PoetryPause Blog - Matthew Ashbrook Posts

The couple was excited,
They’d married years before,
But now they had the money
To buy their own front door.
 
They went to see a broker
To purchase a first home,
Then set about to driving,
Through London they would roam.
 
They narrowed down the region
To one they would agree
Would offer them the prospect
Of hanging their marquee.
 
The neighborhood established,
They next defined the house
That suits the best intentions
Of every man and spouse.
 
A home came on the market
In London’s center core,
The agent called and met them 
And took them through the door.
 
The great room and the kitchen,
The dining room and deck,
Were everything they wanted
They thought they’d write a check.
 
Then they checked the bedroom,
The ceiling and the wall,
Then opened up a closet
And saw a dead man fall.
 
The owner dangled freely,
His neck wrapped in a rope;
The suicidal owner
Apparently’d lost hope.
 
They were set to buy it,
A place they could unwind,
But something in that closet
Changed the couple’s minds. 

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So he’s a liar,
Who expects anymore?
A charlatan scheming
Political whore.
 
He’s devoted and loving,
And a child of Christ,
He said this and claimed this
And thought it sufficed.
 
An image projected
On the public to prey,
Like the Wizard of Oz
All smoke and display.
 
Without the conviction
To stand on the stage
Metaphorically naked
To measure and gauge.
 
More respect would be garnered
From a man who’d embrace
His nature regardless
Of consequence faced.
 
For that is the man 
Whose convictions are true;
A man you could trust
To say and then do.

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This is too cool,
This road’s gotta rule,
  A marvel of cunning and skill;
Promoting a car,
They sought the bizarre,
  And created an asphalted grill.
 
On a small patch of road,
They cut musical code
  Into asphalt with patterns that sound
Like the overture played
When the Lone Ranger preyed,
  When a Honda comes drivin’ around.
 
Considered the tread
On the tires and wed
  The grooves to the tread as they speed
Over the grid
And at fifty-five did,
  The Lone Ranger theme play indeed.
 
Short-lived it would be
Alas, for you see,
  The neighbors who lived by the way,
Were disturbed by the song
When the cars streamed along
   To officials soon voiced their dismay.
 
So they paved the road smooth,
The neighbors to soothe,
  So the highway now sounds like the rest;
Horns that are blaring,
Brakes squealing unsparing,
  Thanks to the neighbor’s protest.

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Time to caucus
Gather ‘round
Politicians
Near abound.
 
Four states north
In diners found
Politicians
Standin’ ‘round.
 
Shakin’ hands
And babies kiss
Trash opponents
Boo and hiss
 
Vote for me
It’s time for change
I’ll shake it up
And rearrange
 
Represent
The people’s will
Guaranteed
Your dreams fulfill.
 
Many tempted
Fewer try
One succeeds
All will lie

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There lives in the city, Christina -
Jilted in love’s big arena.
  She had her a beau
  Who, wouldn’t you know,
Moved in with a girl named Regina.
 
Christina, soon after he’d bed her
Without an intention to wed her,
  He’d not call again
  To return where he’d been,
Thus bitter the memories he fed her. 
 
Aware of his new love Regina,
Vengeful grew thoughts of Christina.
  She found a new guy
  To assist her and try
To savage the feral hyena.
 
A branding iron fashioned from steel
For them held a certain appeal.
  They captured the guy
  That made Christie cry
Then heated the iron with zeal.
 
Like the cows of the old wild west,
They brandied a ‘R’ on his chest.
  A lesson he’ll learn,
  They said as they burned,
The lover she’d come to detest. 
 
Christina’s been sentenced to jail,
Most certainly grow thin and pale.
  Five years in a cell,
  It’s seems that her hell
Outweighs his by measure and scale.

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There’s a new cone
That you’ve got to try;
That’s gaining some ground
On the ice cream you buy.
 
Aunt Bessie’s a van
That she drives around town
With a bell and a whistle
While dressed like a clown.
 
Selling her cones
To the people who stop
To purchase her snack
Then lick from the top.
 
Fostered in England,
The base in a cone
That’s typically like
A Dairy Queen’s own.
 
Filled is the cone
With bangers and mash,
Topped with some peas 
And some gravy they splash.
 
