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Kill the Poet

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Kill the poet,

ransack the diet of bliss.

Dust away all traces of inspiration,

childbirth, breath and roses.

 

Thumbtacks, dried-out bones are

what has stayed.

I am a sand-fish, surfing the bottom,

accumulating 

duties, commitments, leftover debris

to feed my already grown children.

 

Notions of a mission? A nest of delusions obliterated.

Kill the loose ends, dynamite the cave, come

out in the open and say your piece. My bed is

rippled with loose springs, arranging my nightmares

in grand succession. Kill the poet. You killed

my last cup, spilled my endurance, and I am thinking

 

I will cut my hair cleanly off, clip my eyelashes,

dump all my seeds on stony ground.

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Copyright © 2014 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Gutter Eloquence Magazine, Issue #30”, 2014

http://www.guttereloquence.com/issue30/grayhurst30.html

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

 

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“Her (Allison Grayhurst’s) poetry appears visceral, not for the faint of heart, and moves forward with a dynamism, with a frenetic pulse. If you seek the truth, the physical blood and bones, then, by all means, open the world into which we were all born,” Anne Burke, poet, regional representative for Alberta on the League of Canadian Poets’ Council, and chair of the Feminist Caucus.

“What a treasure Allison Grayhurst is. Her gift? To unfold for us life at this intensity of feeling and revelation. Who knew truth and beauty could be so intertwined and so passionate?,” Taylor Jane Green BA, RIHR, CH, Registered Holistic Talk Therapist, and author of Swan Wheeler: A North American Mythology, Swan – A Planetary Mythology, and The Rise of Eros, 2014.

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