Moonlight Musings '25

Prompt: Personify Winter

Frozen eyelashes, clawing through the white

Safety from freezing

A glacier momma bear, snow charging

Into the skies, we were out on a family walk

I was terribly afraid,

Sometimes that will change any story:

Just keep walking and smile -

Maybe winter’s more like a squirrel

The keeper of things from the year - 

All the little details

Like a little old house and old heaters, etc, etc

Cosmos and planet gaia, coccooned by their younger selves

You, me, me as that sly wolf who dwells

At the border in order to survive

Experiencing that shadow self, fractured, sheltered -

Just think, we are experiencing extreme cold

Remember the first responders

Unconquered, unsung

Final fighting fails to fall fallow

The sun sinks cold,

So little time to make amends

When no one else could see us

She grew to love the way the streetlights

Cast a shadow of us in the snow

Everything about us is used up dried up

Our breath carried us -

Not frail though, her muscles stood out

She was naked; she had no fear

Of the cold because she was the cold

Her favorite rock, a cliff on the edge of the world

Light bringer and herald of new dawn

The sheep scrambling for solid land

But I had her permission

Her expression, everything warm

The trees must have been chandeliers

She decided to sit with me for awhile

quiet surprises the senses

Campfire sounds against heated glare

Time to go in

I enjoy most feeding the birds and squirrels and 

I’m sure, one or two rats

I wonder why she comes and why she goes

Bring us to our waking hours -

Dancing circles in the snow

At least you leave the pines

Stay, you make the time go slow.

Got an eye on the bard owl

Nothing too hard to see, she made it 

That way, an inescapable clarity -

The bitch sets down her gun

And when the owl sighs, she smiles

Back to my burrow

A surly drunk from Boston, 

he travels far to bring her home

A romance for the ages

She was met by the wind.

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Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: State of emergency

SOS, attention please, this is a PSA

From your friendly neighborhood meteorologist:

Please stand by for an emergency message

What is this state of emergency?

Is it mine or is it yours?

Time will tell.

If you ask mom, she’ll say, the weather, permitting

Wonder if I’d be ok all night in cold streets and 

So called shelter politics.

Thank God for 24 hour coffee shops -

Justice is neverending

emerge within the millennial state of emergency

No-knee jerk reacting

The new day, new age, segway void -

Manifest actualize realize

Button down the hatches

Find yourself a friend

This is the kind of storm babies come from

People raid the Ingles

Milk, juice, butter,eggs, cheese, etc

Shovels, broom and ice scrapers pulled out of corners

There is a run on flashlights and bulbs

Who isn’t anxious?

What keeps us going in this state?

Hope is something that makes you wait

So, I got serious about having an emergency kit ready.

I can only tell myself what I have learned over a lifetime.

I am proud of myself for being prepared

To protect all that you love, emergent in the urgency

You won’t hear the sirens

Something has to shatter for life to pour in -

Love a demon and watch it become an angel

On the occasion you catch a glimpse of hope in a stranger 

There’s something in the water

Why is it like this?

Location to be determined

Bite back frost bite

Now it’s time to only look after self

Hydrate your soul

Build a tent in your bed

Get matches, get candles

We will remember the perfect storm.

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Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: the oracle says

Listen, 

The oracles position has not been filled

For millenia, but she still speaks:

