.
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I will make my way across the water
. .
I will push my way
through the threshold,
bend over the edge then
let myself go – gravity,
mudslides and rock edges
will dictate my descent, but
I will look up and witness
the starlings amongst the sparrows,
the dislodged grass sprouts that take
the fall with me, above me
in gentle wave-like motions
with the wind.
These limbs will crash,
be cut from their flesh, and I will break
only to be reborn, a sapling, myself
graced with lifetimes of memories, stretching
my stem gradually into the light.
In time, animals will flourish under
my shaded canopy, and lovers
will carve their initials into my skin,
promising one another their exclusive eternity.
I will make my way across the water,
over the threshold and fall
to embrace the ground I came from.
Spread low, spread high – a century
or more guardian, a tree-fort reaper in a forest
far across the hill and still
beyond.
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.
Copyright © 2017 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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First published in “Random Poem Tree” February 2017
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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https://allisongrayhurst.com/2017/02/28/i-will-make-my-way-across-the-water/
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Crystal dark
.
sound, woodpecker
foraging, near, nearing
spice
on my fingertips –
relaxed appropriation.
Backpacks and scarcity,
only the Zen flavour
of moving, taking necessities,
giving up newly bought coats
to strangers on buses.
Bus routes going to unexplained territories
vocalizing droning dreams
of the misused, disenfranchised
ruthlessly bored,
cardboard box lifespans
arrows pointing back from the way
you came,
mounds of
silver sorrows, pee-stains
on stones, what is left but dead planets done with
geological formations, never
knowing scattering amoebas, only
knowing failed attempts at rhythm, equilibrium,
rubble,
aftermaths of harsh creation,
pointless rock-globes
spinning
with moons no signs of summer.
.
.
Copyright © 2015 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
.
First published in “Indiana Voice Journal, Issue 10” May 2015
Nominated for “Best of the Net” 2015
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/05/04/crystal-dark/
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Creativity
.
Peeled of my own death,
entering a corridor of dawn,
heat without fire,
a staircase into the void,
buried in the gas furnace, this
guest that never comes, eats bread
or slips into the cradle of a comfortable
home. Pen and beauty, an inevitable
loneliness that victory cannot solve,
a transitory opera, bird songs, fragile,
almost breaking, vibrating at a desperate
but soft speed.
A woodland to walk through that inherits
a shadow canopy darkness. Walk through
regardless of doubts full-blown,
regardless of scrapes across your tender surface.
Love is just an image
as you walk,
sounds are menacing but
never reach crescendo,
never sustain the heavier beat that leads
to ecstasy’s blackout.
Leaves become teeth.
Impressions are unkind.
Your husk is broken
and your blood is a heap of
dead violets crushed
in a celebrated summer.
.
.
Copyright © 2014 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
.
First published in “The Continuist”, June 2014 and print 2015/2016
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
.
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/06/09/creativity/
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elegy of this day being
.
At the throat, brushed green like tile I shine.
The devil says “hum-drum”
as the eel struggles, futile like a wagging tail.
So many broken, hating with the hardness of crocodiles
and ants, pulling along their dead,
to consume, knowing nothing of sorrow or forgiveness.
All night I sit with my naked thighs
on the carpet, red from the heat.
What point could there possibly be
to all this pain, the death
of others, the sickness that swarms in mid-air?
Hurricanes hit the graveyards.
A gull tilts on a telephone wire. I wish to bid goodbye.
I wish for ice-cream cones in my fridge,
a handful of poppies to give some child,
any child, I meet.
I see dead eyes in my dream,
glossed with mucous and unbearable vacancy.
How do I serve when the world is so cold?
The humpbacks know this, the midgets
and also the centipedes.
I want to hide in rooms where
infants are sleeping or salamanders nurse their young.
The darkness is in me. The ground deceives me,
changes colours as I go.
Let us go now, my nightmares
and I, go under the light, go until
our heart’s blood is free-falling, exposed.
.
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Copyright © 1998 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
.
