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Steel and Spice
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Inch across
the bell-cups of lilies
in the dead oblivion
of decades of reality’s denial.
Inch into the sweetness
of a lilac’s centre,
nourished on imagination everytime
over the bite of bitter soup.
Gather the crows in your morning sky,
ask them to envelop you and then ask
their forgiveness.
Hiding your panic
in the promises of miracles, licking the acid
off of your skin to make for a good story,
for the belief in an undamageable surface.
Mistaking silk for bread, counting on
God’s kindness to come on the brink
of desperate need.
Will you now
be a slave to the feast of worms or
strip-mine until what little gold you find
feels like abundance?
Maybe you are safe, living in this
burning garden, protected with a poet’s peace
and by a faith that bypasses gravity’s consequences, but
has consequences and demands of its own – ones
you must live by and dedicate yourself to keep
turn a blind-eye to practicality,
and press all fear into a resounding prayer,
existing on the substance of
divine gifts, gifts that are final,
that have no price to pay except that you
leave yourself leaning, tied and planted only
to this holy dreamscape liberation.
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Copyright © 2017 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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First published in “GloMag” March 2017
http://online.fliphtml5.com/gkih/vhtz/
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Published in “Rasputin: a poetry thread” April 2017
http://rasputinpoetry.blogspot.ca/2017/04/allison-grayhurst-licks-skin-acid-for.html
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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