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This page is in appreciation for all the incredible comments made on my work. Most have been from other poets. Many comments are poetic, insightful, and articulate. I would like to thank every person who took the time and energy to let me know how my work affected them. Not one comment has gone unnoticed, even though they are not all included on this page. These comments have moved me deeply, giving me incentive to keep writing.
Click to access Book-35-Comments-on-the-poetry-of-Allison-Grayhurst-from-2011-to-2023.pdf
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Comments made on poems shared on All Poetry
https://allpoetry.com/AllisonGrayhurst
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2024/2025
If it is empty then it is empty
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18551756-If-it-is-empty-then-it-is-empty-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2013/05/08/if-it-is-empty-then-it-is-empty/
Noseringpoems – Poignant ink here beautifully expressed sentiments and thoughts with use of metaphoric references for imagery that captures philosophical perspectives with spiritual touch speaks volumes to me amazing work and read.
Edified
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18534642-Edified-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2012/04/23/edified/
Krystöff – A pretty deep and profound inking…cleverly conceived and creatively composed into a compelling write…What a poetic delight and a worthwhile read!
Interlude
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18516622-Interlude-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2013/09/11/interlude-2/
Its-minhaR – Beautifully written!I The poem has a gothic feel to it and is lyrically mature. The imagery is haunting and the tone lingers long after reading. Good work!
You are wrong
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18509625-You-are-wrong-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/11/22/you-are-wrong/
Terry Collett – A real written poem I can read again and again
Amazing
Lucan 1 – It takes real strength to put feelings like these into words, especially when they’re about such a deep and hurtful experience… You’ve done an amazing job of showing the path from caring so much to feeling completely disconnected… You wonderfully describe the loss of what was once so important, and how it feels to finally walk away… So good!
Surrogate Dharma
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18504336-Surrogate-Dharma-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/11/06/surrogate-dharma-2/
RiddleMeThis666 – This is a hauntingly beautiful and deeply introspective poem — a meditation on grief, resilience, disillusionment, and the quiet ache of survival. The imagery is visceral and arresting, especially lines like “my dream dropped out of me / like a miscarriage” and “Vinegar keeps getting injected into my bones”, which evoke emotional and physical vulnerability with rare candor. There’s a subtle, powerful tension between despair and endurance, and the final metamorphic wish — “Make me one of those fish” — feels like a yearning for freedom, fluidity, and a new form of grace. It’s raw, courageous writing, unafraid to dwell in discomfort while still searching for beauty.
Blue6.0.23.5 – This is utterly phenomenal, it has such an effect, one can only emphasise with the speakers torment. The need to escape the depths of the human condition is clearly emphasised.
Riverstones
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18488675-Riverstones-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/12/11/riverstones/
Myriad-dark – A wonderful creation of pastiche moments captured in a zoetrope of images flashing by… has a vaguely nodding Dylan Thomas synergy to it (at least to this uneducated eye…) and an extremely creative touch to it…. Write on..!
Nicely written
On this Dock
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18483188-On-this-Dock-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/04/01/on-this-dock/
Kaye – Wonderfully inspiring, your words are the heartbeat of your ink that shows you know how to make the words move with great meaning.
Crystal dark
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18470180-Crystal-dark-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/05/04/crystal-dark/
Sijun Cui – This poem’s vivid interplay of natural rhythms and societal decay offers a profound meditation on vulnerability and perseverance—truly evocative!
Surrender
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18459188-Surrender-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/05/02/surrender/
Eli Waukeen – Those words were visceral in the best way. I enjoyed it.
With the purity of a single intention
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18447954-With-the-purity-of-a-single-intention-by AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/10/24/with-the-purity-of-a-single-intention/
Krystöff – This is pretty deep. profound, philosophical…what a thought provoking piece you have here…so cleverly conceived and creatively composed into a compelling poem…What a worthwhile poetic delight most insightful and inspirational
Snowy
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18385173-Snowy-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/05/09/snowy/
Jonathan Moya – This poem radiates serenity – a quiet celebration of presence, simple joys, and an almost spiritual detachment from the anxieties of human ambition. “Snowy” becomes more than a dog; they embody ease, contentment, and the quiet assurance that life need not be hurried or explained – only lived. Beautifully meditative.
Undyinghope – so so beautifully written, love how it is so descriptive. The metaphysician – Great poem well done it resonated with my own experiences of life
New Wheel – The Passage of Arnik
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18419166-New-Wheel—The-Passage-of-Arnik-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/new-wheel-the-passage-of-arnik/
Notm.shoxz – You have a gift for words. Your talent for crafting beautiful and meaningful poetry is evident in every line, showcasing your exceptional abilities as a poet.
