“My poor world!” I want to say, as I sit here surrounded by abundance. We’re poor until we aren’t and then sitting in a room full of gold like Scrooge’s Money Bin we wonder why the gold isn’t at least one foot deeper so we could move our diving board one foot higher and get that extra adrenaline rush as we free-fall further into the abundance for which we are never quite grateful enough.
We hit the pile of gold like a ton of bricks (Family Guy did a cutaway about that— great minds…). We aren’t made of feathers like Scrooge McDuck, so we platz and break all our bones when we intended to dive in and swim through, sensuously.
There is this riddle about what weighs more:
a pound of gold or a pound of feathers. A pound is a pound unless you’re talking about the pound of flesh that hit the unforgiving gold.
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.
View all posts by M. Ashley
2 thoughts on “A Pound of Gold (poetry)”
Yes, caution is needed because it’s not like a canary in a coal mine. Throwing canaries in there won’t prove anything. I haven’t had that problem. My vault has rhodium ball bearings so the gold coins slide around like wheels. When I need to buy another gold-dusted chocolate brioche ginger-bread house, I have the fungible children bring some of the rhodium to a catalytic converter factory that supplies trucks for the truculent Willie Bloggers Chocolate Factory for Wayward Children. Unfortunately, Hansel and Gretel became rich selling their story and now train teams of orphan children to steal catalytic converters.
In Pittsburgh, on the site of the Homestead Massacre is an amusement park. In that amusement park, a haunted coal mine ride. The last thing you see beside the rickety track before you descend into a mine is a canary hanging upside down. At some point in history, not too long ago, that was terrifying.
M. N. Ashley 
Yes, caution is needed because it’s not like a canary in a coal mine. Throwing canaries in there won’t prove anything. I haven’t had that problem. My vault has rhodium ball bearings so the gold coins slide around like wheels. When I need to buy another gold-dusted chocolate brioche ginger-bread house, I have the fungible children bring some of the rhodium to a catalytic converter factory that supplies trucks for the truculent Willie Bloggers Chocolate Factory for Wayward Children. Unfortunately, Hansel and Gretel became rich selling their story and now train teams of orphan children to steal catalytic converters.
LikeLike
In Pittsburgh, on the site of the Homestead Massacre is an amusement park. In that amusement park, a haunted coal mine ride. The last thing you see beside the rickety track before you descend into a mine is a canary hanging upside down. At some point in history, not too long ago, that was terrifying.
LikeLiked by 1 person