poem

 Oracle

There were pies hanging 

From the apple trees

And cookies swaying 

In the wheatfields

I'm always seeing things

Two or three steps ahead

There was a ring on your finger

When you were a little girl.

The first time we made love

Our child was telling us

To please keep it down.

And now I see the face

Of a tired old man

Tiptoeing around the edges

Of a hole in the ground. 

The house has gone silent

With everyone gone.

The boy in the backyard

Is on his way to the cemetery 

With his pretty young wife and baby son

With flowers to be laid 

At the foot of the stone

Marking the spot

I have always known

9/14/25

poem

 Inversion Table

I use an inversion table for my back

Even gravity is a therapy  

Like a thermal bath or the alpine air

Of a swiss sanatorium
The difference is the resistance

It takes to maximize its benefits

Which is how I prefer

To receive my natural cures.

When I go out in the sun

I cling to my pale skin

Like a novice to his virginity.

I meditate in the middle of active

Urban construction zones,

Take a couple sips of herbal tea,

Slosh it around, then spit it out.

At the spa it’s no touch massage

And a refusal to sweat in the steam room.

Sometimes I can make a cold plunge boil.

In bed, I listen to binaural beats

And see how long I can stay awake.

I fight everything every step of the way.

It’s resilience I’m after.

If you don’t fight it, you’ll fall.

Even love is a luxury good

That only heals once

It’s been first resisted. 

That’s why I pull away

When you reach for me 

And when I really need you 

I wander for a while 

Looking for you 

In all the places I know

You won't be.

That's how you know my love

Is strong.

9/14/25

poem

 End of Summer

Strange

It’s the last day of August

And unseasonably cool

The sky a soft endless blue,

A pool you could write on

With clouds like Ice Age continents

Seen from space,

Two planes lacing the open

Seas between them with fading thread.

The light is brassy.

Individual objects seem preternaturally

Distinct like reflections in polished steel. 

You could spend the rest of the day

On one single tree, its greens,

Its thousand hidden shadows,

Each leaf a thin slice of jade

Dancing with one several branches away.

I wish I hadn’t seen it.

It’s too much responsibility

For average men like me.

I’ll fail to depict it

Properly, let alone artfully,

Obscure it under an avalanche of wrong words.

(Even avalanche isn’t quite it)

I see now why some religions

Forbid its believers from saying

The quiet name of God out loud

 

9/14/25

poem

 Apprehended

I caught myself,

red-handed,

Trying to capture myself.

Sheepishly, I pleaded ignorance.

When that didn’t work

I put it all on myself—

Weren’t you hungry?

Haven't you ever felt loved?

The penalty for unauthorized attempted

acquisition

Is 25 years to life in a work house 

In a small town just on the outskirts 

Of international waters.

Here, you’re both the sheriff and the burglar

Tasked with trying to stop yourself from getting what you

covet.

To escape, just use the keys

Jangling from your waist.

That’s part of the job, too

9/14/25

poem

 Value Based Care

The hospital system has asked me to reconsider 

My use of a certain kind of scissor 

Given my volume, they claim that switching 

Brands could save the system thousands

But I say I don't care

I have my reasons—

I like the way it works, it’s weight in my hand.

Mostly I just like how it cuts.

But they want me to be a better steward

Of limited hospital resources

And to take on the role of ambassador

For conscious value creation.

I don't know what any of that means

Nor am I interested in finding out.

It sounds like capitalist realism.

Oh, you haven't read it? You should.

To summarize: someone hands you a knife

When you’re bleeding. They tell you

To swim while you’re drowning. 

I can barely afford the dawn

And evening is beyond my means.

If you save a dollar a day

By the end of your life

You’ll have enough to pay

For the bagpipes at your own funeral—

Don’t put that on your poor wife.

We all have a fiduciary responsibility to those

Strategically positioned to reap all the benefits.

The mesh reps are taking us out to the steakhouse for supper.

I’m an old-fashioned guy and even I never say supper

Each bite of this overcooked T-bone is a conflict

Of interest and has to be reported on the government website 

Even the side salad that came slathered in bitter onions. 