Spring Too
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18397976-Spring-Too-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2016/02/01/spring-too/
Kevin’s helper – Amazing job… What’s good about this poem? The poem masterfully contrasts the darker aspects of life (anger, inequality, darkness) with the beauty and wonder of the natural world (mountain rejoicing, fire, starlight). The language is rich and evocative, with vivid imagery and metaphors (fattened snake, kaleidoscope in the folds of my mouth). The poem also celebrates the joys of everyday life, like feeling sand between your fingers, and the beauty of human connection (kissing a loving child). The tone is contemplative, reflective, and ultimately hopeful.
Blend
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18394413-Blend-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/12/02/blend/
Zia Willis – Great write, there is a lot of amazing imagery and thought provoking themes packed into this poem.
Sanctum
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18383253-Sanctum-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/09/05/sanctum/
Joy Enjoy – Like Hannibal ante Portas, you are ready to conquer this virtual fortress with wonderful writings. But as I see you have just conquered more hearts than I be able perhaps 100 years after. From your throne of gold, have mercy of a poor troll and tell me the secret of your glory, beyond obvious talent and grace, of course. Thanks in advance. Good work
BookwormDave227 – Powerful imagery, solid word choices. It is thoughtful and engaging.
Lifted
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18379314-Lifted-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2016/02/28/lifted/
Unearthly Demagogue – The weight of years, a past fading like a dream. A new self emerges, raw and untested. Through the pain of change, a purifying love arrives, dissolving fear. The inner self awakens, sensing a transformed world, seeing old threats anew, finding sacred meaning in the everyday. Inner visions solidify. The very essence of being, the breath, triumphs.
Lovely poem
Joy Enjoy – A little touched by melancholy as all noble souls are, but faith and love of life may be useful. Life and Love and Light in the song of Hope. Well written
Wisteria-Petal – good work I really liked the efforts and the choices of the words highly appreciated
Days Without Water
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18356847-Days-Without-Water-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2012/02/14/days-without-water/
Anitapapic – A bit intriguing, it made left me wanting to know more, read more, feel more. I find the last stanza to be so neat and efficient.
Building walls of personal mercy
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18336926-Building-Walls-of-Personal-Mercy-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2017/02/03/building-walls-of-personal-mercy/
Danna Hobart – I am very impressed by this. Your imagery and metaphor are top notch. Well done.
Obinnex – It is about how hard it is to stay positive when the world feels bad. It talks about feeling like you are drowning in sadness, but trying to stay strong. The woman finds little things that make her feel better, like eating fruit or watching birds. She is trying to figure out what helps her, and what is just a distraction. It is about fighting to stay hopeful in a tough world.
Where Love Draws The Line
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18327490-Where-Love-Draws-The-Line-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/10/29/where-love-draws-the-line/
Andrea Williams – Where love draws the line, BEAUTIFUL! I love its rich storytelling as I would consider it as.
I have been born
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18310542-I-have-been-born-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2016/05/16/i-have-been-born/
Unearthly Demagogue – You’ve touched on something ancient: the weariness of cyclical existence, the yearning for a definitive self. It’s the soul saying, “Enough”. Born and reborn, shaped by forces beyond control, you’ve lived countless lives, each bound by flesh and fate. Now, a choice is made: to halt the relentless wheel, to reclaim agency. It’s a declaration of autonomy. “This skin, mine”, becomes a monument. Not just a body, but a final, chosen identity. The landscapes falling away are past selves, discarded. You’re refusing to be defined by them anymore. It’s a moment of profound self-possession, a stand against the endless “becoming”. You’ve clearly chosen to be.
Flower Quilts – The passion can be felt through the intricate and unique word choice
Sammyw – This is so beautifully written. Read it more than once. Great job!
Onslaught Cloud
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18305322-Onslaught-Cloud-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2020/09/09/onslaught-cloud/
Graddy – Wow beautiful poem very authentic and wonderful to read
Before I Go
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18262553–Before-I-Go-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/04/15/before-i-go/
Heidi Marie – I love this! I love the depth of the words. To me it reads letting go of self disappointment and moving on with forgiving yourself. I loved the words letting go of crashes expectations peel away the crust until you reveal a flower. brilliant
The Letting Go
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18253810-The-Letting-Go–a-five-part-poem–by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/the-letting-go-a-five-part-poem/
Noseringpoems – Lovely and poignant thoughtful ink here strong sentiments and thoughts expressed through five stages interpretation that reflects upon the essence of melancholy and emotional turmoil within and anguish hurt pain through toxic relationship and the process of letting go cleverly written visualization with philosophical approach and use of metaphoric references for imagery amazing work and read.
The fault of sages
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18205634-The-fault-of-sages-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/07/12/the-fault-of-sages/
Blueprintlover – I feel this on such an emotional level please keep writing
Under mosaic whisperings
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18156603-Under-mosaic-whisperings-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2015/05/23/under-mosaic-whisperings/
Iman Zahra – “Your words touch the soul, bringing forth cherished memories. Thank you for sharing this beauty.”
