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Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Sleep snapped its fingers all night,
but refused for a moment to alight.
Snichy-snatchy promises made,
but not meant and not kept.
Awareness - a balloon pushing
the head into grotesque shapes
thin enough to see through,
too flexible to squeeze away...
the riots of thought and remembrance.

4:00 AM
Ugly time, when reality
is caught in the headlight glare of reason;
refuses to be molded into something
rounded and melded.
Something less likely to flense our minds.
Ever happen to you??
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Saturday.
He fondles his roses
as little Beth walks by,
holding her mommy’s hand.
When mother and daughter
are up the street a bit,
he palpates petals,
lets thorn press into his crotch.

He is that nice old retired preacher
from the middle of the block.
He babysits Beth while her mommy
goes to the gym.

His predilections are private...
secret...
No one knows.
No one knows but little Beth...

and all the little girls before her.
Not everyone is who they seem and evil can live forever hidden.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Angie’s blind eyes wander aimlessly in their sockets,
one white as the belly of a snake, the other a pointless blue.
She has one dress she wears every day, and a cane that is
without tip and has lost most of its red paint.
In the building she has memorized even the pale illusions
well enough to scoot about without hesitation.
She likes no one.
She likes me.
Thinks she is JFK, talks of herself quite lucidly and with
deadly accurateness.
Found herself a spirit-lover, asked me to perform a
marriage ceremony for them. What the hell, it’s a sad
life with no one in it, although that does not apply to me,
who loves my self-imposed isolationism beyond reason.
I find a pretty stone broach, a stuffed teddy-bear holding a
red satin heart that says, “I love you…” and a doll with
ribbons in its hair - these were her dowry.
I say the words over my open Bible, inviting blasphemy
to call out my name.
Now, she has become a Velcro-shadow.
When I am ill her zeal to cure me is fanaticism incarnate.
Foolish woman, I - who chose her own path to trod,
but along the way tripped over a crippled bird that is sure
to peck me to death.
True story - as are most of my works
Sherry Asbury Jun 2015
He walks the streets and haunts the clubs.
He is a vampire on the prowl for prey.
This bloodsucker can face the sun
and prowl during the light of the day.

What he does is prey on the lonely and weak.
Homely women, lonely woman seeking love.
He is a sociopath, a psychopath with no
conscience or need to look to heaven above.

He hurts, he cheats, he cons, he steals...
with his charming face and phony smile...
Does not even realize his evil...
thinks women should succumb to his style.

He leaves them drained of worse than blood,
he ***** away their precious hopes and dreams.
Leaves them dead and dying when he through,
and only their mirrors hear their screams.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Your long neck twists itself
into a graceful question mark.
Tall as a man your legs
carry you to waters where you feed.
Sloughs and ponds - even the
occasional drainage ditches.
You lend an elegance to the world.
You do not destroy or plunder,
but snack on fishy delights
taken up in your sword of a bill.
Blue heron, thrive.
Your estuaries and flood plains
are disappearing as civilization
populates the earth.
Pragmatists take the world as it is.
Lovers of animals sorrow
that one day you will be extinct.
What do you add to this world?
You are not a shopping mall
or housing development.
What you do is add grace
and beauty to our world,
making it a more beautiful
place to live.
Progress sounds sensible and necessary - but we will lose the wonders of our world without caring for the inhabitants that the brain-dead consider extendable.
Sherry Asbury Jun 2015
I am not speaking for others, but for myself
when I want to escape, I take a book off my shelf.
Engrossed in its pages, captured by its tale,
I can be a princess grand or on a ship a-sail.

Walls no longer form my boundaries..
inside a book I can be just who and what I please.
Boredom does not live there, fingers do not drum,
as I listen to bird wings beat or hear a guitar strum.

This world sometimes fails to be a very nice place,
but one can always find a book about a special place.
Or we can learn about those who have gone before,
perhaps setting foot on a moon-flung shore.

A book is a special friend who welcomes us inside,
offering an adventure or just a place to hide.
Books take us away from the mundane and ordinary
as they open up and share with us their story.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
He made me sell my books.
I wanted words - he wanted dope.
All my lovely volumes were packed
in boxes one day when I
came home from work.

