Clark Ashen was a sensitive man;
He lived his life with his heart.
Being endowed with expressive talents,
He devoted himself to literary art.
Ashen was born into a middle class home
That put value on honest work and knowledge.
His parents just managed to find enough money
So he could go to a good college.
While at school he had the best professors
And Ashen found his studies exciting.
He read Byron and Keats and Faulkner and Twain
And greatly improved his own writing.
With diploma in hand he went out into the world;
He settled in a poor hovel.
He had no money, no job, no girl, and no car,
But he had an idea for a novel.
Ashen borrowed a typewriter from his friend Katz
And struggled with all of his might.
It took six months and three reams of paper
But he had written his first book, Hollister's Flight.
It was an unprecedented wondrous tale
Of a young girl's escape from the devil.
But in a larger sense it was about truth
And good and evil on a symbolic level.
But before Ashen could get the book published
His landlady stopped by for the rent.
He was already starving and in much debt
So back to his parents he went.
Although they criticized their "slacker" son,
His parents begrudgingly took him back.
But they made him take a job to pay off his debts,
So Ashen went to work at Burger Shack.
You'd think a kid with a college diploma
Could get a more rewarding job;
But out in the real world where appearance counts,
Ashen had dressed like a slob.
So during the next two years of hard labor
Ashen tried to publish Hollister's Flight.
But editor after editor rejected it--
He couldn't even get a bite.
Eventually Ashen left Burger Shack
For he finally had his debts paid off.
He was fortunate to find a new job when he did
Because he was about to be laid off.
He was now employed as a photo assistant
Adjusting the portrait studio's lighting.
He found the work extremely boring
But it gave him free time for writing.
His new book was called Fry Guys.
It took him two years to create.
But it was a deeply moving personal work
About blue-collar social ills and fate.
Katz and all other friends who read it
Believed it would win a Pulitzer prize.
So Ashen sent it off to publishers--
He must have made four dozen unsuccessful tries.
One June day while relaxing in a park
Ashen met the love of his life.
She was woman named Cindy Flynn
And Ashen wanted to make her his wife.
He started writing love poems to her--
Three or four every day.
But when Flynn found out he had no money
She packed up and went on her way.
Ashen was thrown to the depths of emotion;
This was the worst of all defeats.
But the poems of heartbreak he then wrote
Had passion to rival Keats.
When Katz made him realize how great these poems were
He was able to get over Miss Flynn.
Ashen titled his poetry collection Love's Arms,
And to a publisher, sent it in.
It could not be printed as a whole book
Though one poem appeared in The Atlantic.
But Ashen's literary career wouldn't take off;
Maybe he was just too pedantic.
He had quit his job at the photography studio
And was writing poetry and fiction full time;
That no publisher would print his masterful stuff
Seemed like a humanistic crime.
In one last attempt to sell his work,
Because Ashen was really desperate for money,
He gave up literature and tried popular slop:
He wrote a book that was romantic and sunny.
He called his new novel Sally's Rose.
It was about achieving perfect love and gold.
He hated it's happy ending,
But to a publisher it actually sold.
Unfortunately the critics panned the book.
No one bought it (and library loans don't count).
So Sally's Rose didn't bring Ashen much dough
And his debts continued to mount.
When he went to borrow money from his parents
They told him without a job he had no worth.
So he went back to his hovel alone
Thinking he was the most wretched person on earth.
Yet those feelings prompted him to write
Malevolence, a novel of tremendous scope.
It was about poverty and betrayal and emptiness
Yet it ended on a note of hope.
Ashen didn't try to get it published;
He just let the manuscript gather dust.
He then went to go get a job,
But couldn't, 'cause the market had gone bust.
Ashen was really getting hungry now
And he had no place to stay.
He was getting more bitter and cynical
For no one seemed to care what he had to say.
He spent almost a month on the streets
Wandering around in the chill.
When Katz found him and took him in
His condition was gravely ill.
Though Ashen lay on his sick bed
He still felt compelled to write.
He weakly took pen to paper,
For he knew it would soon be night.
Ashen spent himself in this masterpiece;
His final epic was called Futile Ambition.
It wistfully spoke of lost dreams
And mourned the human condition.
As Katz read Ashen's moving manuscript,
He found it so heart-aching, he cried.
And at the age of only thirty-two
Ashen was exhausted, got weaker, and died.
After the funeral, Katz gathered together
Ashen's works-poems, novels, and all.
He sent it to a publisher who knew quality
And wanted to posthumously publish it all.
But unfortunately cruel fate intervened:
For the manuscripts that were so cherished
Were caught one night in an accidental fire.
They burned up and forever perished.
So was the story of our great author,
A man filled with sensitivity and passion.
Like so many others in our giant world
We will not remember Clark Ashen.