Nunoftferreira – Excellent flow and cleverly poetic composition skillfully weaved by your words
Adrian41062 – Great with excellent rhythm and flowing freely good storyline and lots of strands within the write.
On this Dock
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18137514-On-this-Dock-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/04/01/on-this-dock/
The Playful Poet – I thought this was a great poem with deep imagery and detail. I can see why it was published. Inspired me.
I see differently
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18130347-I-see-differently-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/09/23/i-see-differently/
David Pinto – “Your poem resonates deeply with me; the imagery is stunning, and the emotions are palpable. Thank you for sharing such a heartfelt piece!”
Mina nur – This poem is stunning! I love how you described certain feelings with vivid imagery.
My Mother’s Sky (part 34 of 34)
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7217468290929999873/
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17906004-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-34-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/my-mothers-sky/
Benjamin Sessoms – This poem was absolutely moving, vulnerable, selfless, and honorable.
Obinnex – The speaker reflects on the death of her mother and the profound impact she had on her life. The language of a part of the speaker’s heartwarming tribute to her mother is lovely. For example, ‘Your sky is prophecy, feeding/the bedrock and the water’s reflection,/all parts proved sacred, identical/to the immutable moving whole.’
Valerie-valaria – Beautifully honest testimony of the love shared between mother and daughter. It was an honor to read.
Crystal Hope – Your last breath is more
a soft sigh than a breath,
not a cross-wind of struggle,
this is truly beautiful and emotional tribute. enjoyed reading this or to read
Against Gravity
Learning
https://literaryrevelations.com/2023/03/17/read-the-stunning-poetry-of-allison-grayhurst/
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/03/against-gravity/
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/04/learning/
Cindy Georgakas – Allison’s words are powerful with incredible imagery felt the minute you start reading her. I can see why her work is acclaimed. Well deserved. 💞
Jonicaggiano – Congratulations on all your amazing successes. I love the idea that you
have a whole album of music for your poetry, such a wonderful accomplishment and I truly
appreciate the name, “River.” Your last poem really touched me. I especially enjoyed the last few lines on your last piece.
“Because I keep the rituals that keep me sane,
in storm or shade, I pray more than I dream
and when I dream it is about abstractions,
about tree branches, blankets, about
the hair’s breadth distance between sea and stars.”
I could relate to these words and I found them comforting. Thank you so much.
Layla Todd – Beautiful the imagery in ‘Learning’ and the powerful message that comes across! <3
My Mother’s Sky
https://allisongrayhurst.com/my-mothers-sky/
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17906004-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-34-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Smanansingh196 – Blood on a field blood in a cloud and then so many streams flowing unassuming I take your hand lean amazing great inspired.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17901319-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-31-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Dino 33 – damn, Allison, I really felt it, the line ‘take what you must, but take it now ‘, really hit me to realization, its like narrating a one of the classics, I loved it
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17898107-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-29-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
SherryBoy -Thought provoking and lovely imagery painted here, well written!!
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17895141-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-27-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
PoetAldo -You wrote a master piece
I also find that your poem
is very nicely put together.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17892163-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-25-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
TJ Hunger – This poem is emotionally raw! It perfectly captures the despair of losing someone close. The “blended scenery” and “bruised blood” imagery is powerful. Perhaps too much so.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17889155-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-23-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Fidelia sara – This was an amazing poem with a nice choice of words that effectively conveyed the feelings. The flow of words is brilliant.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17884607-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-20-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
abode of scribe – How beautifully written… Loved every bit of it. Thanks for sharing.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17878382-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-16-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
GotLilt – Beautiful imagery and bitter sweet expression of loss.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17876935-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-15-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Thomas W. Case – Tremendous imagery. You take the reader right into the scene. Vivid and sharp.
Nicely penned.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17872199-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-12-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Nunoftferreira -This is full of depth and very philosophical…truly impressive and worthy of to be read more times… Well done work and interesting read of a good piece of poetry you have composed and shared here.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17870647-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-11-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
abode of scribe – This touched me a lot in different ways… especially the last stanza. Death is indeed a different journey.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17869151-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-10-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Rabia Batool – Very brilliant piece !!! Bravo
I liked your word choice so much
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17859519-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-4-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Josh-moonlightbeam – Interesting and powerful imagery. Great use of consonance. The author’s grief comes through as a force of nature. Thank you for sharing.
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/17854699-My-Mother-s-Sky–part-1-of-34–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Ceren7 – This was really great and emotional to read. I like the similes.