He never took me anyplace.
But he took me to Powell's
to sell my Shakespeare collection,
my John Donne, all the Emily Dickenson -
and my cherished Edgar Allan Poe...
all the musty, strange old books
I had lovingly hoarded -
many first editions.

Next he took me to a used book store
where my paperbacks could be traded
for stacks of westerns he would be
too high on crank to read.

Now my books live in the closet.
Safe...hidden, like Jews in a Warsaw Ghetto,
or runaway teenage girls in abandoned buildings.

It has been five years.
Perhaps soon I will get a bookcase
and let them out to stand beside my chair.
Books to me are living things to be cherished.
Sherry Asbury Jun 2015
Slowly around me senses slip away.
One by one they succumb to the fates.
Self-hatred has engulfed me at last,
beyond my capability to care.
I loose my bowels into the nothingness
that soon will become the kingdom
where my feces-encrusted corpse
will slowly rot - releasing my responsibility.
Sherry Asbury Jun 2015
Slowly around me senses slip away.
One by one they succumb to the fates.
Self-hatred has engulfed me at last,
beyond my capability to care.
I loose my bowels into the nothingness
that soon will become the kingdom
where my feces-encrusted corpse
will slowly rot - releasing my responsibility.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Someone is new in the building,
I can smell the bacon.
It is a feather teasing my nose.
Will they have coffee and toast?
Is there strawberry jam?

I can remember eating bacon,
crisp, salty crunches of meat
that I can no longer afford.
Get old, my friend,
live on disability and bacon is
a mere memory.

Sometimes I pretend
I am a vegetarian,
but I have no proper teeth
that will grind things
to my need.

There is a desiccated cantaloupe
sitting like a ****** queen
on the counter by the door,
calling to me - waiting for my
sharpest spoon to scoop
its insides hollow.
I play games with time...
stretching out the moments,
for once it is gone...

Being poor is an honor.
It is a state of grace.
Littlest things become
treasures to our day.

At the market I sigh in awe
of one mold-ridden tomato,
bruised and ruined, but at
a price I can almost afford.
70% of elderly poor are malnourished
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Butterfly

A gray, decaying cocoon
lies snug up against
a Sunday plate-glass window.
All that can be seen
is the jeans-covered ****
of some homeless person.
Charity blankets never
cover everything at once.
At the edges
of the chrysalis is
a banner from some parade,
wrapped like a royal-blue
winding cloth.
What emerges as
the sun floats high, could
hardly be called a butterfly.
It is the old man who
sits, nodding, by a square
of cardboard, hand out for change.
His unfurled banner lies, catching
breezes nearby.
His old gray blanket bleeds
his stink into the street.
He waits for the hour
when he can can bind himself
to his bottle, squirming back
into his corner.
I see these people every day.  They become background noise in a silent agony.
Sherry Asbury Aug 2015
Butterfly

A gray, decaying cocoon
lies snug up against
a Sunday plate-glass window.
All that can be seen
is the jeans-covered ****
of some homeless person.
Charity blankets never
cover everything at once.
At the edges
of the chrysalis is
a banner from some parade,
wrapped like a royal-blue
winding cloth.
What emerges as
the sun floats high, could
hardly be called a butterfly.
It is the old man who
sits, nodding, by a square
of cardboard, hand out for change.
His unfurled banner lies, catching
breezes nearby.
His old gray blanket bleeds
his stink into the street.
He waits for the hour
when he can bind himself
to his bottle, squirming back
into his corner.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Charade

“Stand behind me now,”
I tell the charcoal scarecrow.

Bony fingers tap, trying to refract me
into my darkest madness.

In the dusty silence, trying
to supplant me, is a madwoman.

They won’t know - I hide myself
within myself.

My Kabuki face stands in for me.
Ghost worms wind themselves around me,
trying to pull me from my cherished space.