Come one come all to the table

We must travel and clean and take pain pills

Ask and you shall receive

Ask until you ask the right one in the right place

Dream of washing clothes, then pay your bills

Then thank god - in a cryptic language

In riddles and puzzles that have never been solved

It’s so cold, my pen froze

If only I could predict the next moment

I don’t know

How some people could be so stupid

What it would be like to be myself -

We will dance and sing and come together

Everyone will have enough to eat

Passed on to all we meet

May we learn each other’s language

The weapons of war, turned into ploughs,

Justice the rule

Like a busy party 

I must just have one of those faces

Asked to hear every fear, every warning

Where is the one who offers me promises

Repeat the promise one more time

In silence, the promise no less true

The oracle is a liar

You can only tell the future so many times

Before it stops listening to you

This is nothing to worry about

The verdict is still out

None of it’s supposed to make any sense

The riddle is as obvious as the miracle 

Of your hand extended in the gesture of giving

A gift

One of 200 healthy habits

I would have quoted a bob dylan song

In honor of the unknown god

I’ll tell you this for free

Stop asking questions, I see through

All your bullshit - open your heart

And see what you see

You don’t have to purchase pain

You’re not the expensive illusion

I hope you got your money’s worth

Big portions = big consequences

Be mindful in all circumstances

Be there in all situations

Meet the intersection

We all leapt to our feet.

The oracle said yes.

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Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: The crows know

They know where you live

They’ll help protect you

They’ll dance on the wire

Bring you little presents, smartest

Of the wild birds, they mate for life, 

raise young together

Despised by some, while others are intrigued

They are scavengers, they have mimicked humans, etc, etc

The quest to identify first - where?

From bird to bird, what bird has the bigger eyes?

To being the return of light -

Publishing

To keep things in the know

God forbid a jester is there -

The watchers between light and dark worlds

High above the volcanic ruins.

They know my compost in my back yard

Where Leslee gets her prompts

Know more than we wish to give them credit for

The only bird that will attack a bald eagle

They don’t pay rent in the sky, but they die.

Do crows love, any more of less than a dove

The crows know the straight line is a lie 

And the worth of taking the long way around to the truth

Worms, compost, trinkets 

Crows speak a different language, in the summer and the winter

I don’t speak crow, I just googled 21 nonfiction books about them.

Crows know 34 thousand ways to say stop.

They sing it in a high-pitched caw

Noir and ennui in the parable recounting

Electric pings absorbing fear

Snatches mixed with canopy branches

They know we think we think we know

We’re only human, they know

The origin of earth, meaning of life

The end of days

I don’t count crows all the time, there’s a lot of irony

In the way life changes

What if a crow lived forever?

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Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: Resolutions and New Beginning

If you really want to do the world a favor

Say yes to bad luck

External negation - the stars, the reality

Keep travel plans with fate

Be sure you’re on time when it really matters

What can we bring to resolution?

What can be new beginnings?

Sometimes things have to grow on people

Before they understand

A changing, but everyday the same world

As the light comes full tilt at me - the hardest part

As a soul trapped in a body, life comes at us

It shocked the world -

Spin and spin, paint me a picture with edges

See what really is - notations of reality

Unlimited possibilities with an invitation to adventure

As an only child who everyone loved and admired

Needed for a very important mission,

A practice to build spirit divine,

Hang my success on an inner bookshelf,

Read more books, an excuse I need to eliminate

Consider it a mental block, never stop expanding our minds

Overflowing with water, all that I know about you

Call in curiosity, the child’s first steps in a recurring dream,

An echo in the event of its happening,

On a tight rope, resolve has always been a loosening(?)

A constant shifting in the internal landscape

like trying to catch a spinning top with a fishing pole

Pressing for a pause, freedom steers my ship

Powered by steam and sweat and tears

Water, psychic sensation, tired of drowning myself

Feel it all, create for the sake of creation

A shiny sapling, sword exposed, air whistles, remember to breathe

A resolution is evolution

I’m trying to fix it!

My potential next step - I learned quickly I had to move slowly

Keep the faith, don’t waste time with unbelievers

Let it be for me, 

A fellow preacher I can wish luck

There is no good stopping point,

Get jiggy with it

Swing me around proper, pulled to the still point

Of your beautiful face, sharing a new years kiss

Always, we begin again

Do it again.

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━  ✧ ₊˚

Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Our Fall 2025 issue, "Stars Beneath the Sky"  is officially finished and making its way to bookstores near you! 

