Category Archives: Excerpts from Book 29 “Animal Culture (rules of commitment)” Edge Unlimited Publishing (2018)

She said

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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She said

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there is a man who walks around town

who thinks he is Elvis.

It is a cliché, I know, the crazy man who thinks he is Elvis.

But this guy is for real, she says.

 

He wears a white low-cut button suit, chest hairs showing,

and those 70’s flared pants.

Sometimes, he even flaunts a red cape.

He wears a black wig that each week

the barber pretends to cut.

(That kind of compassion is rare!)

 

Everyone shows him kindness.

He gets free day-old muffins at the doughnut shop,

and when Joyce is working, she throws in a coffee.

 

How cool it would be to walk around in white,

feeling like a king, never paying for breakfast,

everyone smiling at you, treating you as a rarity.

 

People take pictures, videos, come up to him

and ask him to sing. He never does,

just lifts the one side of his lip

and dramatically flips his red velvety cape

 

purchased years ago

at the local used-clothing store.

 

 

 © 2018 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “Outlaw Poetry” August 2018

She said by Allison Grayhurst

https://outlawpoetry.com/category/allison-grayhurst/

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

 

 

Lumin

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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Lumin

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One of the greatest souls I ever met

was in the body of a rat.

She was pure and noble, dissolved

in gentle love, a smooth essence, easy

to dive into.

      Her name was Lumin- named by my son

after the Shaolin clan virtue Focus.

In truth, it may sound crazy, something many

would smirk at or mock – but here she was –

holding an infinity of tenderness in her rat eyes,

every day, every night with her rat toes, her Dumbo ears

and her rat tail.

      She had a brain tumour and lived a year with it –

recovering five times from the brink of death, holding space

in the chair, giving up her seat on the throne to stay with us.

Every night for hours we stayed together, often

just looking into each other’s eyes.

      No one could know. I could have never guessed

that I would love a rat this much,

that such an untroubled expansive heart

could dwell in one so small, so shunned and disrespected.

      She loved and was able to receive love

like a child with her mother.

She saved my son during two years of teenage despair.

That was her music. There was nothing hard in her, nothing

that did not soften into joy- even when she was ill.

When she died

 

five minutes she struggled, panicked, lunging for breath.

My hands went on her. I prayed for God

to intervene with mercy.

For five more minutes she stopped lunging, was at ease,

gasping slightly, then stopped gasping

and the light radiated through and around her body,

and her breath and the beating of her chest stopped. Now

she is at rest, delighting fully in the wave.

 

      One of the greatest friends I have ever had was a rat.

And I have and have lost many friends in many body forms –

she was a shrine of layered clarity and kindness. She

was a great being, a resting point in God’s creation.

      One of the greatest souls I have ever met

was in the body of a rat.

 

Please listen. please understand. Holy. Holy. Holy halleluiah.

We are all joined.

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 © 2018 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “Outlaw Poetry” July 2018

https://outlawpoetry.com/2018/lumin-by-allison-grayhurst/

https://outlawpoetry.com/category/allison-grayhurst/

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

 

 

Thread Count

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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Thread Count

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Tumble down

the ocean stairs,

mounting the whales’ trail,

maneuvering depths and distances

unfathomed.

 

Dream in the city at 5 a.m., accustomed

to the speech that comes just before the birds

awake and take away all formation of song.

 

This doorway, like a driving marked nightmare

cursing your already blooming cloud. Tomorrow

is the same leg-chain to drag behind, the same

shrinking dome to be lived under.

 

But tonight, I have you like a burning death,

one spot burning, one place in the house, fast

and immediate, wielding shapes

out of tall-far-away trees, from mind spaces,

fresh as newborn fish navigating

coral reefs and seeing which caves to hide in

or seeing what is hiding in –

patient predators.

 

Tonight, the bath water is ready, rooting

my body to its sensations.

The spell is dissolved, and clarity

becomes gold, a hailstorm of ecstasy, reaping

many more than one plateau, gliding gigantic above

these graves, loud, rudimentary, I have you,

nailing the flame

to both of our sinking thighs.

 

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 © 2018 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “Outlaw Poetry” June 2018

https://outlawpoetry.com/2018/thread-count-by-allison-grayhurst/

 

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

 

 

 

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