Never let them see you are crazy -
or they will expect it all the time.
Sherry Asbury Aug 2015
Born of cosmic particles of light
she is beauty beyond imagining.
When she clasps her hands
in contemplation, suns are born,
the moon rides high on her shoulders.
Diviner of the universe, boundless
power born of the goodness
that encompasses all and endless.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
I wrote poetry tonight of sunsets and ponds,
worthless topics in light of the state of the world.
Just ended a hospital stay...needed to be mellow.
But this godawful earth gives me the heebie jeebies.
Forced confinement that came with cable t.v.
I wallowed in insanity and stupidity that seemed
                  to have no freakin end
We are teetering on so many brinks, but what was on?
A series about a guy makes a chain of hamburgers
on the family name...
Watched them play on a lawn big enough to choke a goat,
swim in their waterfall pool and frolic in designer clothes.
A series about mansions that cost millions of dollars
and could each house the homeless population of this town.
     Freaking carbon combat boot prints.
Worked all my life.
Me and my three cats struggle - disability does not

               buy mansions!

The world in on a precipice so **** scary
God himself can’t tip it back.

Korea, Iran and all those Isis ******* that put
bullets in the heads of six year-old boys.

And they show wanton consumption - reckless regard
for the land - don’t tell me they earned their money
and deserve to have obscene disregard for others.

When the rich have to  pay their fair share...
when life is equitable and no one goes hungry
or sick
or without education...

Then maybe it won’t be so sickening.
The Mahatma said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
Sherry Asbury Jun 2015
Most days I do not give it
room in my head, ignorance
makes things easier, momentarily.
It is in the absence of distraction,
when all is quiet and still
that it floods my being, my soul,
and sends cold shivers down my
spine...  I have so few years left
to me.
I have spent the others like pennies
found in my pockets, not cherished
or beloved.
Now they trickle away, leaving
me more barren than before.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
They came to Auschwitz and Treblinka...
they tore down the walls that confined us.
How we wept with joy as the SS officers
were taken away - we spit in their path,
those of us still able to call up sputum
from lungs tortured with malnutrition
and iron beds that bore no blankets
for our bones.

My sleeves are covering the number
they burned into my arm, taking away
my humanity and rendering me nothing.
A young soldier takes my arm,
kisses the hated brand;
he has tears in his eyes as he
tells me he is from Texas...there are
no other words he can pull from his
young, shocked brain.

When you see this picture -
remember these words:
“All it takes for evil to flourish
is for good men to do nothing”.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
It was such a little plate,
fragile as a flower.
It gave me peace
to sit and gaze at it by the hour.
It had a chip, but then,
people have chips too -
ones that can't be repaired
with the strongest glue.
My hands would tremble
when I picked it up.
Somewhere along the way
I had broken the matching  cup,
leaving me with a single plate
to love and treasure.
Old hands shake with pain.
I dropped it on the floor,
shattering it too badly to repair.
Someday someone will discover
when I have died...
a tattered old envelope
with my broken plate inside.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
I stand frozen in the darkness
as I stare into my mirror lit by moonlight...
barely able to believe - my old age is near.
See those wrinkles; see each shadow and dent.
Please, someone tell me where my years
of living went...
No pleasure do I find in platitudes
about golden years.
It is real and it is here with all its agonies
and tears.
How sad she is - old woman whose years
have passed her by.
She refuses to tint her hair - no white lies...
It is right there in the face that used to
be pretty and unlined.

Live your life before your days
are trinkets you can’t find.
Live like it  is your last day
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Pulling her cardboard
with a filthy, ragged string...
she searches.
No corner is her own.
There is nowhere
she belongs.

Sometimes the cardboard
catches a breeze, sails up
to smack her in the back of her legs.

But life has smacked her
so many times - she does not
notice anymore.

There is little hope for a clean place,
but dry sure would be nice.
Her bones sing in the night air,
a chorus of hungry wolves.

The cough in her chest
is thick with illness;
her feet are crippled stubs.

She can not remember if she is very old,
or young as a chick.

She wanders - sure  of this...
she is cold and hungry and has
no place to rest her head.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
hypnotize

What did I see in him?
How did he hypnotize?
Then he was my hero
with his brown-green eyes.

Eyes that told a thousand lies.

I was not young and foolish,
I was just foolish as a clown.
Obeying every edict and order
for those hypnotic eyes of brown.

