Tension

Starburst lightning

Sets the sky ablaze,
Steady prayers for your guise

Never looked quite right,
Interlude,

Or deception?
Can you never hold back that smile

That offends my intelligence?
I can taste the tension
Hanging in the air,

It loops and curls

And makes it hard to breathe,
I'm sorry, the damage is done
And I can't be fine with it,
But when have I ever been?
I decline to revise,
I can't lie,

But rather bask in my disaster. 

Mother Sees

Fall fast
Along coastal shorelines,
Jupiter called my name
But I was too busy
Dancing in the ocean,
I'm no mermaid
But definitely have a sea creature in me,
I close my eyes
And from the sea
I land in a forest
Surrounded by trees
With the moss at my feet,
Our mother is speaking
But you don't want to hear,
Listen!
She screams over mountains,
 "I'm all you have, I'm all you need,
And when you ignore my pleas
You don't just kill me
But yourself,
Your children,
Everyone's family."
Dance in the ocean
Play with the trees
But leave them as they are,
Free. 

Ashley Leslie 2020

The Moon

The moon,
My only friend
Watches over me,
Through despair,
Through the descent,
You remind me how large the universe is,
With galaxies, asteroids,
Jupiter and billions upon billions of stars,
Forever is hard to comprehend
But somehow it lends hope
To my small existence,
For we are grains of sand
Descending from the hourglass,
Molecules dancing and colliding in time,
Is anybody up there?
Or is it just you,
My moon,
Keeping watch over me?

Trying to be a sandcastle
In the midst of a hurricane.

Ashley Leslie 2020

On the Right Side of History

Come find me

Down by the river

Under the canopy of evergreen

This is where I'd rather be.

But through this smokescreen, unravelling

A taste of freedom cannot be

While others are suffering,

Engaged in a social justice war

Incredibly for a longtime ignored.

Black Lives Matter!

We scream for George,

And Breonna, And Elijah,

And Regis, to name just a few,

Deep-seated, systemic at its core,

No longer can we ignore,

For he is me,

And I is her

And I see their pain,

We are all enmeshed in this insanity.

Statues aren't history,

Racists don't deserve to stare down our communities.

Immortalize love!

Not hate, not genocide,

No justice, no peace,

Only war on the streets.

My sisters and brothers can't breathe

Because you have your fucking knee

On their neck,

On their back,

You hold them down

With viciousness so twisted in design,

Yet you get away with the crime.

Is this how fair and just societies work?

It's time for it to crumble

Like the statues we pull down. 

Ashley Leslie 2020

The Chase

A window,
No a door,
Slammed shut,
Windy weather blows me apart,
Tethered,
Resistant,
Circumstantial evidence,
I'm the storm,
And I'm chasing my tail
That I've never been able to catch.

Overthinking

My mind is like a carousel
Round and round it goes,
Fixated on the negatives
More often than the positives,
Overthinking every little thing
No matter how insignificant
it may be,
I wish there was a switch
On and off
Like a light bulb,
Ruminating again
Over and over it plays
Like a movie picture
Horrorshow,
My personal hell.

Written August 1, 2019

My Prison

Night bleeds through
to daylight pain
held so tightly
by the enemy,
I sleep less than soundly
but whenever I'm awake
I'm falling,
between bed-sheets
or stagnant sitting,
life is complicated
and grows harder it seems,
two steps forward
65 Steps back,
I feel like nothing,
maybe I am nothing,
and nothing seems to change;
trapped in this box
4 walls, my prison
I'm sick of looking
at this carpet
and sitting on this sofa
every day the same sounds
my small apartment playground
becomes smaller still
with each passing day.

Tired isn't a strong enough word to describe how I feel,
exhausted to the bone,
through every inch of flesh
my muscles, tendons,
organs and blood,
enveloped with fatigue,
vulnerability a standard mode of living for me,
I might as well be dead
because I already feel it,
pain is a 4 letter word
that you'll never understand
because you can't get into my skin,
I wouldn't want you to,
no one should suffer like this,
I taste it,
strong like black licorice,
I smell it,
pungent like your father's cologne,
I hear it,
pounding, screaming like demons in my ears,
I see it,
Every time I look in the mirror.

Written July 29, 2019