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I lived in error

 .

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in smoke, in a station

amidst

            the clouds.

I rolled through

                        phantom pits,

finding fondness in each

                                    fathomless descent.

            With rage and thick

confusion

            my mortality

                        was stained.

And there, coughed up, anointed

            by the deep, your love

took me past

                        my generations stalking

God

in every science and witch-craft cure,

                                    past the feel

            of condemning visions, and intellectuals

seeping their venom

                        into every

                                    willing heart.

            Your love like a lingering

                                                pain, pulling

me through alleyways and dungeons,

            tore,

with a terrible force, the sickness

            from my veins, and yet

                        as tender as

                                    a riverwave

in gentle flow, guides me

                                    onward.

.

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Copyrright © 1996 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Schrodinger’s Cat”, 1996

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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.