Soon it became push and shove,
with me the victim every time.
Fewer the hours that were happy,
fewer still those that were sublime.

Then came the fists to control me,
and I died a bit with each episode.
No longer was I a strong woman
with a stand on my own feet code.

For years I let him beat me
and get pleasure from my cries...
Oh, yes, this pathetic man knew
he had me - had me hypnotized.

Now I am alone, left him all alone.
It has taken twenty years for me
to break the ties, to rise up again
and live as a “Woman Free”.

Never let another take your soul,
never let them bind you and hypnotize,
for all you will ever do is wither as
as you listen to their selfish lies.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Memories hunker behind
a door marked “Blessed Oblivion”.
The key is under the mat.
To crack one open and peek
inside would be
a foolish flagellation.

Secrets simmer in cannibal pots,
lids held down by tenuous fingers.
Some truths deserve to be buried.
Some memories must be held
as closed as a spinster’s knees.

Doors opened less than judiciously
trigger popping puppets that scream.
A mind is only as strong
as its most heinous memory.

Some minds are olios, badly stirred,
their orts floating in a brine of insanity
that needs a pinch of salt.
Reality paints itself as a circus clown,
and changes the rules of life
without warning...
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Raw irony laces its high-top shoes
and laughs at me with a cynical sneer.
Dark dances are in my head -
Others, so normal...all of them...not me.
Not me, never me, is not me.
Upon my back is a pack of sorrows.
Secret wishes are scars that run up and down
my arms from self-mutilation.
Taught not mercy or kindness,
yet they live within my being...sparing him.
I can no longer sing - he crushed my throat.
I hobble on a hip that will never heal.
Buddha says, “All life is suffering”.
The injuries are well-known friends
who come to visit; come to stay.
But the thoughts inside my head -
where no one can see...these worry me.
He left me nothing, not even my innocent
kindness, for I have killed him
a hundred times in my mind...will **** him
a hundred times a hundred -
and he will not be dead, but I will have
the stain on my humanity even after
I know he is well and truly dead.
I, the murderer of the heart.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Island of Exile

In the sweet cool darkness
of my barren and lonely room,
Neil Diamond sings for me,
weaving silken beauty
from my gloom.
Cherished sanctuary
where the world
is an unwelcome stranger.
Wanting only peaceful fantasies
to caress me when day is done.
Living in a dream world
is not insane.
Reality is callous minds
who display only contempt
and empty hearts to
bully their way through another day.
Their is no kindness -
no one cares about more than
their place.
Puppets to the god of being “one”
they never look each other
in the face.
Not all their pills or pleadings
will make me walk out that door.
I will sit in my blessed aloneness
and plug my ears against their
meaningless roar.
Being one's own self is the best revenge.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
One step closer to spring,
but still bitter winter.
Deserted playgrounds
and parks are seas
of mud and slush.

An umbrella with
no guiding hand
circles across the street,
as oozing hail pounds
out its melody on its ribs.

Wind is invading the dreary quiet
with its voice of doom.
In a vacant lot stands
a crippled truck that lost
its footing on a patch of black ice.

Lucky ones are home,
roasting their limbs by a fireplace
with its yellow bundle of flames.
Soup in mugs - marshmallow
on burnt sticks.

A sudden downpour sends the rope
on the flagpole whipping discordant clangs.

Coats on racks drip puddles on the floor,
galoshes stand side by side in soldierly rows.

Soggy earth is a sponge that ***** shoes
into its void.

Nature weeping in the howling morass
finds no quiet moment.
Thought a winter poem might relieve some of this heat.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Benevolent Jester

Capering dervish spin me around...
free my feet from solid ground.
Delight entangled with despair,
coaxing me deeper into its lair.
Hold close your mask of gayety
that no eyes your dark evil will see.
Wear his face to taunt my heart,
making me regret out being apart.
Secret truths shall stay unspoken,
for t’was more than heart was broken.
Bones will heal, though not well...
heart will dance forever in hell.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
I have often bent my head
to rest on a pillow, not linen
and feathers, but concrete
and small squalid stones.