Nicely done
Mel Mel – Thank you for sharing. Most definitely great job. Keep going. Keep writing like to hear more of your great and wonderful work
Enjoyable
Comments made on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCULKYL_Dbe9-K1pwq2tU03A
Kill the Poet
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2014/04/17/kill-the-poet/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh-zk0vwPGM&lc=UgwuJ8ZAM7guPYOyx2F4AaABAg
PizzaIsNotPecs – Allison is so brilliant
@poetrymanusa – I can’t believe this wonderfully rich, imagery, the poem has been on YouTube for a year, and only 1 like! The skill set of words here is amazing. As a fellow poet, editor, and publisher I would publish this poem in a heartbeat before anyone else got to it. Michael Lee Johnson
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Comments made on poems shared on All Poetry
https://allpoetry.com/AllisonGrayhurst
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What is
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17658934-What-is-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2024/02/23/what-is/
Ianthia – Lines of great profundity and beauty…. heart wrenchingly so…amazing.
Charri – This is beautiful and so thought-provoking, a joy to read and read again.
Thomas burnett – Very deep and moving I can definitely feel your pain
Ethan594 – I enjoy the contemplative motion of this poem. Starting there and then moving to the mother is restrained and effecting.
Bound to
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17649267-Bound-to-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2024/02/18/bound-2/
Kevin’s helper – I enjoyed this The poem’s exploration of despair, self-doubt,
and futility resonates with readers who have experienced similar emotions.
The reader can relate to the speaker’s struggles with self-respect,
compromise, and the desire to find meaning and purpose in life.
The poem’s vivid imagery and evocative language create a powerful
emotional connection, allowing the reader to empathize with the
speaker’s pain and longing.
Inertia Foiled
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17647402-Inertia-Foiled-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2024/02/17/inertia-foiled/
RNeal – “Inertia Foiled” is a defiant anthem against the seductive pull of negativity and stagnation. The speaker confronts the alluring ease of resorting to negativity, whether through aggression, self-pity, or isolation. Each option is presented as a potential comfort, a way to avoid the vulnerability of love. Yet, the poem ultimately celebrates the triumph of love’s awakening. The image of love “coming down the stairs” symbolizes its irresistible descent, ready to shatter the speaker’s defenses. The final lines, “I could just receive / and dedicate my purpose / alone / to this sensation,” resonate with a newfound resolve to embrace the transformative power of love, even if it means facing vulnerability head-on. This poem is a powerful testament to the struggle against inertia, ultimately choosing connection and purpose over self-imposed isolation.
Maelstrom
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17643633-Maelstrom-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2024/02/15/maelstrom/
Dark Seuss – This is excellent work, it was so nice to read.. I have nothing here I would suggest to change. Bravo
Cut the Reins
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17645496-Cut-the-Reins-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2024/02/16/cut-the-reins/
RNeal – “Cut the Reins” presents a stark contrast between a raw, chaotic past and a seemingly stable, yet oppressive, present. The poem critiques a society built on hierarchy and religious control, where freedom is sacrificed for the illusion of peace. While I refrain from suggesting changes, the poem’s strength lies in its vivid imagery and forceful language. Particularly impactful is the comparison of the “sibling-slayer, bared-tooth ruler” to the manipulative “priest,” highlighting the potential dangers hidden within civility. The poem leaves a lingering question: is true freedom possible within any form of established order?
What Do I Belong To?
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17641864-What-Do-I-Belong-To–by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2024/02/14/what-do-i-belong-to/
Tiffthepoet – Very inspiring nicely written you have a way with words phenomenally done I give two thumbs up
Against Gravity
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17274127-Excerpt-from-poem–Against-Gravity–by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/03/against-gravity/
Symmetry59- You were born to write. Such a brilliant mind.
Intertwined
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17280794-Excerpt-from-poem–Intertwined–by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/13/intertwined/
Kendricks capps – This truly creative writing at it’s best
I truly love this poem it’s a real quality one
To come by
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful piece of poetry 🙂💚🍻
Symmetry59 – Genius work…
CBC website comment on book Sight at Zero
https://www.cbc.ca/books/sight-at-zero-1.4618370
Taylor Jane Green
Allison Grayhurst is an incredibly passionate and prolific poet in Canada. The real deal. I have followed her poetry for years and regard her as a National Treasure.
Poetry is Breath
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17207545-Poetry-is-Breath-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/30/poetry-is-breath/
WilliamChen – Powerful and memorable!
Poetry is Breath
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17207545-Poetry-is-Breath-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/30/poetry-is-breath/
Sliptheknot – Plain language with carrying capacity. I suddenly adore being nearly electrocuted! Thank you A.G., for posting so reliably, remarkably, on AP
Blatant. B – I love your extended metaphor especially because I can picture it and there’s a way it make you feel. Thanks for the share.
Scrooby – “that next-layer rare connection”: so true: such strata takes a lifetime to uncover.
Useless
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1MHL3RZCR1JSV/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=8196316127
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/06/useless/
Karunesh Kumar Agrawal – 5.0 out of 5 stars This poem evoke a sense of weariness and longing for something better. Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 20, 2023
This shelter is threadbare
like a low-battery flashlight,
barely making a dark corner visible.
