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Stage Fighter

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Showman, you are inert

as you warm your jaws

on the flesh of fame – What substance

is this dangling addictive worm?

Have they seen your mouth

curse and scream

from regions beyond sunshine’s shadow?

Part of arriving is knowing the small side

of grandeur. But you!

You wore your god-given javelin, split trees

with its darting blade until

mountains lay half crushed, fragmented,

fuming with decay.

The poet is in the kitchen marveling at the moon.

The banker is with his notes,

with his severed nerves,

watching the globe take its last full run . . .  And you?

You are making sure the camera

is straight to record perfectly

your stainless steel smile.

Are you suffering?

The stage is impartial.

The audience fights like starved seagulls

for one glance at your Adonis wig.

You are staring out from the subway walls,

dying for immortal victory – a billboard type

permanence.

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Copyright © 1991 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Next Exit”  1991, under the pseudonym Jocelyn Kain (aka Allison Grayhurst)

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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“Grayhurst’s rapturous outpouring of imagery makes her poems easily enjoyable … Like a sear the poet seeks to fathom sensual and spiritual experience through the images of a dream.” Canadian Literature

 “Allison Grayhurst’s Common Dream is a massive book by a talented and enthusiastic young writer, with a feel for descriptive, meaningful verse. Philosophical and very deep,” Paul Rance, editor of Eastern Rainbow, U.K.,  spring 1993.

“Her poems read like the journal entries of a mystic – perhaps that what they are. They are abstract and vivid, like a dreamy manifestation of soul. This is the best way, in prose, one can describe the music which is … the poetry of Allison Grayhurst,” Blaise Wigglesworth Oh! Magazine

“Rich images and complex, shifting metaphors drive Allison Grayhurst’s poems. She focuses on sexual love and interior landscapes, widening to include the heart, eternity and all.”  Next Exit

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