Like the breath of
a thousand butterflies,
a little wind has covered
my exposed and tested bones.

My lips have often whispered
in God’s ear, and He has
answered with a bit of stale bread.

Now I sit quietly in corners
listening to the gossip of honeybees,
whose wings are translucent
in an August sun.

I watch my skin grow thin and fragile
as sheets of onion-skin or the wings of moths.

It has been a journey - harrowing
and flush with revelation, leaving me
gaping at the wonder of it all.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
You grabbed my nose with your fingers,
the way adults tease children with the game.

But you were not playing games - were you?

You knew a hundred ways to inflict pain
without leaving bruises - with no visible
proof of your abuse.

There was the time you knuckle-knocked
me in the thigh - I could not walk for a week.

You did it because you loved me, you said,
to help me learn not to be so stupid and aggravating.

Sure would have been nice if you had not
loved me quite so much.
I was beaten and abused for ten years.  I loved my husband and wanted to pull him up - instead - he pulled me down into his sewer.
Watch who you are drawn to...
Sherry Asbury Aug 2015
Melvin’s Hat


Melvin’s hat was blue,
it smelled of tobacco
and rode close to his ears.
Kept the evil thoughts out.
Kept the evil thoughts  in...
even pon a hell-hot July day,
on a Tri-Met bus going uptown,
Melvin wore his hat.
He rolled his own cigarettes,
leaky confections that
shed  onto his black skin
like dandruff.
He struck his matches
on the **** of his jeans.
Melvin had two teeth;
yellow commas
on each side of a leathery smile.
Two boys got on the bus.
They snatched Melvin’s hat
right  off his head...got off
and set it on fire.
Two boys as black as him!
They ran, those bad boys.
One ran under the wheels
of a 1989 Pontiac, green.
Sirens screamed.
Horns honked.
People panicked.
Melvin’s feet burned
like holy fire.

He had to hurry.
He had to be quick.

He had to find another  hat
before any more evil thoughts
leaked out and killed more boys.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
It is a sky of ice scattered on velvet,
spreading its soft, dense blanket
up and to the edges of the universe.
Moon - a mirror for the gods to peer into,
reflecting slices of light that shine.
Treetop fingers write shadowy messages
across the silence of night.
Still as breath held in anticipation,
the night huddles and hovers over all.
Soft winds sing a lullaby to the ears
of all who are awake to hear its tune.
Earth sighs deeply in pleasure
and spins on its stick with rhythm.
Such beauty as this night, wasted
for the lack of eyes to appreciate.
I love night - but live in large city and cannot go out.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Old Father folds himself
into a corner of the doorway.
His cardboard bed is new,
has not yet begun to carry
the soak of his sweat
or the brine of his old *****.
It is a beauty - he guards
the box with a ferocity
only seen from those
who own nothing but what
they can carry.

Old Father sits like a monk,
quiet and contemplative.
His gimme-cap is a dirt ground halo.
The blanket of his beard
gives a sense of warmth against
nights too feral and bitter
for a man of sixty-eight years.
His breath sketches pictures
onto the air, and, like fog,
they drift away.

Sleep well Old Father,
on your cardboard bed, on the cement
of that doorway where dreams
are dusty shadows that become
ice-rimed memories.
So many people homeless, as the rich step over them...grumbling about their presence.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
A covey of old men
perch on a concrete park bench.
Their wattled bob - their heads nod.
It is warm enough to be without shirts,
and they watch the young men who are -
remembering when they could.
They are too aged to wolf-whistle,
dry lips peel in the light of day;
but they appreciate every curve and *****.
Pecking at morsels of life, they spend
the hours of their afternoons.
They gather at the park to smoke and spit and cuss  out whoever is on their list for the day.
Sherry Asbury Aug 2015
Crabbed old feet,
imprisoned
in shoes too small,
too ***** and too red.
A bit of music escapes
from some trendy cafe
and she dances
in the wailing cold.
She remembers
when she was pretty.
She remembers
being young.

