What were you as a man Aristotle?

What were you as a man Aristotle?

 

 

            Bend the mind in fifteen different places

to pull out a particular, that

at the moment of capture,

shifts form and demands further

adaptation.

            Summersault

through definitions, substances,

entities – modeling God

on unity, and evil on chaos.

            What genius generates such a mind,

dilemmas purely in abstraction –

a voice swimming in a multi-layered

vortex of ideas and sophisticated vocabulary,

adept at defining, circulating, making movement,

unparalleled density in each paragraph,

in each line of unmatched cerebral dexterity?

            So I found you and I don’t know how

to take you in, if I can, but your observations

of elemental spirituality are exciting, and each read

is a like long dive into a living coral reef-barrier –

colours alien, animals sublime – both prey and predators,

proficient in the art of survival, and the energy!

Take me in –

            if what I thought would take a week,

takes months, and I sift through

your summits and grooves slowly, tasting

sugar, sour wine, touching

the tips of wings from the flight of many birds zipping

around my atmosphere at capacity – sometimes

as shadows, sometimes showing their bright plumage,

and those times I can glimpse, participate

in your singular reasoning, hear a man’s voice

labouring under metaphysical complexities

and bend my mind to the cyclone of your gospel,

spinning, upside down but in perfect order –

            maker of an intellectual sermon,

thinker uncorrupted, unlike your mentor Plato was

with his didactic prejudices, with his what-fors

his where-fors – but you!

            piecing out the divine,

making meals, ideals without rigidity,

chaptering out the primitive and the holy combined

with your plying, delving, ricocheting symphony

investigation.

 

Copyright © 2021 by Allison Grayhurst

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 .https://issuu.com/allisongrayhurst/docs/book_32_-ways_of_mercy_-_the_poetry_of_allison_gra

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Published in “Dumpster Fire Press and Voices from the Fire Anthology” April 2021

https://www.amazon.ca/Voices-Fire-2-Dumpster-Press-ebook/dp/B094LJLXGF/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1664284661&sr=1-12

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VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Allison Grayhurst

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Published in “Chicago Record Magazine” March 2021

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https://magazine-record.blogspot.com/2021/03/consecrated-in-murky-limpid-place-you.html

https://magazine-record.blogspot.com/2021/03/

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You can listen to this poem by clicking the link below:

 

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