New Era

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              From the start I believed

in never bending, but now I am a weather-vane,

guided by singing.

              Now, in movement I grow like a wild weed –

a glutton of untouched terrain.

              I have put on the iron mask,

burned my skin for the battles

of another. That shore is sinking

and my globe has altered its axle.

              I put away my grown-up philosophy

to live by impulse and the pity of God.

              The task is done, the ice is swallowed.          

It is time to love the gargoyles and create

a new form of beauty.

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Copyright © 2004 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “The Screech Owl” and “The Screech Owl” Issue 3

http://thescreechowl.com/the-apple-tree.html

http://thescreechowl.com/the-owl-loft—store.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/january-2015/the-screech-owl-issue-3/paperback/product-21987615.html

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Published in “Creative Talents Unleashed” January 2019

https://creativetalentsunleashed.com/2019/01/04/new-era-by-allison-grayhurst/

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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“Allison Grayhurst intertwines a potent spirituality throughout her work so that each poem is not simply a statement or observation, but a revelation that demands the reader’s personal involvement. Grayhurst’s poetic genius is profound and evident. Her voice is uniquely authentic, undeniable in its dignified vulnerability as it is in its significance,” Kyp Harness, singer/songwriter, author.

“Allison Grayhurst’s poems are like cathedrals witnessing and articulating in unflinching graphic detail the gritty angst and grief of life, while taking it to rare clarity, calm and comfort. Grayhurst’s work is haunting, majestic and cleansing, often leaving one breathless in the wake of its intelligence, hope, faith and love amidst the muck of life. Many of Allison Grayhurst’s poems are simply masterpieces. Grayhurst’s poetry is a lighthouse of intelligent honour… indeed, intelligence rips through her work like white water,” Taylor Jane Green, Registered Spiritual Psychotherapist and author.

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No Hope –

           For Good

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Understand, I was pleading

like Job under the wire

for the arrival of hope.

But now I see that hope is murder to the seed

of this emerging beginning.

It is not a butterfly shred in a child’s hands

but the cause of dark inertia,

giving despair a little more fuel to run with,

preventing the final collapse, stopping the black hole

that will suck the last trickle of false expectations through,

keeping me pinned to this stalled, starved and stale

universe like a crushed insect clinging for breath.

It is hope but also torture that takes death away

from that which needs to die.

It is hope but not enough to build on,

so it is better that it never comes, never runs

along side this something spectacular that is trying

to break through.

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Copyright © 2004 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Extract(s)” magazine and anthology, 2012

http://dailydoseoflit.com/2012/05/22/poem-allison-grayhurst/

http://www.lulu.com/shop/eastern-point-press/extracts-anthology-vol-i/paperback/product-21034416.html

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

.

“Allison Grayhurst intertwines a potent spirituality throughout her work so that each poem is not simply a statement or observation, but a revelation that demands the reader’s personal involvement. Grayhurst’s poetic genius is profound and evident. Her voice is uniquely authentic, undeniable in its dignified vulnerability as it is in its significance,” Kyp Harness, singer/songwriter, author.

“Allison Grayhurst’s poems are like cathedrals witnessing and articulating in unflinching graphic detail the gritty angst and grief of life, while taking it to rare clarity, calm and comfort. Grayhurst’s work is haunting, majestic and cleansing, often leaving one breathless in the wake of its intelligence, hope, faith and love amidst the muck of life. Many of Allison Grayhurst’s poems are simply masterpieces. Grayhurst’s poetry is a lighthouse of intelligent honour… indeed, intelligence rips through her work like white water,” Taylor Jane Green, Registered Spiritual Psychotherapist and author.

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Flies

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By dawn the flies

released their shape into

the soothing wind and what

came back was the weary pulse

of dying wings grafted to the day.

What world was this inside their

dark heads that honoured the

photograph over the experience,

that held up frivolous wealth like

a deserved trophy?

What faith was plucked with the flowers

as all their little tongues reached out to pocket

the short-term scent?

The flies live in their high castles like undergrounds

enjoying only the drive and privileged complaints.

They call themselves the philanthropists and

the even-tempered elite.

But I see them in the honey jar

and count them as already gone.

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Copyright © 2004 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “The Write Room”

http://www.thewritemag.com/poetry/flies/

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

.

“Allison Grayhurst intertwines a potent spirituality throughout her work so that each poem is not simply a statement or observation, but a revelation that demands the reader’s personal involvement. Grayhurst’s poetic genius is profound and evident. Her voice is uniquely authentic, undeniable in its dignified vulnerability as it is in its significance,” Kyp Harness, singer/songwriter, author.

“Allison Grayhurst’s poems are like cathedrals witnessing and articulating in unflinching graphic detail the gritty angst and grief of life, while taking it to rare clarity, calm and comfort. Grayhurst’s work is haunting, majestic and cleansing, often leaving one breathless in the wake of its intelligence, hope, faith and love amidst the muck of life. Many of Allison Grayhurst’s poems are simply masterpieces. Grayhurst’s poetry is a lighthouse of intelligent honour… indeed, intelligence rips through her work like white water,” Taylor Jane Green, Registered Spiritual Psychotherapist and author.

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The River is Blind chapbook review:

“An existential curiosity courses through Allison Grayhurst’s latest collection. It’s Grayhurst’s physical constraints that comfort us: a box sitting at the top of the stairs, housecats in states of wakefulness and sleep, the “snails and moss” that preoccupy her. Indeed, The River Is Blind situates itself firmly in the familial but imbues those relationships and domestic touchstones with a disembodied calm. Ambition and disenchantment linger along the fences of Grayhurst’s property but she remains candidly in the present.

“In lesser hands, muses such as these might’ve resulted in verses of weak-kneed contentedness. But Grayhurst’s voice remains one of detachment, webbing daily pleasures into greater meditations on love and God. Through spiritual lens, poems like “Everything Happens” and “Flies” counteract steadfast faith with insights on the material world, a separate world; a place where people grind flowers for honey,” Ryan Pratt, Ottawa Poetry Newsletter, January 30, 2013

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