Now a ***** veil
of fears drifts
as she finds her
old age has begun.
She is worn down,
worn out, ****** dry
by the pain every
woman knows.
The laughing mouth
of the grave waits
to welcome her home
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Crabbed old feet - imprisoned
in shoes too small, too *****
and too red.
A bit of music escapes
from some trendy café,
she dances in the wailing cold.
She remembers when
she was pretty.
She remembers being young.

Now a ***** wall
of fears drifts as she finds
her old age has begun.

She is worn down, worn out
by the pain every old woman knows.
The laughing mouth of the grave
waits to welcome her home.
This from a series of poems about old women finding their place in the world as they fade.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
She shuffles purposely, eyes down,
seeing only that path her veiny legs mark out.
A broken old toy on a frayed string.

Flesh of her feet squeezed past
the boundaries of her sneakers.
Pitted, marshmallow feet that have traded
high heels and sheer hose for sweat sox.
She wears three pairs...all she has -
trading them each day.

She swims against the tide, determined
to make her way - to remember her destination.
Her green Book of the Month bag is clutched
to the fray of her coat...everything she has
and is - is in that bag.

Her eyes play peek-a-boo with the sun.
Images flit on her retina, frightening her
to jump; some shadow-shape approaches...
she flies apart, afraid and confused,
helpless to regain her route from memory.

The place she goes is not the place
she wants to be, but it is such a long trip home...
if she could remember where home is.
The plight of women on the streets is sad to behold.  Where is there a place for them>
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Old women are forgotten wombs
whose graceless bodies have fed the world,
then been sent to sit in its shadows...
not quite seen, unacknowledged
and without nurture.

Old women are crucified with the nails
of oppression and poverty.
Invisibility swallows them when
age freckles out-number the fresh
patches of youth.

Old women have scarred and calloused
knees from kneeling in submission to
lesser minds that felt bigger for the
looking down.

A rosary of sorrows is strung through
the weary fingers of old women.
They are hung on the crucifix of youth
and beauty to wither into dust.

Old women have crabbed and ruined toes
from shoes worn too long - that a child
might have new ones.
Alone in cubicles or corners, frayed photos
beneath their coats, old women remember
children that have long forgotten them.

Old women do not seek a man’s arms...
for that is not a refuge, but a honeyed trap
where souls are flayed and burned.

Old women talk to themselves because
no  one else has ears to hear, or words to share.
Even their echoes are faint and whispered.

Such wondrous minds...libraries of living life,
vision and experience...left untouched because
they are not behind a pretty face.

Behold the woman....she is a wealth of wisdom
and power, beauty and courage - to those
wise enough to touch her power.

Her reckoning will come...

Until then - she endures.
From a series of poems written about old women not fortunate enough to have the wealth or stamina to keep themselves fashionable.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Old women eat curb-side blackberries
honeyed with dust and car exhaust.
They are stained with berries...
black birth marks.

They are never satiated.

They dare the dragonflies of metal
for the taste of juices provided by
a generous God.
Ground-fall pears are ambrosia
to old women who go to bed hungry.
Full bellies are a vague sizzle of memory.

Old women walk the earth
dropping bread crumbs to lead the next
Old Mother who needs to find her way..

A whiskey bottle thrown from the freeway
grazes the temple, to explode into
granular road-sugar.  She picks
stray pieces of amber from her hair...
just as delicately as she plucked berries
from their hairy, clawed vines.

Old women pray for darkness
so they can lie down, swaddled
in cardboard, wrapped in blankets of denial.

Old Women never surrender.  They endure.
Old women endure.
When my husband went to jail - leaving me alone...I wandered and existed on blackberries and ground fall pears. I was totally stupid about life...innocent and lost...lost my mind.  Now I encourage women to know abusers and leave them - and STAY GONE.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Scent of pine lingers
over the deep labyrinths
beneath the trees.
Black beetles bump chests
like Sumo wrestlers
as they try to avoid each other
in the warm scratch
of detritus dark with shade.
Baby snakes lace the meadow grass
where deep sunshine heats their cold bones.
A deep hush is suspended
by the erratic leaps of pond frogs.
One sails on a limb through
water yellow and noxious as nicotine.
The day carries  its own rhythms
and paints them on a peaceful canvas.
Where I would love to be.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Love has many faces...many guises.
Nature has many hidden secrets and places.
Penelope rode the Swift Shadow
out of Chesapeake harbor, great sails
catching hands full of wind and pitching
them into the gleaming sheets - sending
the Shadow flying across the water.
She was not happy, even at the thunder
the voyage put in her heart.
At a far harbor awaited a man who had
petitioned her father for her hand in wedlock.
A painting of the proposed groom had been sent.
Penelope’s father was pleased, but she saw
in the muted colors, a pale, vapid appearing youth
with slightly crossed eyes - she wept in her room.