I sang to find an easeful slumber.
I left my empty bin by the road,
begging for a refill.
Summer is behind me.
The grass is torn
from tiny claws and pecking.
I live below the breathing line
and there is no way to rise higher
or join a harmony to unfasten my chains.
This poem evoke a sense of weariness and longing for something better. It seems like we’re expressing a feeling of being trapped or confined in a less than ideal situation, both physically and emotionally. The imagery of a threadbare shelter, a low-battery flashlight, and an empty bin all convey a sense of lack and depletion. The line about singing to find easeful slumber suggests that we may be seeking solace or comfort through self-expression, using music or singing as a form of escape or release. However, the mention of the empty bin by the road, begging for a refill, implies a longing for sustenance or fulfillment that remains unmet.
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Homecoming II
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17197217-Homecoming-II-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/06/01/homecoming-2/
Obiekwe Emmanuel – Beautiful poem captured from the angle of weakness to a spontaneous reinvigorated person. I love the fact that strength conquers weakness. Thanks for the share.
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You Heard Me
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17190209-You-Heard-Me-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/28/you-heard-me/
Nunoftferreira – Deeply philosophical, inspired words and inspirational piece of poetry you have composed and shared.
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Zen Virgin
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17188525-Zen-Virgin-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/27/zen-virgin/
Murph5 – A very deep poem. It was an enriching experience reading it. One needs to courage to yield to the direction unprecedented. This poem gives it.
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Crack the Exterior, Interior Resonance
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17166057-Crack-the-Exterior–Interior-Resonance-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/14/crack-the-exterior-interior-resonance/
Murph 5 – Inspirational… this poem as depth.. might be what is needed to push on and renew faith.
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Immersed
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17185220-Immersed-by-AllisonGrayhurst
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/25/immersed/
Matthew T. – You make the water sound so inviting. Great poetry!
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Mark it down
https://allisongrayhurst.com/2023/05/22/mark-it-down/
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17180024-Mark-it-down-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Ayush Bhatt – This heartfelt poem paints a vivid picture of life’s journey, where great joys approach like weeping harmonies in music. It speaks of the relief found in course-correction, the astonishment in the manifold beauty that surrounds us. The imagery of decorations placed around the table and declarations of devotion riveting through the backyard garden evokes a sense of abundance and celebration. The poem captures the essence of shared faith and enduring love, emphasizing that even in the face of explosive moments and transformative experiences, the bond between two souls remains steadfast. It speaks of stepping away from restrictions, embracing a beautiful anticipation, and opening the fortune box of possibilities. This poem invites us to cherish the moments that define our lives and embrace the wonders that await us with open hearts and minds.
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Rabbit
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17176610-Rabbit-by-AllisonGrayhurst
etoile – It sounds like you’re describing a wonderful and good experience. There is so much peace found here. It’s comforting and beautiful.
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Not a mirage
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17174941-Not-a-Mirage-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Kats7Corners – What an outstanding write! Making one’s mind up to be free; a self commitment to shine.
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Footsteps
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17173173-Footsteps-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Jslamb – Amazing how you pack so much into so few words. Length, width, height, depth.
Great job
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I heard a poet say
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U83S45pXSKw&lc=UgwQRfzB2lrg5w0KnCB4AaABAg
TortillasAreNotBiceps – She is so damn good. I just bought her book and it is amazing. She’s genius. I found her on Allpoetry.
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A King
https://allpoetry.com/poem/17169490-A-King-by-AllisonGrayhurst
PoetGlenn – What an absolute gem of poetic energy and word genius! How easily I devour all the darkness of a king, digest and assimilate it? This is, of course, my take on your poem, thinking of late of how I take for granted my lover, care not for her pain. This is what was on my mind as I read your wonderful piece. So that’s what I saw in it. You met my need and so beautifully. And I am humbled by your gift. Thank you for sharing it with us, your subjects. Blessings and peace to you.
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There are names
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16791731-There-are-names-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Air Anchor – This Poem speaks to the depths of my being, kind of reminds me of Prufrock Love Song by T.S. Eliot, but it also delivers something more, poignant and nostalgia-inducing (in a good way) thanks for sharing! In my mind this is art 100%
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Only for a time
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16806952-Only-for-a-time-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Bill Schiller – absolutely beautiful. gorgeous language and rich with insight
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When
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16818348-When-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Harris40tude – by george, a thoroughly great creation allowing, enabling, and providing me (the enthusiastic listener) with rapt attention, who matter of fact replayed the youtube recording more than once.
Great
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Direction
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16654138-Direction-by-AllisonGrayhurst
brandon – Such an incredibly beautiful write. The flow paired perfectly with that imagery. Tight share
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Direction
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16654138-Direction-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – As always, your writing reminds me of the fine scrollwork etched into the aged ivory of fallen heroes—admired as much for its beauty as its content.
