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Emptied

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I am tired God

of the lack, invisible

corroded treasures,

deciphered, enciphered

throughout the day. I need you

final in my palm. There is this cup,

a spoonful of nectar, only. Knowing so

small like a traveler who cannot see

beyond the knick-knack souvenir, only

this spoonful and a house too quiet in the

early mornings, not enough connection – a wave

that never crests, metal made into nothing.

I need to build, soak myself in this feral blizzard

approaching, always just approaching. Why can’t I

have flour? Be someone alive, with wings and a face

of pure stone? Why is your love so tenuous, powerful

sometimes, and then, wispy, hardly registering?

I remember a planet I once tread upon – spiked, clustered

grass, almost blue, but in the sunshine, it was not

a colour that had a name. I want that rawness back,

a festival of sights and sensations,

constant like a ringing bell, ringing

out a perpetual harmony. I want to stop struggling

in this cemetery, mourning things I’ve never had.

If you would tell me where to watch,

what to do with this trampled voice. If

I could receive a waterfall. God, I am getting older, younger

somehow than when I started. You brought me

here, away from sensual flavours and the mountains’ pulse.

Put salt on my lips, paint me, now, please

in turquoise.

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Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

 

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

 

.First published in “The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine”

http://www.foliateoak.uamont.edu/archives/march-2012/poetry/five-poems-by-allison-grayhurst/?searchterm=allison%20grayhurst

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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“Allison Grayhurst intertwines a potent spirituality throughout her work so that each poem is not simply a statement or observation, but a revelation that demands the reader’s personal involvement. Grayhurst’s poetic genius is profound and evident. Her voice is uniquely authentic, undeniable in its dignified vulnerability as it is in its significance,” Kyp Harness, singer/songwriter, author.

“Allison Grayhurst’s poems are like cathedrals witnessing and articulating in unflinching graphic detail the gritty angst and grief of life, while taking it to rare clarity, calm and comfort. Grayhurst’s work is haunting, majestic and cleansing, often leaving one breathless in the wake of its intelligence, hope, faith and love amidst the muck of life. Many of Allison Grayhurst’s poems are simply masterpieces. Grayhurst’s poetry is a lighthouse of intelligent honour… indeed, intelligence rips through her work like white water,” Taylor Jane Green, Registered Spiritual Psychotherapist and author.

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Book reviews of the River is Blind paperback:

“Throughout (The River is Blind), she (Allison Grayhurst) employs 
reiterated tropes of swallowing and being consumed, spatial fullness 
and emptiness, shut- in, caverns, chasms, cavities; angels, archangels, 
blasphemy, psalms; satiation or starved. With a conceit of unrequited sex 
as “my desire”, nocturnal emissions, awakening in the morning, the poet lives 
at capacity, uninhibited, dancing,” Anne Burke, poet, regional representative 
for Alberta on the League of Canadian Poets’ Council, and chair of 
the Feminist Caucus.

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“Allison’s poetic prose is insightful, enwrapping, illuminating and brutally truthful. It probes the nature of the human spirit, relationships, spirituality and God. It is sung as the clearest song is sung within a cathedral by choir. It is whispered as faintly as a heartbroken goodbye. It is alive with the life of a thousand birds in flight within the first glint of morning sun. It is as solemn as the sad-sung ballad of a noble death. Read at your peril. You will never look at this world in quite the same way again. Your eye will instinctively search the sky for eagles and scan the dark earth for the slightest movement of smallest ant, your heart will reach for tall mountains, bathe in the most intimate of passions and in the grain and grit of our earth. Such is Allison Grayhurst. Such is her poetry. THE RIVER IS BLIND is a must-read,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.

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