Category Archives: Excerpts from Book 18 “Fire and more,” Edge Unlimited Publishing (2016)

Entering the organic spa-spot

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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Entering the organic spa-spot

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The torture I held as you tiptoed across

my organ cells and hair follicles.

I held even more by holding insanity’s

delicate wafer on your conveyor belt.

I love this end the most, smelling charcoal and

the rotted-tooth breath of what once was.

I loved saying goodbye to your rigid palm-reading,

your depleting predictability and the adult-slot

I’ve had to slot my mind into

to manage you as well

as I did. And I did. I received gift baskets,

praise and even a place

on the roster. I know it was for something but even so,

it was nothing I can use in my journey among the

aspen shavings, the inter-sloping muse

that highjacks my better self

and gives it free play.

Even so, good to know, I am capable. So much better though,

to say goodbye, bow out and join ranks with the sages.

So much weight to shed, the load of metal-brick responsibilities,

keeping tabs, counting scores. So much that wants to be forgotten,

go unnoticed and lose the symbiotic skills of your success.

Mercy is mine, understand that. I am not settled, but embarking.

I am saying goodbye and it is easeful,

a release that arrives as completion.

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Copyright © 2015 by Allison Grayhurst

Fire and more cover - Copy

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “The Peregrine Muse” December 2015

   

https://sites.google.com/site/theperegrinemuseii/home/grayhurst

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Click to access Make_the_Wind20160404Allison_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:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/entering-the-organic-spa-spot.m4a?_=1

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“Grayhurst’s poetry is a translucent, ethereal dream in which words push through the fog, always searching, struggling, and reaching for the powerful soul at its heart. Her work is vibrant and shockingly original,” Beach Holme Publishers.

“Allison’s poetic prose is insightful, enwrapping, illuminating and brutally truthful. It probes the nature of the human spirit, relationships, spirituality and God. It is sung as the clearest song is sung within a cathedral by choir. It is whispered as faintly as a heartbroken goodbye. It is alive with the life of a thousand birds in flight within the first glint of morning sun. It is as solemn as the sad-sung ballad of a noble death. Read at your peril. You will never look at this world in quite the same way again. Your eye will instinctively search the sky for eagles and scan the dark earth for the slightest movement of smallest ant, your heart will reach for tall mountains, bathe in the most intimate of passions and in the grain and grit of our earth. Such is Allison Grayhurst. Such is her poetry,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.

“Grayhurst is a great Canadian poet. All of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry is original, sometimes startling, and more often than not, powerful. Anyone who loves modern poetry that does not follow the common path will find Grayhurst complex, insightful, and as good a poet as anyone writing in the world today. Grayhurst’s poetry volumes are highly, highly recommended,” Tom Davis, poet, novelist and educator.
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I can see the sun

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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I can see the sun

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but I can’t be the sun

or know the sun

in this wilderness clearing

cutting up, suctioning out my insides.

Sing alone over the wide span

of dead rolls, broken by a secret

and wounds dried up, salt hard,

hard with condensed pressure.

Creak and slide over insect glitter, sun

beams shaping the edge of the bank. I am a

fish in a polluted stream. Tires and concrete,

broken blocks blocking my way to the river.

Evolving is hard, takes time to earn a body

that can leap over high obstacles, conquer resisting currents

while starved of a clean home. It takes a fool’s joy

and an easy detachment to soar far out of the nest, lift

up and skim the skin of golden warmth. But I am a fish

meant to find shelter at the bottom bed of the ocean,

not in rivers or in streams, not leaping, but slow, slow,

surfing the cold sandy terrain,

skylight forgotten, sunlight undreamed.

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Copyright © 2015 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

 

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.Published in “Duane’s PoeTree ” December 2015

http://duanespoetree.blogspot.ca/2015/12/allison-grayhurst-writes.html

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Click to access Make_the_Wind20160404Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

.

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

.