Inspiring
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Lift
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16659163-Lift-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Thessander – A well convey poem that really deliver a punch to the gut with its emotive message and powerful powerful wordplay.
Lovely
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Initiation
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16667509-Initiation-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jack tomkovick – “guide me into your soundproof room” good line. + “a clean bill of health” + “days showered with talkative sparrows”
great line!!! + “just small spillages” like oil spills of decency and hope. Bravo. loved this! Nice write.
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Triage
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16669005-Triage-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Anjali219 – A lot of emotions in just one masterpiece, it’s incredible. It has pain, hope, fear, anxiety, anger, and whatnot. I love it thank you for sharing
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Sparrow
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16675300-Sparrow-by-AllisonGrayhurst
ARMundell – Lovely imagery in this poem! Especially love ‘the bull shark is coming with the encroaching wave’ and ‘open the cage-latch, cup me as your own’. Great poem!
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Thinking Outside
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16755783-Thinking-Outside-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Walter Alter – Jeez, Allison, this is some seeriously evocative versing with a natural lilt and accessible stretch between meta and phor.
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Beach
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16768196-Beach-by-AllisonGrayhurst
shepromisedmenothing – Vibrant imagery and I love the word choices you used. Refreshing way of describing a well-know landscape!
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When This Is Over
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16773526-When-This-Is-Over-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Howard Liggins – Your words are very colorful and exacting. Good Work!
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Building a Temple
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16545912-Building-a-Temple-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Sam Peter Sandil – That was deep, and amazing work. A truly wonderful piece of poetry
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Unharmed
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16599716-Unharmed-by-AllisonGrayhurst
HuBaChi – I must say, being on the neuromolecularly integrated side of entanglement, your masterpiece, reads in streams of so much variation, each to be applauded and never known
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Threshold
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16618010-Threshold-by-AllisonGrayhurst
TheINVISIBLEman – This is a really good write, it makes me feel almost if I’ve been dragged to hell against my will in a very interesting way.
Clever piece
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Fountain
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16624644-Fountain-by-AllisonGrayhurst
I.am.Lois – The metaphor within your poem provokes deep thought. I suspect most of us have such a fountain sitting in our back yard. I liked this poem very much. It was well written, and I like a poem that rolls around in my mind after I’ve finished reading it.
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Waterfall
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16626411-Waterfall-by-AllisonGrayhurst
S…O.A – This was powerful at best, it resonates with the voice of a man (woman) who found purpose and will not back down no matter what.
Amazing
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Backtrack then forward
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16632177-Backtrack-then-forward-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Spacebound426 – I really enjoyed reading your poem! Excellent expressionism! Incredible insight! Well done! Thank you for sharing this piece!
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Running, lightwave riding
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16644114-Running–lightwave-riding-by-AllisonGrayhurst
brandon– – I really enjoyed this write. That wordplay and flow were remarkable. Thank u for this share.
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Resilience
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16648924-Resilience-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Moonwolfsinging – I like the subtle rhymes such as bonfire and star, know and stone, plus gathering translating bursting constellations and engage/exchange. I found the meaning of the poem harder to engage with. I particularly like the image of bright gathering and bursting floral mastery of endless constellations. I like the awe you bring to the description of the universe.
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Egg
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16650672-Egg-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Katie Lauren – Amazing poem, incredibly well written. Enjoyed reading it.
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Reformation
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16531104-Reformation-by-AllisonGrayhurst
HuBaChi – Expressive write, hard to know the hold, the source of its brilliance, but to imagine
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I will make my way across the water
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14985191-I-will-make-my-way-across-the-water-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – Wonderfully written. Images carved into my mind.
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The Letting Go (a five-part poem)
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15981976-Excerpt-from-poem–The-Letting-Go–Deviant—by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – “Blast” is a colossally dark, yearning-churning diatribe that exudes the intensity of Shakespeare’s “Out dam spot!” The line that caused my own soul to churn was “Cruel corpse rising from a muddy grave.” The phrase that made me gasp:
“You stood on my shoes as I was
wearing them, dug your heels in
and spat in my eyes.”
Great
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High Alert
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15986943-Excerpt-from-poem–High-Alert–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Larale Renee – Ooo moving poem. And vivid imagery. I see it and I feel it. Thank you!
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Figurine
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15801427-Figurine-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Oscar Stuta – Wow this is beautiful i felt inspired and you made my imagination go beyond what is normal
Inspiring
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Onward
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15803223-Onward-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Leslie S Powers – A surprising image in what first appears to be romantic, then tragic, then an affirmation of a human bond. Wonderful!
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Consecrated
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15810343-Consecrated-by-AllisonGrayhurst
PoArtry X – This piece expressed to me such a mastery of language and content…Impressed
Nicely done
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Unseen
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15815813-Unseen-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Errol Mendes – A powerful way to describe, especially in the springtime, how nature tries to teach us all the connection of everything and the way everything nurtures everything else
Inspired.