A very full issue, this zine includes the prompts of:

Explore a secret; What gives you hope?; Freedom looks like; Insects; Truth is... ; A beginners guide to getting up in the morning; Can the seer be seen?; Freedom in balance; Life at its best; Design a public monument; On a clear night; Magic wand; Behind the veil; Beneath the surface

Find a copy somewhere near you today! You can navigate to the "Bookstore" tab on this page to see where has one, but this edition and more will be available for purchase at our Dec 4th reading event as well!

Prompt: Origin Story (of yourself or anything)

In the beginning was the word

My hand always starts with the mouth

Incompleteness, caught up, and scattered across time

Converging into a future point of origin, more real than any passing thing -

How did it evolve? Did it originate from a dinosaur? Or a fish? A stomach full of brambles, a gnarly thicket of disagreeable neurons

It’s one of nature’s mysteries

Nothing! A seed containing all,

Brilliant, were there eyes to see it -

A love story, each chasing after the other

An oranges story - squirt, squirt - esters and ketones

Tethering what once was and what it

I felt a snap in my brain, like a guitar string twanging

Spoke hard truths

Words are power additionally

Use them to restore, heal - 

Dying wasn’t an option for me -

One day a hawk will swoop

Highway of cellular connectedness

Propelled into the world viciously

You might call it eternity or infinity

Why does a good thing have to have a beginning?

Laughing like kids at a sleepover

Sweet allies in oblivion

I only came here looking for scraps

Me too - the origin of empathy -

We called it the harvest goblet of plenty

From a not thing, from a cosmic birther beyond names

A mind brought forth, in homage and fertility

Outplays like an instruction manual

The musings of an energy that wants to bounce,

If it was not alive it wouldn’t grow,

Not an original story but a true one

Before the web of words, the discovery of laughter

Tree & three & free

Not I’m just here

Silly goose choking up a flame

We still don’t know

Recollect and remember

What happened and why it matters

When the time comes, we will laugh together at last

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━  ✧ ₊˚

Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: Imagine a Celebration

We forgot how to feel joy.

The role of the cosmic fool reserved

For those who dare to jump with their eyes closed -

It’s cold outside, tonight we fantasize -

Not just any family, can’t fit in the chimney 

because they repaired it last week.

What is there to celebrate about jail conditions?

Guess I might not answer that here -

The festival is not complete without music,

Singers, and games for children -

Invite your little selves out 

The weaving and wandering, celebrate mess,

the icky, the sticky of something tangible

Like a helping hand, leave room at the table -

Take requests so there’s something for all -

We owe this life our elation.

Our ability to wear love on our sleeve

As you sit wrapped in the 6pm dark

The ship’s doors closed behind us, 

Cocktails to the last 2 empty seats

We are here, together, 

the whole universe alive, electric

The hum of reality shared between us -

First we must continue working while it is day

It is 4am at the cosmic diner

Let him who is thirsty come, 

Able to keep a promise,

Champagne to make it more merry

Yelling is fine as long as you’re not angry

Gratitude altars sprinkled around the house

A community willing to support joy

Hungry for any moment of sorrow, joy

Where is the he who will use her energy,

Our soul, an illuminated crystal castle

we can explore -

I saw the castle in her,

A turnout like the undertaker had never seen before

She banished monsters

The floating ethers wish they were me,

The roots, trunks of trees illuminate her existence

She’s worth every ripple effect

So imagine everyone in houses, embrace the joy of tumbling

A walking talking celebration

Rest assured we are all free,

Throw a dance party!

And you walk back to your car knowing

You are loved.

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━  ✧ ₊˚

Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: In order to be Reborn, First you have to Die. 

Kill the life you once lived.

The truth will find you, broken open.

You have to ask for it nicely.

It takes a lot of effort to be reborn again.

Life is full of mysteries - just think of a rose bush -

heaven awaits you

with her best decisions lost in her mother’s purse:

truth, joy, satisfaction, completion - 

a universal human experience . . .