For three days the mighty sailing ship ate up miles
of sameness...blue water with no land in sight.
On the fourth day a fierce storm kicked up the waters.
The ship swayed and mightily fought to keep its keel.
But at last the sea won the battle and threw the ship
to its secret deeps, where bodies were held down
by watery hands.
Penelope found her heavy skirts pinning her
beneath the insistent waves - she knew she would drown.
Suddenly hands grabbed her, held her close and lips
closed on hers...giving her sweet breath to sustain.
When she opened her eyes she was in a cave where
a man...creature... stood before her.
He was not of the earth, but of the deepest sea.
A scream echoed from Penelope’s lips through
the cavernous space.
Touching her gently he told her his name was Sir Brine,
prince of his father Neptune’s kingdom...

And so, in the fullness of time, Penelope became a bride,
resplendent in sea foam and pearls...deeply in love with
the man who had rescued her from the sea - and her other fate.
Written to a picture I cannot share here, but can be found on
AllPoetry.com
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Small house
isolated, scabrous.
Chickens in the doorway,
half-naked children in the yard.

Never enough.
Gone before it gets there.

Echoes of laughter
mark the morning.

One child after another
darts inside to beg
a mother’s kiss.

Daddy swings his kids
round and round, throwing
them over his shoulder,
where they giggle with glee.

I guess they never read
the government pamphlet
that diagrams their
socio-economic space
at the bottom of society’s
pyramid.

Don’t need no pity here!
Happiness is a commodity that flexes with circumstance.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Fat little gray clouds
smear the sky.
Adjusting
to a comfortable position,
they settle in
and spend the day weeping.

Rain here is
soft and welcoming,
cold as ice sometimes,
but warm as a toasty spa
most of the time.

From my window
I see umbrellas that bob
like a *** boiling.
They weave in their
ceremonial dance.

Rain whispers secrets.
Rain reads fortunes.
Rain cleanses the sidewalks
and waters the roses.

Warm inside, one might think
the rain a kaleidoscope
of unsurpassed beauty.

Homeless Old Mothers and Fathers
find it tedious and hold soggy
papers over their heads as they
seek a dry spot to wait it out.

It rains all day - grab a comforter
where you can snuggle and dream.
we are having a drought and just had had a heat wave...so I dug this out to  whip up some moisture.
Sherry Asbury Aug 2015
I was just five years old,
and Montana springs can be very cold.
It was time to go hunting for some
poor creature, men with rifles bold.

Off we trekked to the Bitterroot Valley.
A line of cars and pickups a mile long.
Hunting camp set up by the men first.
Then the women with bustle strong.


Daddy led me by the hand to a place
where the water was knee deep
to a giraffe...but I had rubber boots with
a yellow ducky,  that never made a peep.

Suddenly adults were flying and crying,
running here and there in fearsome flight.
I did not understand what gave these folks
such a sudden and terribly awful fright.

Seems I stepped in a rattlesnake nest,
I thought they were cute little worms.
I wanted to get one for daddy’s fishing,
so I started to reach toward the squirms.

Now, baby rattlers can bite seriously,
but I had red boots with a yellow ducky,
and their furious little bites were not
able to bite, through boots...Lucky.

But those fingers reached out - well,
they were snatched by an aunt who wailed,
and no one told me why they were so tense,
to each other the story was detailed.

Innocent as lamb was I about those
reptiles that looked so cute and harmless.
I never knew my auntie had saved me
from being bitten and  being armless.





