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After Love . . .

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      The mind falters,

reckless.  Excitable

                           it murders

our perfumed relationship.

                     I am chiming the cathedral

                                                            bells, dreaming

of the lost tenderness

and the soft pink flesh

                                   of rodent’s feet.

You are content. Putting the pieces

together

well, with your friend

you use as a

                     remedy. No, the shadows

have not departed.

                              My eyes

are absent of the flaming tears,

and yet I cannot bear to shoulder

                                  the belief in joy.

My knuckles are purple

                           with isolation and

the metropolitan streets

cage me in

                 with memory.

         I am waiting

                            (that is all I can say)

to gain back color.

            Like everybody else

who has been

                     branded by

the loss of love, I walk

towards

            Heaven

dumb- struck,

knowing only the distance and

the danger

of this new, chilling

                               dimension.

Do not look.

It is company I need tonight

                                            and I borrow you

for that.

You were the fool,

a dreamer

who knew the souls of each

                                                 and every star – then

far off, the wind

is webbing around me

and the bomb ticks

             intimately by my bedside.

 

          Is it the voice of Spirit?

          I have no answer, no vision,

          only bandages, inferno heat, the malice

          of this realty.

 

          I cannot erase you.

 

       The rain will make us

        both beautiful

somehow.

         We will find our common

ground and paint

                            those stars

someday

with exceptional

wisdom.

 

The bullets, the miracles

hit

                  painfully brilliant

in their own right. But none of it,

my love

            is fatal.

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Copyright © 1991 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Beneath the Surface, McMaster Creative Writing” Winter 1990/1991, 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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