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Wedding Band
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15823402-Wedding-Band-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – I am going to be brave and say this is among your best poems. Excellently crafted and written
Inspired
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Over
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15825186-Over-by-AllisonGrayhurst
The Closet Philosopher – That was honestly incredible, I’ll be sure to follow for some more.
Amazing.
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Hurdle
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15827000-Hurdle-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – This is where a good written poem reveals itself, words supporting each other to carry the theme, allowing each sound to give sense. Excellent work
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Onslaught Cloud
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15723254-Photo-poem–Onslaught-Cloud–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – I like how you unfold this wonderful poem and concludes so hopefully.
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World Away
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15729537-Excerpt-from-poem–World-Away–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Papa Terminus – I simply love the spiritual acumen in your original poem, it has a power sense of nature and philosophy the words really captures the imagination, very deeply emotive write
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Sand
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15745721-Excerpt-from-poem–Sand–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – Biblical and insightful poem.
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The Letting Go (a five-part poem)
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15782793-The-Letting-Go–a-five-part-poem–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Dr.Ram Mehta – Very inspiring and thought provoking expressions you have composed with a spiritual touch
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Pretzel
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15490094-Pretzel-by-AllisonGrayhurst
TheTreeMan – great job! this is amazing! i can feel every letter and word in my soul!
Inspired me
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Uncut
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15639170-Uncut-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – A masterful work; excellent imagery and use of language. Enjoyed
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Steel and Spice
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15695332-Steel-and-Spice-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – Excellent poem and imagery
Lovely!
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Advance
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15439168-Advance-by-AllisonGrayhurst
AJ Anthony – The massive line breaks between each verse pinned my eyes in place. I saw “Advance, and a gaping maw of space following, and I was instantly confused.
“Leave this place” struck my mind back into itself and I managed to regain my composure. I tentatively continued reading, still feeling betrayed by the openness of the poem, and yet, that openness was the sole reason for my immobility. Reading at a snails pace, my eyes started adjusting to the space around the verses. I started reading faster and more gracefully.
I was gleeful, when the final verses were so easy to read, and my mind was free to explore.
Great poem. Clever write
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Temple
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15445135-Temple-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Mazzmouth – beautiful transcendent and an amazing write
thoroughly enjoyed it
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Communion
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15451257-Communion-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Dr John WorldPeace jd – I was having a hard time holding on to this until I reached the “leaving” paragraph and saw the poetry, philosophy, spirituality. Then in the “how” paragraph I felt the intensity of something that interested me coming. Then the last paragraph the gift of inspiration from God, acknowledged, I was whipped back to the beginning to go again, several times. WorldPeace
You touched me
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Exit Door Closed
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15457490-Exit-Door-Closed-by-AllisonGrayhurst
hereinmyhead – This is absolutely beautiful…I love this poem so much!
Amazing
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Glory, Believe
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15459355-Glory–believe-by-AllisonGrayhurst
thirdlight – Beautifully done. Despite the heavy subject matter, the piece is light and whimsical. thought provoking, passionate and a pleasure to read.
Great!
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Centre-Faith (while dreams swirl all-around)
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15465121-Centre-Faith–while-dreams-swirl-all-around–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – This is one of your best poems. You have an excellent talent.
Great.
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Sand
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15466972-Sand-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Mun – Wow… building resilience.. and faith in God.. aggressive and hard hit
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Because of course
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15364794-Because-of-course-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – A sense of mystery always lurks in your fine poems. You have the talent with words to place them where they are best suited. Fine work.
Inspired me
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Wind – Marrow – Bone
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15416680-Wind—Marrow—Bone-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – Extraordinary.
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We sorrowed far when the sky tore,
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15052200-We-sorrowed-far-when-the-sky-tore–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – You are a excellent poet- this is an excellent poem
Amazing
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No Stone No God
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15234433-No-Stone—–No-God-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Lawless6693 – This is by far my absolute favorite poem I have stumbled across on this site. Your thematic elements blend seamlessly, your metaphors ethereally stirring. I love this!
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As We Walk
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15236746-As-We-Walk-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Sky Dreams – How nicely you write! It enthralled me from start to finish.
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Currents
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15260566-Currents-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Hallie Cosmo – Great imagery. It really tells a story, and makes a person ponder.
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Say good, say goodbye
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15264706-Say-good–say-goodbye-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Z – Depth is incredible. A truly thought provoking piece. Well written.
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Sanctum
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15292224-Sanctum-by-AllisonGrayhurst
John Diamond – Utterly wonderful, saturated in rich metaphor and poetic expression Amazingly good!
