full rate.

Leave a Comment

Ninety years old and a tailor,
Designs a brassier that won’t fail ‘er;
  Retired he did,
  But back he has slid
To a custom fit bra-cup purveyor.

Different he is from the players
Who toil away as the tailors;
  With a look at a breast
  He can outfit his guest
With a customized boobie conveyor.

To acquire the access desired,
Ran Yusheng is now un-retired;
  He sells them his line,
  ‘One look, I design,’  
And the women unleash what’s attired.

A consummate tailor devine
Or a clever ruse used by design? 
  No dining or drinks,
  No flirting or winks,
Just a hook and a fish and a line.

Leave a Comment

I’ve done it. It’s done.
I’ve got two, not just one
  And they’re comin’ my way pretty soon.
They’re stabled today,
Palomino and bay,
  But soon all my grass they will prune.

A fence soon to place
And around they will race
  When they’re not being ridden or brushed.
And a cowboy I’ll be,
On the range riding free,
  If I’m not being trampled and crushed.

They’re not standing idle,
A saddle and bridle
  Will keep them from boredom and fat.
I’ll lunge them to trot
And see what they’ve got
  In my spurs and my 10-gallon hat.

Stockpiling the hay,
Keeping hunger at bay,
  At a stream they will quench their own thirst.
When the winter comes ‘round,
In a barn on the grounds,
  Seek shelter where they’ve been coerced. 

My attention won’t last,
When an hour has passed,
  An object more shiny I’ll find.
But I’ll fondly recall,
My horses and all,
  And the moment that I lost my mind.

Leave a Comment

Khartoum, Sudan
And Lubna Ahmed
Stopped for a bite
Before time for bed.

With a dozen or so
Of her closest of friends -
An evening of eating
No danger portends

When the shadows produced
The Sahrian Police 
Who shouted out orders,
“Desist, you must cease!”

The girls rounded up
They were taken away
And charged with a crime
Of indecent display.

They were all wearing pants,
Not a thing girls can do -
If you’re Sudanese-bound
There’s a punishment due.

Forty lashes they’ll get
‘Til they bleed and they squeal –
From fashion faux pas
To justice surreal.

Leave a Comment

Once upon a midnight dreary,
A line I’ve lifted ‘cause I’m weary,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis
Once again, I do not own this,
I digress, for there’s no reason
That this verse can’t be as pleasin’
Without words of lifted basis,
The dictionary’s an oasis,
Filled with novel words and phrases
From the bounty there within
This verse for you I now begin:

Sunny skies await the masses,
Boys aplenty and their lasses,
Just beyond the cusp of logic
Lost within the demagogic
All that rhymes and all that reasons,
Quantified by passing seasons,
Ambiguously hides the pleasures,
Gold of fools and pirate treasures,
Furthered from the hands that reach for
All the lost and souls they preach for,
The cumulous soon part revealing
All the years that time’s been stealing.

Leave a Comment