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For This Face Only You Could Alter

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Be for me my mask torn down.

Take from me my old and hatching temper.

Take my wanting, my struggle

to renounce approval.

Be for me the lonely desire, the one

celebrated by each breath.

Take the guilt from my

loins, the hours spent mute, consumed

by androgynous fear.

Be for me a living arrow, a communion

of conviction and gentleness.

Take from me my fate, a conditioned future,

an inevitable plan.

Love me

although my love is sensual,

thin of voice, of spiritual

decision.

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Copyright © 1995 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry” #3. The magazine is now called “The Journal”, 1993

 

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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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,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.