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/i-can-see-the-sun.m4a?_=2

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“Grayhurst’s poetry is a translucent, ethereal dream in which words push through the fog, always searching, struggling, and reaching for the powerful soul at its heart. Her work is vibrant and shockingly original,” Beach Holme Publishers.

“Allison’s poetic prose is insightful, enwrapping, illuminating and brutally truthful. It probes the nature of the human spirit, relationships, spirituality and God. It is sung as the clearest song is sung within a cathedral by choir. It is whispered as faintly as a heartbroken goodbye. It is alive with the life of a thousand birds in flight within the first glint of morning sun. It is as solemn as the sad-sung ballad of a noble death. Read at your peril. You will never look at this world in quite the same way again. Your eye will instinctively search the sky for eagles and scan the dark earth for the slightest movement of smallest ant, your heart will reach for tall mountains, bathe in the most intimate of passions and in the grain and grit of our earth. Such is Allison Grayhurst. Such is her poetry,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author..

“Grayhurst is a great Canadian poet. All of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry is original, sometimes startling, and more often than not, powerful. Anyone who loves modern poetry that does not follow the common path will find Grayhurst complex, insightful, and as good a poet as anyone writing in the world today. Grayhurst’s poetry volumes are highly, highly recommended,” Tom Davis, poet, novelist and educator.
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Empty drawer

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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Empty drawer

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I can’t speak it

it burns, melts

down my throat,

riddling my stomach lining.

I can’t smell the wet

wooden fences, touch

what glistens naturally,

transient and pure.

Running from the socializers,

the money makers, money believers, ignorant

of death and of the weight of love.

I can’t stand in my special place,

domed by a protective layer of faith

and the muscle tissues of maniac grace.

I want to leave this war in which

what I say has no say, where I am pinned

to the gravel, spoke

wheels of the worldly controllers

rolling over my flesh and spine. Is there

mercy? Is there anything

open? Oxygen? Validation?

Is there anyone to talk to?

I would talk but I can’t speak

or move forward from this death trap.

In my mind, confinement abounds.

Blood letting, leach getting, plastered

to every underside of skin.

When will it be gone?

Will I be gone, clear of this

disability? Bicycle

riding, riding twisted garden paths.

Smile here, nod there at all the people in human clothes.

I am grey as my namesake, as a cluster of lackluster trees.

There is nowhere for me, nothing

I can understand.

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Copyright © 2015 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

.

.

First published in “Duane’s PoeTree ” November 2015

  

http://duanespoetree.blogspot.ca/2015/11/allison-grayhurst-writes.html

.

Click to access Make_the_Wind20160404Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

.

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

.

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/empty-drawer.m4a?_=3

.

“Grayhurst’s poetry is a translucent, ethereal dream in which words push through the fog, always searching, struggling, and reaching for the powerful soul at its heart. Her work is vibrant and shockingly original,” Beach Holme Publishers.

“Allison’s poetic prose is insightful, enwrapping, illuminating and brutally truthful. It probes the nature of the human spirit, relationships, spirituality and God. It is sung as the clearest song is sung within a cathedral by choir. It is whispered as faintly as a heartbroken goodbye. It is alive with the life of a thousand birds in flight within the first glint of morning sun. It is as solemn as the sad-sung ballad of a noble death. Read at your peril. You will never look at this world in quite the same way again. Your eye will instinctively search the sky for eagles and scan the dark earth for the slightest movement of smallest ant, your heart will reach for tall mountains, bathe in the most intimate of passions and in the grain and grit of our earth. Such is Allison Grayhurst. Such is her poetry,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.

“Grayhurst is a great Canadian poet. All of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry is original, sometimes startling, and more often than not, powerful. Anyone who loves modern poetry that does not follow the common path will find Grayhurst complex, insightful, and as good a poet as anyone writing in the world today. Grayhurst’s poetry volumes are highly, highly recommended,” Tom Davis, poet, novelist and educator.
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