Who really knows?

Is this just a dialectic of fucked up DNA?

Have I died yet?

Forget what you believe.

Lifetime after lifetime, coming back,

the river flows, it does not stop.

In a flash, what gives itself is gone,

all that is unheard astonishes,

“the original revelation of the nothing.”

Deep in the valley there is a colorful bird,

buried in mud -

what is hiding under those wings?

All the creatures hold their breath

a psychedelic renaissance -

Don’t think about rebirth when you’re dying -

But when I die, I’ll be right back. . . 

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━  ✧ ₊˚

Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: Inventory of Pockets, Mind, and Heart

Inventory is a large word -

possibly more than one list,

all those things stacks on top of each other

not all pockets go so deep, 

so be careful what you keep in them - 

pocket rocket - built from the inventory of the mind -

nothing but two keys and a fortune cookie paper

“Be the best and fuck the rest,”

make it heal or make it hurt

always, there is room for something else,

having nobody else in the Code Purple room

all I see is fluorescent lighting and 

I am not alone.

Where the weight of your chest is 

too heavy in my heart,

I keep my loved ones, and 

sometimes my enemies,

a full time job to keep it open,

I never forgot how to sing,

my mind like a scrambled egg,

the present lies somewhere in that jumble

all in view to the unseen, I can invent

to take inventory, to give inventory, to be

In-vent-ory . . . 

computer scenes running MSDOS 

without any human employees, 

goopy, messy figurines - 

Close-up, to the smiling woman 

holding a propeller hat . . .

you deal with yourself in parts:

there’s a manager in there somewhere,

putting out as many fires as she can -

a list of what was found uncounted, unaccounted.

To miscount is not to know what was lost.

Have you taken time to show 

just how combustible you have become?

Pockets overflow with sorrow, 

no change to spare;

Pockets emptied of the day’s treasures,

Thanks for the reminder - 

An open space if I move past the heaviness,

conjure a hopefulness,

knit a pretty new thing,

empty or full and of what? 

What I need or what I want - 

it all comes out in the wash.

You are endless.

Perhaps it’s time to get a fanny pack,

make more room for the important stuff -

barefoot, on the trampoline

inventories of the heart are the only

that will serve -

keys to open doors, found today,

while walking a kitten 

where I slept under the stars of the universe.

What’s left when we surrender the answer:

apparitions with tiny baskets,

this moment - my salvation and a reminder

I lost myself in that dance,

the heart’s ransack took place

compassion that won’t let me wish 

someone would die.

I am so rich.

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━  ✧ ₊˚

Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: Trying to Hard

What can we say about that?

It’s like dating - you have to “let go and let God,”

Let it come naturally

Maybe, I should trust a trustworthy idea,

Be yourself.

Sometimes I stay skinny and sometimes I grow fat

Is my fruit sweeter for my efforts?

Push me, pull me for the sake of the sidewalk,

For the sake of the fruits -

Invite me to the lonely cafe

That might become a movie, it’s really soaking in

We’ll see what happens, you know?

It is very easy to try too hard

The stench of monotony, make up a new face,

Pray through smoke breaks, grasp for meaning

I miss the brutality of living in the most honest way

Focus on your breathing, is happiness like an orgasm?

Think too much and it goes away?

No matter how much hardcore porn you jack off to -

Maybe, you should try harder to be a good man,

Blacksmith alloy of shield and bow, no polish is necessary

Ignite my intentions, don’t hold me to any standards

We get it. I’m only suicidal in the mornings

Dried dill, tied to the kitchen cabinet doorknob

Next in line is thyme, time -

I may be overthinking . . .

