Category Archives: Excerpts from Book 9 “The River is Blind” Edge Unlimited Publishing (2012)

Surrogate Dharma

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

 

Surrogate Dharma

 .

I didn’t think I would get lost

or be chained to a contractual victory.

I thought a grain would grow,

become a solid garden. Fires would come, then

firefighters. I would be testifying about

the worth of what survived.

     That is not what happened. I fell prey

to the propaganda of affirmations,

to the volume of control I could contain.

My dream dropped out of me

like a miscarriage. I hoped I could forget:

Tie my shoes, zip up a coat

and kiss the shelter I have. Bridges here and there –

they are not mine to travel.

Vinegar keeps getting injected into my bones,

replacing the marrow with

its potent clarity. Do you see? I am getting older.

It will be over

and I have to be able to say I served well.

My mouth opens and folds like a fledgling wing.

People pass – each one a violin note, a digit, a reluctant

panting pitch. Conversations are ash.

I don’t like living in these elements, my neck

stretched up into the dense middle

of a monsoon. Let me climb,

dragging this dead beast behind me.

Let me live where my father went to school,

on a Himalayan peak.

I am not a petal. My courage is fickle, it fortifies or fades,

dependent each day on mutual obligatory infatuation.

     I can’t keep pretending:

The sun is strong. The night is strong. I am not stronger.

     I am in this hovel with my lamp, tasting metal

of varying textures –

rusted, gold, and other star-erupted symbols –

greeting obscurity, broken toenails

I can’t be bothered to trim. How many rooms, my God?

How much waiting and walking, and the fish?

I could be a fish. Make me

one of those – sliding about, weaving

with one full-body stroke

through a lush intricate terrain, mastering

a juicy undergrowth.

 .

 

.

Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

3021

Surrogate Dharma chapbook 1

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

.

.

Published in “Occulum” August 2017

Two Poems | by Allison Grayhurst

.

First published in “SpinRock Reader Lit Forum” October 2015

SpinRock Reader Lit 1 SpinRock Reader Lit 2 SpinRock Reader Lit 3 SpinRock Reader Lit 4 SpinRock Reader Lit 5 SpinRock Reader Lit 6

http://spinrockreader.blogspot.ca/2015/10/surrogate-dharma-poem-by-allison.html

.

First published in “Surrogate Dharma” e-chapbook Kind of a Hurricane Press

Surrogate Dharma chapbook 1

Surrogate Dharma chapbook 29Surrogate Dharma chapbook 2

 

http://barometricpressures.blogspot.ca/2014/10/surrogate-dharma-allison-grayhurst.html

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-DuKJaq66CldFQtSDd1aTBncm8/view

.

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

.

Time like . . .

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

 

Time like . . .

.

There is time like there is

a carpet or somebody

knocking on the door. The battle

rages in a chaotic frenzy. People

cave into fears as if that means

‘maturity’. There is no time like there is

no permanence other than God.

Stimulation and bleeding gums.

Sit down, run your hand over your face. I will

run my fingers along your jaw line, your

brow line, and trace a constellation. Be my

instrument, expose the terror I cautiously keep. Call me

a hypocrite and then forgive me,

avenge me for my mortality.

In heaven, the Earth is a vegetable left too long in

the fridge. In the mornings, I am lonely but want only

to be alone. Your breath howls, sometimes I can hear it

when you think you are sleeping. Those times I would rip

across any void just to clean your blood. Time is

laughing at us, because we’ve touched the flesh of freedom

and everything after that wears on our skin,

groaning, growing

as instant madness.

.

.

.Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

3021

img061

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

.

First published in “Tic Toc poetry anthology”, June 2014

Tic Toc 1Tic Toc 2Tic Toc 3Tic Toc 4Tic Toc 6Tic Toc 7

.

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

.

The bells

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

.

The bells

.

The bells speak of a hurt

that is mounting the circumference

of a life, mourning the death that splinters the arteries,

the hip bones, each vertebra. Begging to the stars to tell

a colossal fable, a majestic myth

to solve this boring condition

of being here, away from the infinite sky, swallowing

mounds of dirt where many others have had their footprints.

Speak of woods, and of creatures that love but cannot

laugh. My lover, I am freed from the concrete

chamber – you freed me and helped me find

an arrow. There is ringing in my ears and a sorrow

triumphant, clinging to me like barnacles.

It is what I have chosen – to not pretend and to kindle

a primal inspiration. Desire like a ceremony –

days of meditation long past, but trances and

swaying and throwing words out, guttural,

epidemic with desire, those days are here.

On the roof, hands at my side. Hurt in my ankles and

in my teeth: A snake is in the front garden and

I am watching it.

.

.

Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

3021

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

https://allisongrayhurst.com/shop/

.

First published in “The Tophat Raven”, March 2014

tophat raven 1tophat raven 5tophat raven 4tophat raven the bellstophat raven 3

.