The Final Despair

Reaching the madness of failure

plugged like a mouth stuffed

with a sponge, unable to express

the agony experienced with a outward scream –

curved under pressure to turn in the direction back,

circular damnation. Gifts of grace,

pillaged and gone up in smoke.

A child’s every breath was my breath,

joy as yellow as the sun – years of happiness

that meant love was working, that the

mutilated and hanging seekers

had nothing up their sleeves to defeat such truth.

But now,

my heart is small, barely beating.

My horse is burning,

racing the fields.

My hopes are maimed,

crushed by senselessness,

helplessness and the feeling

that O – there must be switch,

if I could just find it and lift and set

things aright. But my prayers

billow into the air, head for the abyss.

I doubt everything and bottom out

in that emptiness, moving mechanical,

tethered to a trusted routine,

happy only in the peace

of a morning’s solitude.

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Copyright © 2022 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “Creation and Criticism, Vol. 07” October 2022

http://www.creationandcriticism.com/loss-and-other-poems-by-allison-grayhurst.html

http://www.creationandcriticism.com/_blog/search/tag/Poet

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First published in “Medusa’s Kitchen” July 2022

http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2022/07/that-spider-dancing.html

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

Loss

There, the cement

is broken by a heavy fall,

ants make their way in,

dig tunnels, weeds sprout up

and birds land.

Beginnings are ugly, born out of death,

harsh endings and spoonfuls of stone and flame.

Even the perfect, soft, love-filled endings

are brutal in their permanence.

I drown in the shallow stream.

I make music in the desert.

I touch the worms of my thoughts,

wagging and whipping up the smooth level below.

Do you know how much I miss you –

the light in your dark special eyes,

the light that seeped into and saturated

wherever you went, and the natural love

pooling around your small body,

extending into the corners of this house,

upstairs, down basement stairs,

all the empty places?

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Copyright © 2022 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “Creation and Criticism, Vol. 07” October 2022

http://www.creationandcriticism.com/loss-and-other-poems-by-allison-grayhurst.html

http://www.creationandcriticism.com/_blog/search/tag/Poet

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Published in “Poets’ Espresso Review, Volume 14 Issue 4” November 2022

PE Vol. 14 Issue 4 Summer, Fall 2022 October 2022

https://www.poetsespressoreview.com/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o2E_8r2fEzwYb5F62xIXI8fgvRcEjVhe/view

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First published in “Medusa’s Kitchen” July 2022

http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2022/07/that-spider-dancing.html

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

Stand

I stood

where all things feared

were served with the promise

of this perpetual.

I stood

at half-mast,

my energy so recently

abundant, now draining, and

my hopes, mummified, soon

to be buried.

I stood and saw what I saw,

but it made no difference.

The light was inferior to this calamity.

Declarations came and went without execution.

I stood and said I would not go back,

but I did. I let the fruit spoil,

my own humanity overcome

with a ripe mix

of rage and despair.

I stood on a steep slope,

looking for

a soft grassy landing

or a way to stand

with equilibrium.

Copyright © 2022 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “New Mystics” July 2022

https://www.newmystics.com/lit/AllisonGrayhurst.html

New Mystics July 2022 AllisonGrayhurst-9Poems

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below: