Had you known your granite headstone would be flanked by two unknowns you might have thought it significant; as yours stands tall like one chosen compared to their drunken faces. The tree that shadows where you lay its sloughed bark being last to view the moonlights felicitations; In…
Tag: Tony Ashenden
Last Testament of an AK-74 by Tony Ashenden
Lay me down, half boy half man, lay me down, I’m hot. Burning your hands, I am, lay me down, I’m shot. The next round won’t fire. Warning you, my fresh-faced keeper you am wanted by the Reaper. Would have liked to be a plough, would have made good, turning earth, here and…
Ghosts in Breakers Creek by Tony Ashenden
In muddy mouthed Portsea Creek unwatched forgotten ships lay beached dashed and smashed breathless, cut and bled weather beaten picked and broken by the dockside stooping crane’s bill collecting scrap. Their final passages over shallows barnacle crusted bottoms scraping over shingle pulled and pushed by impatient tugs who know falling tides suckling mud claim tows….
The Price of Fish by Tony Ashenden
Pray hard for men who hunt the deep sea in their cockleshell boats out of Clyde scour the swims of Poseidon’s green head filling iced holds with dead alive eyes where the buffeting wind screeching is God’s angered ethereal Hand fear is the shake of riveted plate and love is a church locked up on…
Slaughter by Tony Ashenden
And their vacant eyes; to me dull, relative brother-like, unto my blood. Lesser and labelled more the beast for being servant, yet I fear I fit my moulding them too perfectly. To moo and peer moronically alive cross thicket hedge, un-decides the place of puppet and the master, their voices turn the thicket’s harsh of…
No Emperor’s Head by Tony Ashenden
Who wore the hat of Roman kind led armies of the blind in Laos Vietnam and Cambodia? Then who challenged the just anointed crown in Britannica Planted bomb to burn the people left their blood in burnt ash sites public places, shops, and schools messaging by video their sacrifice? Uniformed of working clothes black gowned…
Writ of Habeas – Corpus by Tony Ashenden
[A writ to a jailer to produce a prisoner in person and to state the reasons of detention] Soldier do your eyes have the lights that flashout of tanks in the face of the snubof a terrorist gun and in they shinewhen his message of soft lead eruptsfrom the lips of a shimmering barrel? Do…
The Ribbon of a Madman’s Weave by Tony Ashenden
Granite SliverArrowhead I see you spurnedby Pigmy Bowmanyet you suffice and scathethe greening mortar…Mind that delibly recordsattemptmy show and outward personality. This ribbon of a madman’s weaveis the tape of all my sayingsmallborder thin and compass handthe clutch and stayFingers….Placing granite slabs to facetheir palms of tungsten fleshtoward the shortened eye. Yet soonthe tongue of…
A Day in the Night of the Walking Sleeper by Tony Ashenden
Ah! The pain the wanting all over dilemma sober reach out sweet grape of confusion; a duchess spread out on her savage’s bed willing her blood red to the lips of her lackeying male, neither caring the speech or the stain of his whip. Taking the seventh of her seconding breaths at the weep of…
A Shepherd’s Tale by Tony Ashenden
Consider, discuss, decide as you must. A boy of nine I was, given to play? Yes- but impatient to grow. A minder of sheep and goat, not quite a shepherd, you understand. Arab Jewish Samaritans, lowborn we were under Roman rule in the land of Moses. Tent dwellers; nomadic in the Way of the Sea…
Religious Ego by Tony Ashenden
Gritty shell Church within an egg I watch the moulder of your stone In envy Of the subtle grain that clings together Unperturbed Disdainful of my changing face. I even see Your smoke washed splints of mortar Laughing into faces. Stilton memories I achieved And could not Stop the wooden green from going rot. Words…
MasticadoresIndia // Editora: Terveen Gill 