But I’m hungry and I’m tired of Graham crackers.

I don’t have anything to do with negotiated contracts

I just use whatever mesh is left on the shelf.

Like an out of touch billionaire I have

No idea how much everyday items here cost.

If you told me scalpel blades were 85 bucks

A piece, I’d think that seems crazy high but hey,

What do I know? What do I care? Somebody needs it. 

Now our bosses want us to do a "compassionate pause"

Before we start an operation

Because the well compensated consulting firm found

That performative acts of empathy 

Generate higher patient experience scores. 

You can’t have a hospital without reimbursements

Nothing in this America comes for free

The federal government says every life is worth $13.1 million

Which factors in metrics outside the notion of mere net worth

But if you have that much in the bank it means you're worth that much

If you write a poem, subtract 75 cents

Save a life, it’s a rounding error

When you retire you get a Citizen watch. 

8/25/25

poem

 Old Souls

Poets are all born old

Babies with old souls

Their best and deepest stuff

Slumbers unsaid, unwritten.

Everything that follows literacy 

Is second rate and derivative

Compared to the trove of desperate wails

They carry around from infancy. 

Some poets just get older and older

They run out of money and insurance benefits

Everyone they love dies. 

All they write are elegies 

Other poets age in reverse

The world increasingly becomes

More and more wondrous

Entire poems of only punctuation marks 

And then, finally, the magnum opus

Delivered just before birth—

A baby’s first laugh.

8/19/25

poem

 Don't Forget to Say Goodnight

You forgot to say goodnight.

I'm out in the streets in my pajamas

Looking everywhere for you.

I wanted to tell you that the poems

Of John Ashberry make a clattering 

Sound in my mind like someone 

Dropping a champagne flute 

On a stone floor during

A moment of silence recognizing

All the brave men and women who lost

Their lives during the siege 

On the citadel of final understanding.

So many good soldiers, lost.

Our heads were bowed

Only the birds outside made a sound 

Lips moved silently in prayer

And then it all shattered 

Which almost seemed deliberate 

As if God were warning everyone

We were starting to get too close

8/19/25

poem

 Imaginary Friend

When I was a boy I had an imaginary friend.

Mom was worried until someone told her

It meant I might be gifted.

His name was Nee Nee and of course

Everyone got a kick out of that.

Looking back I shouldn’t have told anyone his name

But I never meant to.

An adult overheard me whispering it out loud

While I was playing under the table. 

Who’s Nee Nee? She asked.  My friend, I said.

He was my very first friend, I guess,

And that one’s always real.

But other than his name I don’t remember anything else about him—

What we did, how we played, why I even liked him.

I sometimes wonder what became of him.

I’d try to track him down if I could

But I can’t for the life of me recall what he even looked like.

If he was a talking animal I suppose 

It was just his job, to go around from lonely boy to lonely boy

And he’s probably out there helping someone now.

If he was a mythical winged beast, albeit friendly and down to earth, 

Conjured from the ramparts of my inner sanctum

He’s probably dead by now, since I never fed him 

And everyone else would be afraid of him.

If he was a boy, like me, I imagine 

He went back to his life, grew up, got married,

Had a few kids and now sits around wondering

Whatever happened to his old pal

Jeff 

8/19/25

poem

 Bad Poetry

Never say a poem is bad

Just turn the page

No babies are ugly except

 for the ugly ones

Of whom we don’t speak.

We say they’re all a blessing.

Not every sky is a sunrise or sunset.

We spend our lives in the gray haze.

It’s bad luck to wish away

 your life

Skipping to the good parts.

Forgive me if I essay here a bit

On the incontrovertibility of even one bad line

Toward the end of an otherwise epoch defining epic

 that could have saved us all.

Short stories and vignettes are the sweet spot—

The busy surgeon who still finds time to write.

The single mother cranking out bangers while folding laundry.

Novels get all the glory and for good reason

How we adore effulgent celebrations

 of elegant failure.

Flawed, awkward, overbearing and unable to ever shut up.

You can call them ugly if you want.

They’re all grown up. 

8/10/25