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If it is empty then it is empty

 .

        Perishing like wasps in wet tar,

we can’t claim an answer

but only wear our raincoats,

acting out past wounds, meditating

by watergardens where amphibians breed,

owners of the pond.

        Perishing enough to create parables

to be sold to our advantage,

holding hands in the summer or after a bath.

We look through windows, keeping

vigil with homebound strangers, unlocking cupboards,

storing gifts on laundryroom shelves.

We welcome the red squirrel, make love

most afternoons, tie-dye our t-shirts.

burning colours hotter at the edges.

        We meet old mentors perishing,

drunk and mutated, mentors who taught us

to read the lines in our palms, how to find music underwater,

poetry under siege, sometimes showing us

the pitter-patter pace of caterpillars on a damp park lawn.

        Depths pushing out like a well-nourished womb,

depths we perish in, drained of desire,

listless in the light. Don’t bother complaining,

we were made to perish, grow a revolutionary peace

in the crisp leaves of burnt sage, discover mercy

in a backwards fall.

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Copyright © 2013 by Allison Grayhurst

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First published in “Kritya”, 2013

http://www.kritya.in/0808/En/poetry_at_our_time 4.html

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Click to access 20151023No_Raft_No_Ocean_by_Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

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http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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Voice

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When you talk it is not

a shimmering sensation or

a delicate fluttering of

nature’s delicate best. Days

are not here like you are –

an open sewer grate, a crushed

locust. They are smudged and flat

as a textureless dream.

Helmets worn. Grievers

with their now-permanent-grief etched

under their fleshy eyes, checkbones and chins.

I buy buttered pastries, leave them

by their doors. I hear your voice.

You are trying to reach me with an old painter’s words

of resignation and reluctant wisdom – words

I cannot make use of.

The dead evergreen in my front yard will not revive.

Like me, and these things I clung to, it must be replaced

with something of less substance, of more obvious beauty,

like a red rose bush, birdbath or sundial. Or,

I could leave it there, brown and dry – a monument

to what was once lush, gorgeously plump, once withstanding

winters, the heat of global-warming summers, green,

wondrous against my window.

I could walk faster than this, chat with the neighbours.

But I won’t. Because nothing is here but you, only,

and my feet can’t find the motivation to pick up pace.

You talk. My aura is a smog-filled season

where your sun’s rays barely seep through. Days

with stones in my stomach, rubbing against one another,

pressing their hard weight into places.

I have no drug to ease my longing. Will it be long? Years?

Will I make it through to the Fall?

Do you have more to say? Say it then, differently.

I can’t go on repeating,

where nothing shifts but these stones,

sharp-surfaced, blocking my intestinal tract, pressing

with each step, demanding acknowledgment, denied

release, a minimal hope

for redemption.

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Copyright  © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Wax Poetry and Art Magazine, Volume 3, Number 5”, June 2014

http://waxpoetryart.com/issues/0305/allisongrayhurst.html

http://waxpoetryart.com/issues/0305/allisongrayhurst_voice.html

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Click to access 20151023No_Raft_No_Ocean_by_Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

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http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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With the purity of a single intention

 .

      Days of history voyage low

into nations, beside graveyards.

You played with the existential architects for a while,

breathing in their deconstruction, but your laughter

languished. Straddled between crossroads,

you could not form a picture.

      Days of comfort can be understood

when the crack tents with severity enough

to slice two wholes.

      In your mind there are mountains

you have lost the ambition to cross, or to look up

at their venerated summits, and listen.

      You have lost the cunning to cope, continents of wayward

possibilities. Look up, for the sake of past miracles

that swooned into your embrace like found love

as a perfect match

against fatalism and rising futility. Look up – out

into outerspace

and grow yourself a fierce mystic midnight.

      Wash trails and gardens, places

where children are allowed to dig a hole in the ground,

tunnels where the earth shines copper

with forgotten buried pennies.

Look up and drop the stone of objection,

the stretching sorrows of realism.

      It is divine, if you choose it to be.

It is the freedom of a fugitive, freed

of the rusted bars, equipped with appetite

and the exuberance of a gamble.

      The ship is lost and an ocean is gained.

Water and water rhythms

are teaming between your toes,

salting your hair and open wounds.

      From side to side, look at the glorious space around you,

then up, envisioning yourself strong-winged, safe

as a seafaring bird.

 .

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.Copyright  © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Contemporary Poetry-an Anthology of Present Day Best Poems (Volume 2)” September 2015

https://www.createspace.com/5725069

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Click to access 20151023No_Raft_No_Ocean_by_Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

.

http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers

.

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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