First published in the summer 2012 issue of “Parabola” called Alone & Together
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
. http://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/10/22/do-not-define-me/ http://allisongrayhurst.com/2013/07/05/poem-published-in-blue-lake-review-do-not-define-me/ . . . the brilliant fractures, repetitions of wars and slaughterhouse squeals. Once more, brought to the tower, looking over – so easy to sway and not think of the consequences. So easy to crash the wine bottle over the piano stand and stop the bad music playing, forgetting there are so many things better left unexplored, like feelings that extinguish boundaries, that are soft as loneliness or under-appreciation. Sunglasses always worn. Endure, wait for fullness or for medication, wait for that one hour to be adorned by another’s desire, embroidered into another clothes – when wounds and failures, (for that hour) are reduced, overpowered. Moon mountains and muscles, patterns build life. God, there is creation without you – there is everything – grandfathers, butterflies and sand dunes. Unpredictability is glorified. Minds rejoice, gaining rules, workable explanations. Endure, why must I? Why, when denied a boat, a bed, a simple wild hand roaming? Love is absurd. Love is you God, and you are outside of all this, waiting for an invitation, tender as a new mother’s nipple, flowing. . . Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst . First published in “Nostrovia!” . You can listen to the poem by clicking below: . http://allisongrayhurst.com/2013/05/10/endure/ . . . that doing art is a denial of self. I say it is an inclusion of God into the self. It is not simply a dialogue nor is it intellectual banter, but it is being intoxicated with the fullness of seeing God there with every thought – in the swimming pool while treading water, or at the hair dresser, drinking coffee, waiting for a turn. A pebble is paradox like time travel is, or a meteor entering the earth like a man enters a woman – a synergy of the round and the sharp, splicing, splitting, until more splicing and splitting, until dependency on oxygen is born. Speculation, lectures, ceremonies are deeds to occupy but never to explain. Hair like a mammoth’s – how I long to run my knuckles through its thickness and ancestry! I am not intimidated by people with busy days and many different shoes. Brown has become my favourite colour, and grey, that too is magic. I knew this when I was young: True intensity is subtle, is equal in its magnitude as it is to its intricacy – It commands exploration. When I was young I knew God was with me at every threshold, standing inside my flesh. Since then, I have played with death, held conference with death as a sister. But even such sibling biology cannot cull this communion I have discovered, can’t vacuum apart indelible combined-shapes into quarantined segregation. I have known death’s jolts, have known its harrowing cripple and crack, and know it cannot revert humanity back to that interval before God exhaled, altering the playing field, resulting in such a mighty fusion. . . Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst . First published in “Whisper” . You can listen to the poem by clicking below: . http://allisongrayhurst.com/2012/03/09/i-heard-a-poet-say/ . . . Coming down, knowing now that everything known is blindness, deciphered speculation – constellations out there that spin, conjoin, burst and create are mesmerizing but lifeless – into the future, out from the past – the power is menacing, somewhat, and somewhat stale, stagnant, just ‘happening’ like storms happen and the rising of the moon. Rain on a leaf or an orange tabby chasing a shadow is accessible, pleasantly startling, metaphysically invasive. Many serious intellects are left crawling from the lack of sleep, from acquiring too many codes and smug victories. We are small, inside this body of God – a city, drooling with arrogance and inquisitiveness. That is us in motion, devouring the zenith and charting out mysteries. But things get caught on other things. Dead butterflies can still glow – behind clean glass, inside Berber-carpeted buildings, all fluorescent lights and classifications. We can point and name and even think that energy starts and ends, forget that everything is circulation and that life here is simple: It would rather copulate, raise offspring, than count stars. Inside this body of God, we are cupped in fluid boundaries, by instinct, by undeniable emotion, stronger, yet part of, cerebral musings. We feed from the Earth and we get hungry. We have these telescopes, our catacombs of understanding, but we also have pilgrimage, crust, heartbeat, dying, soccer fields and song. . . Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst . First published in “The Weary Blues” . You can listen to the poem by clicking below: . http://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/01/26/quagmire-2/ . . . At the end of the day, the pears will be ripe and the ones I loved and died will float before me in waves of growing beauty. At the end, when all of this leaves, then I will breathe an owl breath, still in my tranquil sky. At the end, I will find you, thank you for this sick chaos – myself, a garden, hit by a massive storm. I will give life again to the little birds, insects that have no use or concept of glory. I will return with you to the Buddha waters, happy to know so much love. I will walk out my door and there will be summer, early summer, and you and I (though bruised and that much more world-weary) will walk into the warmth: ultimately loved, unequivocally whole. . . Copyright © 2010 by Allison Grayhurst amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst . First published in “Bigger Stones” . You can listen to the poem by clicking below: . http://allisongrayhurst.com/2012/04/27/when-this-is-over/ . . . I am where fireflies dance in a birdless noon. I am treading water, looking for a lodged piece of land or even a dolphin’s fin to navigate me through this wounded sea. The air is smoking & a world away lovers assassinate love for the sensation of pride. Rain, drumming onto my neck, onto my jugular, rain spewed from the moon’s mouth, enters & dissects worse than any broken fame. Too late to cross the inner clouds. Too long lost in the wood under a weird & angry sun. It is my jealousy that has woken, generous with hate. It is agony & frailty like an eggshell hammered by a razor’s sharp tongue. I see dragons rise from sand dunes. I hear the laughter of a bride. My days are closed. My element (water, hymn, water) abandoned for wishbones. . . Copyright © 1995 by Allison Grayhurst amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst . First published in “Jones Ave.” . You can listen to the poem by clicking below: . http://allisongrayhurst.com/2013/04/20/sight-at-zero-2/ . . . Sheaves of time like wispy hair freed to the wind, fall on me, tickling my skin with their subtle happening. Happy are the people with soap opera love and yellow hair. Happy am I rolling and stretching & rolling under the great white sun. I am moved to deliver my package at noon. I am myself bonded to my mission like ligaments to the bone. Sheaves of time drift on my plate like leaves from my favourite tree. Call me out from my doubt and let me love each day as new, with the kind of hope only children hold, or lovers caressing faces, feeling eternity on their fingertips. . . Copyright © 2000 by Allison Grayhurst amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst . First published in “Oh! Magazine: Ryerson’s Arts and Culture Voice” . You can listen to the poem by clicking below: . http://allisongrayhurst.com/2013/05/18/sheaves-of-time-2/ . .Endure
I heard a poet say
Quagmire
When This Is Over
Sight at Zero
Sheaves of Time
OH MY GOD…
you have just become a part of my morning spiritual practice!
I LOVE IT!
Wow… I LOVE listening to the audio – it takes me somewhere – profound and important and reminds me of what is most important in life
…the poetic majesty behind it all!
metaphysical and musical!
Excellent writings Allison. well penned.
Thank you!