An artery clogger,
To be certain and sure,
But delicious to eat
And an appetite cure.
 
They’re lining up faster
Than bees to a hive,
To drip ‘em and lick ‘em,
Her business does thrive. 
 
An ugly concoction,
This feast in a cone,
But the flavor elicits
A satisfied groan.

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They’ve got the tax pens out again
And you and I will pay
A lot more than we’re payin’ now
To go along our way.
 
Mr. Corzine’s got a plan
Restructuring the tolls
Along the many roads we drive
To balance budget goals.
 
Beginning in two thousand ten
The tolls will rise by half
Every four years from that point,
He says on our behalf.
 
To ride the Turnpike stem to stern
Will cost you forty bucks;
And that’s just for a car like yours,
It’s much more for the trucks.
 
His plan won’t start until he’s gone,
Coward that he is;
Someone else will get the blame,
Although the plan is his.
 
They spend much more than they collect
And rather than reduce
Expenditures they tax us more
And ever less produce.

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There lives a cruel man named Aragon,
With a couple of kids - a girl ‘n son;
  Divorced from his wife
  Who’d begun a new life,
Their marriage now over and done.
 
After visiting days with their father,
He was taking them back to their mother.
  When suddenly stuck
  He became with his truck
Himself, his kids and another.
 
Ten miles from mom in a snow drift,
The temperature freezing and he’s miffed,
  Told the daughter and son,
   ‘Start walking or run,’
Then setting them loose and adrift.
 
He freed the truck then from its bearing,
Headed back to his home without caring
  What’d became of the two
  Little children he knew
Insufficiently dress in their wearing.
 
By morning the boy was found wandering,
Incoherently stumbling and pondering;
  The daughter uncovered
  In snow dead discovered -
Lost due to Aragon’s squandering.

He pounded his head on the table,
His composure to keep he’s unable
  As the judge read the charge
  The burden too large,
The father reduced to unstable.
 
Described by his family as caring,
Enjoying his children and sharing
  Their ups and their downs,
  Their smiles and their frowns,
Now just a father despairing.
 
His judgment apparently lacking,
When he sent both his kids off a-packing;
  His intentions were good,
  And he thought that they would
Arrive at their mother’s unpacking.
 
Comprised is his brain but of doubt,
He suffers intellectual draught;
   Many lives wrecked,
  Charged with murder, neglect,
It’ll be many a year ‘til he’s out.

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Out in Pasco, Washington,
Host to chronic fog,
A couple needing company
Bought themselves a dog
 
Clifford soon would learn his name
And come when they would call;
He loved to play and run around
And jump to fetch a ball.
 
Enjoying what the countryside
Can offer to a dog,
Clifford ran through fields and streams,
And hunted in the bog.
 
Sunday night when he’d returned
To sit in hearth and home,
Clifford carried in his teeth
A scalp that you could comb.
 
The owners took one look and thought
This scalp with reddish hair,
Looked to be the scalp of one
Quite likely like the pair.
 
They telephoned the constable
Who’d soon confirm their thought –
A human scalp their dog had found
And to their home had brought.
 
A sign that this could not be good
For one who owned the scalp;
Who likely when were dispossessed
Had let out quite a yelp.
 
So now in Pasco, Washington
They seek the topless soul
Who’d once possessed a head of hair
When once their head was whole.

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There once was a fellow named Mikey,
Blessed was he with a warped psyche.
  He collected young boys
  As one might some toys,
And dressed he in a T-shirt and Nikes.
 
He dabbled in chemical matter,
Was versed in vernacular patter.
  Frenetically wired,
  The man never tired,
He endlessly babbled and chattered
 
Attempting to locate his center,
He sought out new drugs that could enter
  His blood stream and brain,
   Derail thought’s train,
And become Mikey’s spiritual mentor.
 
In pursuit of a Siamese twin
That would fuse with his acne-pocked skin,
  A new drug he’d test,
  So a bit he’d ingest
Of a fungus they called psilocybin.
 
Mikey on mushrooms dissolving,
Apoplectically soon was evolving.
  Bouncing off walls
  Through the doorways and halls
While errors in his checkbook resolving.
 
Erratic was his disposition,
But for him not a trip of transition.
  The observers concurred
  That the trip that occurred
Had altered not Mikey’s condition.

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