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Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Moonlight washes me
through the window.
Reaching out cupped hands,
I gather it...drink it...bathe my face.
Silky ablutions.
Moonbeams strike the silver in my hair,
throwing back a milky reflection.
For a moment I am a Goddess
instead of an old lady.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Minty mists float like saris
over the breast of low-lying hills.
Chaos is not found here,
only breezes, lovely and light.

A meadow in the foothills
where daisies and shamrocks grow
has just been liberated from
a long winter of ice and snow.

Butterflies swarm like snowflakes,
eater to begin life’s busy parade.
Nests and burrows - so much to do
before the flocks lay nest eggs.

Collage of colors is sent spinning.
All the air tastes like life and love.
Partners court each other happily
on the earth and in trees above.

Cycles and circles, this is the stuff of life.
New to replace the old, as it must be.
Dizzy dervishes of living spin around...
always something new to see.

Each season has its quantity of time
as the earth turns faithfully around.
All giving their time that life may
continue its melodic, fulfilling sound.
Our seasons come round so swiftly - enjoy each one.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Hours rise up and pop
like fuzzy bubbles of
newly-poured cola.
One minute, life-defining,
the next - pretty air
that tickles the nose.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Sister Sarah weaves the world
on her own loom...
she shades in no compromise.
She blinded by truth.
Blisters are rubbed onto her soul
as if by shoes too tight to leave
a breath of reasonable freedom.
Her gentle goodness shines
through the stain of her
exceptional abilities.
Sister Sarah smiles and the world
becomes a complex kaleidoscopic whirl.

Sister Sarah is a reward...
a tipping of the scales of justice.
Revere the "special people"  - they are the sane ones.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Oh, to be in my little room
where I can dream and sleep,
as up the pallet of my walls
shadow-brushes creep.
Lands and lives and lifetimes
appear and dance above my head.
Al the angels of heaven sing
and carry me to my bed.
With sleepy eye, the dreamer
watches as night becomes day...
a fiery hand throws the sun around
to chase the darkness away.
Shaking out the last bits of night
light wields its broom with glee,
sweeping every little place
where the night could play for me.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Manners

No one told me I was dead.
Rudely left me out of
their conversations.
When did I begin to guess?
When the coffin’s black lid
chewed up the last bit of light.

*********

Bonnets

nodding,
almost­ nuns
in their plastic
accordion
rain bonnets.
Old ladies.

*****

Moon

Now is night a gauzy curtain
blown by the breath of the moon.
Moon wears diamonds in her hair,
the sky preens and primps.
Secret destination...left unsaid...
gently calls out your name.
Just some little poems I found in folder...
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
How I laughed as you threw rocks into the river.
Your little hand lost each stone on the backward stroke;
you waited for the splash that never came - puzzled.
You learned to count by picking up sticks for the fire,
but then you would want different sticks...
and dump your yellow bucket and start all over again.
The day you climbed into the huge plastic tub
where the was was soaking...that memory lives on.
Like Lucy stomping grapes, you danced around.

Every night we would pray and snuggle like spoons
in our tiny tent.
I would sing “The Rose” and “Amazing Grace”
while you mimicked with your sweet half-sung sounds.
It has taken ten years for me to be able to say your name,
or write about you in my endless stream of poetry.
But it will be only in the endless death of eternity
that you will live somewhere other than my heart.
I pray for a heaven, wanting to have the hope
of holding you on some distant cloud as you
throw stars into the limitless sky.
I put these words down through streaming tears.  I had two granddaughters at two different points - their ******* up mothers took them away from me...both called me, Mama and thought I was.  Some things never heal.
Sherry Asbury Jul 2015
Morning melts and dribbles
through the blinds,
where it rests
in molten puddles on the floor.
If you are very still
you can hear the tap...tap
of its fingers as it
tries to seep under the door.
Afternoon is a
pyroclastic lava flow...
devouring each bit of flesh,
******* the breath
from laboring lungs...
melting flesh into tallow
for the candles of night,
to be lit upon
the sacrificial altar
of your tongue.
Hide  wherever you want -
go ahead, find a place.
Count to one hundred,
hands over hidden eyes;
childish giggles bubble
from your lips,
but it will find you,
no matter your disguise.
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