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Ashley Moor Feb 2019
There is something
about tonight
that reminds me
of my childhood dreams—
coming alive right
at insomnia’s peak,
sweet, naive
and daring
in the way that
they stirred awake
my reality.
Dark houses filled
with space and quiet,
suburbs in the city
that gleamed with romance—
a career and sky high
ambition.
From dreaming
quietly in the dark
to forgetting to trace
my fingertips along
my deepest desires—
but aren’t these just
the sins of woman?
Overdressed
and unseen,
sitting down
instead of
dancing under the stars,
remaining unimaginative
in our grown lives
instead of
lying awake at night
and dreaming.
Ashley Moor Jan 2019
Midnight
somewhere out West
a death sentence
a tightening of the chest
a girl
hurled
into the void.

Springsteen
said everything
dead could be reborn
with the open road
I wonder if the same
could be said
of my soul.
Ashley Moor Jan 2019
Is it with
the strength
of my own two hands
that I crush
the bountiful
flowering petals
waiting
in the outstretched palms
of the women
who I love?
Does my towering
ambition
silently decay
their humanity—
their desire to reach
for anything beyond
my hips?
Tell me—
is there a way
to unclench
my fists
from around your lungs?
A way for my riotous
echo to be silenced?
Even if a cure
existed
for this malady
I’m not sure
that I would ever
stick around to see it.
Ashley Moor Dec 2018
The daughter
of a hard man
craving a rambling
softness
a rustling of
wind down south
resting on the willows
crackling to flame
when he
caught my eye
but temptation
does no good
to those dreamers
those sinners in reverse
but that fault
wasn’t his
when the devil
found his prize
captured quick
as the bullets
found their way
down my spine
as a rusted silhouette
at the gates
of your judgement
as the body of water
lapping against
where your love ends
I sit here
in the everlasting silence
waiting for the violence
of my justice.
A riff on Colter Wall’s song “Kate McCannon.”
Ashley Moor Nov 2018
So often
I wonder
what winds will touch you
tonight
what dark turn
of the earth
will show you
my pain
to leave a family
for rain
to seek out a
dim refrain
from the real
the fragile
the vain
I humbly ask
the earth
to find you
to send you back
to the shadows
from which you came.
Ashley Moor Nov 2018
In dreams
I am the rhythm
to the dancer
underneath her skin
In dreams
I only fight
in the river of remembrance
in her breathing
In dreams
imagining my woman
nervous, scowling
reaching for my hand
In dreams
fighting to stay
in silver clouds
above this land
In dreams
reimagining oceans
beyond this land
and endless drone
In dreams
talking backwards
riding rail lines
back to my home
Homesick
Ashley Moor Nov 2018
Many have claimed
to wrap their
arms around
love
to fit it
snugly between their ribs
to sing to it
to let it circle
down the drain
to have swallowed
its hidden
heartbeats
and
any poet
with a spell book
could cast their
words on to it
but I know
love
as I have held its
bare bones
against my own
in the slumber
of my home
where it grows
upon acres of your skin
that I caress
again
and again
and again.
For Gabi.
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