Doubt

 

Doubt

 .

Afterwards, I sit on the altar

of my withdrawal. I will not kneel, rendering

myself a thicker chair. My kind, like

fangs and hooves combined in one secret

creature. A city without history, emotions that

echo but do not deliver. My dress of skin: this place

cannot hold me any longer. Do you see the thumbprint

of the ocean – crater like – in the center of every Earth-rhythm?

Unable to fully believe in Earthy-things and the sun in its

frame of sky, marching on and over – so tired of this

tangle! ongoing. going on. For hopes of a caress, an instant

of locked eyes and the merging of souls. My voice –

weightless as a dream. Desire is a shell, the scent of

cedarwood saturating the pores, memories I haven’t

yet encountered. Sweeping is the goal.

And love stays, but how much

is a basket of exotic fruit, and how much more,

imagination?

.

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Copyright © 2010 by Allison Grayhurst

Walkways cover 2

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

.

First published in “The Kitchen Poet”

The Book

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The Book

.

Inside, spending all my coins, rejoicing

on ephemeral longing, on a lustful inhale

for physical redemption.

 

Hidden in the pages, I am hidden

at four in the morning, bathing in perfection,

lifting into heights that obscure drudgery.

 

Thoughts are shapes that float as shadows,

hardly solid like butter left out of the fridge.

Cages unraveling and houses cleaned of cobwebs.

Between soft book covers freedom kisses explicitly,

candy-ices without embarrassment.

 

Hanging on hinges, on barely glanced-at walls,

I gather my vision in the grass, paint on the

bones of another’s life – beautiful bones and hallways

of many feet walking and swishing bathrobes.

In the book I can face forward and never fear rejection,

I can shower sensuously in warm rhythms,

tied to the stirring light of early summer.

Love between these diary covers is not just canvass

or thick hues that merge and make a middle, it is where I will

at last know another’s body as I know my own, be protected

from the torrential pawing pierce of middle-age loneliness.

 

Inside the book, you are under me like a bed of lavender bushes,

there are waves where once sunken skeletons rise like coral,

polished pure of their violent history.

 

Drowning in the book, imagining ants collecting,

synchronized on an apple core.

 

Bells in my head, footsteps rising, closer now,

you know me well. Inside the book, you know me better.

We are two trees – branches and roots, an interwoven crocheted

impressionistic portrait, staying through heavy storms.

 

Inside the book, we are creatures of greater sympathy.

You are like yarn, tied to my brush and hold, never in

the liquid valley of a distant boat, or obvious as a prickly,

rigid rope. I am mature, a woman with a ceiling to touch,

fifty feet of surrounding stillness, unfettered

from the expectations of my time and gender,

radiant, more, whole.

.

.

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Copyright © 2013 by Allison Grayhurst

 BookCoverPreview

Currents - pastlife poems cover 4

BookCoverImage Allison GrayhurstTrial and Witness print back cover

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

.

First published in “Wilderness House Literary Review”

 

 

Lotus

 

Lotus

.

        Sleep, into triumphant sleep,

waking is a tide of abysses and senses

reflecting illusions. Cursory stresses,

repairing at the bedside where my knees bent in prayer,

scuffing my skin with cosmic complaining.

        I’ve thought about this, and I’ve decided

not to care if I fail at swimming or grooming or trophy-getting,

or in collecting eggwhites, having more than what I have

necessary on the table.

        Love is the weathervane is the station,

earning eternity, a teaming ocean worthy of a dive.

The rest is a stunted fetus that will never coo

or be baby-dream sufficient.

        I’ve spent too long weight-lifting chaos’s hammer,

flinging myself from wall to stump.

I have eyes that hold me, another’s and another’s

I can take pictures of and sing to, and I wish for nothing

but to retain this fertility of tender revealing.

        Children and the final history of desire,

predestined to return as a speck – own my freewill,

multiplying with the rhythm of a brighter responsibility.

        Sleep, for I’ve never existed

but to count this love and to love this way

personal, a cliché of bloated ignorance,

with a mouthful of famine and an armful of miniscule miracles,

gestating, spiralling, blending into the soft brown sofa,

tea in hand, leaning on another, amazed

by how good this is and how very long

this cozy reverie has lasted.

.

.

.Copyright  © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

BookCoverPreview

BookCoverImage Allison GrayhurstTrial and Witness print back cover

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

.

First published in “Guwahatian, Volume 1, Issue 9”