To be while ding is the only way to do, the other way to be

Than to be

Head hurting, body tired, heart heavy

Maybe every once in a while try soft

Boring, boring boring - patterns paint parabolic pictures

I don’t even fucking know how or where to start -

We don’t have problems, we just have more work to do

She still loves you

On the 42nd floor in the 8th office

PAZOW! In capital letters

Burning bright with the courage to dream

Don’t try too hard to give up just yet -

Spell human with an “i”

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Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: Beneath the Surface 

Submerge yourself, bricks tied to ankles -

20,000 leagues under the sea, an old analogy

What is beneath the surface has a top . . . if you can find it, hmmm

As above is as below - maybe God is way up there,

The relationship you have has a top and beneath, it is not just simple -

A disgusting blob of random things

It’s a big mess -

Beneath the surface the ruling of air and water, plants and trees and roots

Dig deeper to find fossils and precious gems,

Beneath our skin, different levels of life

Maybe the depth of love gives us the bends

Looking up, the shift in surface

See the image that is inside, worlds and dimensions we know nothing about

Unless we go there, deep and slow,

It must be lonely

People don’t really mean it when they say they want the earth to swallow them whole

Violations has led to inversion, 

Bless us with clear and cold glory,

The precious sacred space of one’s own

Teeming with life, teeming with death, love unbounded

We tended upward, tension did not exist in water,

May hope yet spring . . . from winter’s stoic stance

Beyond the perception that can’t be perceived

Misdirection is common in this theater

The secrets you keep, hiding beneath the surface of self.

Bursting the seams, the spiritual world raises on a

second glance is reciprocated, unpolished and rough, 

A decision to dig deeper, proceed with caution,

Caught between, crystallized to stone, burst open the fortified floodgates, surrender

Feed the leech, every secret, every story privately concealed

Dare to look at the beauty that lives beneath the surface

Always, always, there is more to come.

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━  ✧ ₊˚

Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Prompt: Behind the Veil. 

Trick or treat trickery. 

What most Americans call living Is a veil of questions. 

Don’t forget what you can’t see

Secrets linger in unmarked graves,

The headless horsemen, the opportunity to be whole 

inhabited by someone else’s likeness

Behind the human, divine, plummeted into the suburbs . . .

He was greatly deceived at the veil of the temple,

Leave out your apples and light your candles

Beyond the veil is freedom

Connect without merging, tears become diamonds the space between my ego and my soul

You’ve seen this figure before

You can try to reach out -

Illusions are lifted

The child for the ghost

The veil of language in between word and world

Each person, part of a great common veil -

With one hand, my fingertips reach out to touch

Forevermore becomes forever, 

Disappeared and finally seen, 

Still protected

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━  ✧ ₊˚

Composite poems are our way of putting all our writers work into one big peice of art. A line from each writers peice is taken during our weekly Friday writing group and put here for you all to reflect on, take inspiration from, or just enjoy! 

Hello all! We are very excited to announce the launch of our new website in tandem with our newest edition of the intersection, "stars beneath the sky" ! 

Within this new site, we are able to try lots of new things to increase our visibility and provide accessibility to connection:

• A calendar, so everyone always knows where to look to find upcoming events.

• Comprehensive information about who we are and what we do.

• A current list of bookstore carriers so AVL locals can find our zines in-person.

• A mailing list so everyone can receive updates on things such as events, zine releases, and other things that pertain to our community.

• A place for you to suggest prompts! If you include your email, we will send you some of the responses!

• A BETA online order form so our out-of-town friends can also support and experience our work!

• And more!

This is all in hopes of more people becoming aware of, participating in, and supporting our community. We will always respect what our foundation truly is; the little corner writing group, the physical media, and the mountain folk who make it real. That being said, if you're in Asheville and anything you see on this page intrigues you, then you must understand that the best way to be involved is just to show up. Your voice is valuable, and your ears are too. Even just your eyes, if you just want to witness, I can promise that adventuring out to one of the local shops in hunt of one of our zines will be an interesting experience. All this is to say that this is not us "going digital." It's just adopting the ways of a digital world to create new bridges to the physical one.

Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoy getting to explore! See you on Friday ૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ♡