The Peace of Angels

I will release to receive

the peace of angels.

I will count the changes

as realizations, tip over

the radicalized, and be singular

in my transcendence.

Purpose is a translation. Within

are experiences discarded

or validated by memories.

Floating or being summoned

are counterweights, dangerous to stand

anywhere

but in the middle.

Loss is a hot vapour – burns as it first rises

and then, no more.

Love is everything – fills a moment

with the breath of eternity.

I will find the colour that draws me

the closest and I will choose it.

I will release the rest, know this surrender

as an exhale, a baptism to witness

that splits the sky.

Copyright © 2021 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

 .https://issuu.com/allisongrayhurst/docs/book_32_-ways_of_mercy_-_the_poetry_of_allison_gra

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Published in “Dumpster Fire Press and Voices from the Fire Anthology” April 2021

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Allison Grayhurst

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Published in “ILA Magazine, Issue 3” May 2021 and “ILA Magazine Feature Poet” September 2021

https://www.ilamagazine.net/post/poetic-feature-of-allison-grayhurst/

https://www.ilamagazine.net/home-issue-3

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Published in “Chicago Record Magazine” March 2021

https://magazine-record.blogspot.com/2021/03/consecrated-in-murky-limpid-place-you.html

https://magazine-record.blogspot.com/2021/03/

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You can listen to this poem by clicking the link below:

What were you as a man Aristotle?

            Bend the mind in fifteen different places

to pull out a particular, that

at the moment of capture,

shifts form and demands further

adaptation.

            Summersault

through definitions, substances,

entities – modeling God

on unity, and evil on chaos.

            What genius generates such a mind,

dilemmas purely in abstraction –

a voice swimming in a multi-layered

vortex of ideas and sophisticated vocabulary,

adept at defining, circulating, making movement,

unparalleled density in each paragraph,

in each line of unmatched cerebral dexterity?

            So I found you and I don’t know how

to take you in, if I can, but your observations

of elemental spirituality are exciting, and each read

is a like long dive into a living coral reef-barrier –

colours alien, animals sublime – both prey and predators,

proficient in the art of survival, and the energy!

Take me in –

            if what I thought would take a week,

takes months, and I sift through

your summits and grooves slowly, tasting

sugar, sour wine, touching

the tips of wings from the flight of many birds zipping

around my atmosphere at capacity – sometimes

as shadows, sometimes showing their bright plumage,

and those times I can glimpse, participate

in your singular reasoning, hear a man’s voice

labouring under metaphysical complexities

and bend my mind to the cyclone of your gospel,

spinning, upside down but in perfect order –

            maker of an intellectual sermon,

thinker uncorrupted, unlike your mentor Plato was

with his didactic prejudices, with his what-fors

his where-fors – but you!

            piecing out the divine,

making meals, ideals without rigidity,

chaptering out the primitive and the holy combined

with your plying, delving, ricocheting symphony

investigation.

Copyright © 2021 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

 .https://issuu.com/allisongrayhurst/docs/book_32_-ways_of_mercy_-_the_poetry_of_allison_gra

.

Published in “Dumpster Fire Press and Voices from the Fire Anthology” April 2021

https://www.amazon.ca/Voices-Fire-2-Dumpster-Press-ebook/dp/B094LJLXGF/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1664284661&sr=1-12

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Allison Grayhurst

.

.

Published in “Chicago Record Magazine” March 2021

https://magazine-record.blogspot.com/2021/03/consecrated-in-murky-limpid-place-you.html

https://magazine-record.blogspot.com/2021/03/

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You can listen to this poem by clicking the link below:

Lantern

I have made my prayers,

threw the disc and boiled

the water.

The wind is still

so I must be still.

When it moves, I will rise up

and move with it.

The stillness is not a coffin,

nor is it emptiness,

only a time of settling,

internal exploration

and four-wall refuge.

Plugged, unplugged,

a point of arrival and departure –

I will stay, listening like a small bird

is always listening, ready for flight,

ready to be initiated into a greater world

to match the poetry in my mind.

When I will move forward,

I have no clue, not yet.

That I will move forward is inevitable, so

I will not wrestle the quiet,

will not feel myself abandoned.

I hear a faint breeze moving

over there, over there.

I think I hear the first syllables

of my name.

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Copyright © 2021 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

 .https://issuu.com/allisongrayhurst/docs/book_32_-ways_of_mercy_-_the_poetry_of_allison_gra

.

First published in “Synchronized Chaos” April 2021

http://synchchaos.com/synchronized-chaos-april-2021-escape-room/

http://synchchaos.com/poetry-from-allison-grayhurst-12/

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You can listen to this poem by clicking the link below:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/lantern.m4a?_=3