We are not the arsonists of August nor the fire-pushing winds of pre-fall. We are the burnt black hills of November in the hot, short shadow of which we gather our families in thanksgiving that from us the doomed young grasses of March will grow to blue the sky for a month and draw foreign shepherds here to graze their great flocks of bell-ringing lambs.
I am an essayist and poet. My work has been rejected by some of the finest journals in America. Fortunately, it also gets accepted from time to time and has appeared in equally fine journals such as Word Riot, Inlandia, Brew City Magazine, and SageWoman, among others.. In 2002, I won the Academy of American Poets Prize for Vanderbilt University.
For no good reason, I possess an unnecessarily dark humor which is why being third generation California Inland Empirian delights me so. My gods are weird. I once won $350 for writing a smartassed essay on “why the wise use of water is important in my daily life”. I am undoubtedly the Greek god Hermes’ special snowflake. I’m pretty sure I got into college via a series of fortuitous clerical errors.
When I had to grow up and get a real job, I decided against it and stayed a writer. I have worked many odd—and I mean odd—jobs to support my habit: PR writer for country music hopefuls, resume massager, WalMart fitting room attendant and switchboard operator, and telephone psychic, just to name a few.
I am also albino. That's why my psychic gifts are so strong. I traded in my pigment for magical foresight, because that's how it works. It gets all technical. Trust me. That's totally how it works.
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6 thoughts on “Children of a Fallen Desert Empire (poetry)”
The foreign shepherds, apparently, are thankful that they can leave their families to live a solitary existence in a mountain shack with a sheepdog and a video tape. Tragic grasses are very versatile: they once started a range war between the sheepherders the the cattlemen. The sheep eat the grass close to the ground so that cattle couldn’t eat them. Either way grasses don’t grow tall. There are songs however: “Blue skies, nothing but blues skies|nothing but blue skies from now on. ” and “home, home on the range| where never is heard a discouraging word| and the skies are not cloudy all day.” It sounds a little like the dry humor of Rumi and the gods. I think it was a TV show in the ’50’s for the ’49ers and the golden oldies on the radio.
I once had a Hungarian pen friend who was at university for civil engineering. Around finals time, he wrote me several forlorn letters about how he wished he could run away and become a shepherd so he could drink wine with his dog and be with the “sheeps.” No mention of a video tape, but it would have likely been Batman. “I am hard like Batman” he once wrote me (referring to his emotional toughness).
I heard that they let a sheep mother raise a sheepdog puppy so that it will grow up not wanting to eat a lamb. I am sheepish when it comes to spelling but sometimes the god of spell-check betrays me and it still doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know the difference between “to, too, and two.” When two moose become sheepish they’ll never become one even if the Lord is their shepherd.
M. N. Ashley 
The foreign shepherds, apparently, are thankful that they can leave their families to live a solitary existence in a mountain shack with a sheepdog and a video tape. Tragic grasses are very versatile: they once started a range war between the sheepherders the the cattlemen. The sheep eat the grass close to the ground so that cattle couldn’t eat them. Either way grasses don’t grow tall. There are songs however: “Blue skies, nothing but blues skies|nothing but blue skies from now on. ” and “home, home on the range| where never is heard a discouraging word| and the skies are not cloudy all day.” It sounds a little like the dry humor of Rumi and the gods. I think it was a TV show in the ’50’s for the ’49ers and the golden oldies on the radio.
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I once had a Hungarian pen friend who was at university for civil engineering. Around finals time, he wrote me several forlorn letters about how he wished he could run away and become a shepherd so he could drink wine with his dog and be with the “sheeps.” No mention of a video tape, but it would have likely been Batman. “I am hard like Batman” he once wrote me (referring to his emotional toughness).
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I heard that they let a sheep mother raise a sheepdog puppy so that it will grow up not wanting to eat a lamb. I am sheepish when it comes to spelling but sometimes the god of spell-check betrays me and it still doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know the difference between “to, too, and two.” When two moose become sheepish they’ll never become one even if the Lord is their shepherd.
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But shall they want?No sweat giving up moose union if my desire for moose union has been shepherded away. By the Lord, no less!
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Give me my praise
I shall not be wanted
Humble is praise in the valley
where the lambs are abundant; I do
not need to want for chops, and
I’d have no need for stewing.
Give me my paprika, the
shepherdess is at the barbecue
My staff, they comfort me not, for
an office gives me my unjust humor;
though cross, I’d let them
humor me well and lead me
to cross the river Styx into Egypt
and find my sticks, no carrots
Loquaciousness
do not fail me now, for
I must be at a gate of Heaven
to explain my case splayed out
in the verbosity of the century, yea
I come to praise Caesar and myself in kind
Tell me Caesar is there
and I am ubiquitous in
the quadrillion words of praise.
~~ Meadow of Doom, Douglas Gilbert
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I am dazzled, especially, I must say, by the casual dash of paprika. Hungarian Hard-as-Batman is grateful for the lordly shoutout.
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