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I will make my way across the water
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15174922-I-will-make-my-way-across-the-water-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Dr.Ram Mehta – You have crafted and composed very inspiring expressions with a spiritual touch
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I will make my way across the water
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15174922-I-will-make-my-way-across-the-water-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – I read this. Then read it a second time with you narrating the poem in the background. You have such a command of words—disciplined, but not harsh. Like an experienced juggler who places each object in its proper time and place. Or a talented ringmaster in a large three-ring circus who has all the acts aligned in such a way that it seems more a ballet recital than a sawdust serenade.
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Within Reach
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15195479-Within-Reach-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – This moves organically, like fresh lava advancing slowly across the ground, cackling, smoking, and heating the air, while cooling the top layer yet retaining enough energy to change landscapes—forever. PS: Why your writing affects me so, I do not know—except to say that though your words look calm on the surface, there is heat and earth-changing energy beneath.
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Within Reach
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15195479-Within-Reach-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – If I had written this poem, I would have bathed in the arms of the muse that brought this poem into being. I could read this poem over and over and be joyed by it each time.
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Kill the Poet
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15204910-Kill-the-Poet-by-AllisonGrayhurst
PingS – It’s always stunning to read abstract poetry like this- thank you!
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Kill the Poet
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15204910-Kill-the-Poet-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – A remarkable poem: full of imagery and good word choice
Lovely job
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Kill the Poet
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15204910-Kill-the-Poet-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Orense – Abstraction and ghastly loveliness. It also resonates especially with the times.
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Kill the Poet
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15204910-Kill-the-Poet-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – Intense. Raw. Brutally deep, like unhealed scar tissue. Or knife cuts on the Mona Lisa. Reminds me of something I once wrote, though not as well.
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Where are you? I’ve been calling
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15052162-Where-are-you–I-ve-been-calling-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Z- This was an awesome read, full of images and metaphors, really gets the imagination going. Awesome stuff
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Dad (an eulogy)
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15058297-Dad–an-eulogy–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Xavier X – What a beautiful tribute to a lovely person. The memories, the images and the delicacy of the writing are wonderful.
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Traces
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15060495-Traces-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Sirene1127 – Your poem is full of wonderful images. I loved the line “I have taken the hinges off the door, waiting to see what enters.”
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Illusions Burned, Radiant Light Restored
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15064805-Illusions-Burned–Radiant-Light-Restored-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Stray poet – Really captures the mind and the imagination. Great piece of writing!
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Crossroads
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15022508-Crossroads-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – Meticulous opening. Solid transition. Vulnerable ending—a perfect story arch.
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In My Corner
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15024932-In-My-Corner-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – Religious but not foremost, but desiring what peace that could bring in moments of non-peace. Splendid poem.
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One Wing
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15024942-One-Wing-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – There is sadness in this poem that reaches out. It is well written and is like finding a message in a bottle.
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new poem – not a poem
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15031308-new-poem—not-a-poem-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – Each word, solid. Each thought, connected. Like a well-constructed ladder, elevating the reader with each step. Enjoy the precision and disciplined creativity of your work. Thank you
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Lines
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15031303-Lines-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – You are an impressive poet: I am never disappointed by your poems.
Inspiring.
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The Flood
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15034799-The-Flood-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Daniel hale – I love it and I love the pictures that you drew, funerals and baby births and a barn alive with birds…… This lines with the following ones really puts one in peace while imitating and describing the circle of life
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The Flood
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15034799-The-Flood-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – Beautifully written; has a psalm like quality
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Bless The Fallen
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15040341-Bless-The-Fallen-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Obinnex – This is a spiritual piece in which the speaker is praying and hoping for those who are short of spiritual humility to be blessed with faith to be led through the dark into the light.
Wonderfully inked! Inspiring!
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Chinaglass Smile
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15010457-Chinaglass-Smile-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Gkmaharjan – Chinaglass smile, I am lost in your strength. I am not! Very powerful!
Amazing
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Before You
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15010469-Before-you-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Z – I wish I had talent like yours. What devotion! Truly amazing!
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Lament
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15010481-Lament-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Sliptheknot41 – Hi Allison. This reads aloud right from the monitor. In any voice or tone it reads acoustically, speaks from and to just about everybody.
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Lament
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15010481-Lament-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – I love this poem. It has many surprises like opening a present with another gift inside.
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Sanguine
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15013189-Sanguine-by-AllisonGrayhurst
smitasri – Wow, I am in awe you’re too good. I loved it especially the imagery is beautiful. I loved ever word
Inspired me
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Tunnels
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15015044-Tunnels-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jslamb – Quite a journey. Few writers take their work to the granular level the way you do.
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Everything Happens
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15018803-Everything-Happens-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – You build up the poem with the craft and skill and of a sculptor of words and images. It is in essence a spiritual poem; it is in s sense prayer like.
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No Gods, no Heroes, only women and Hector
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15021661-No-Gods–no-Heroes—only-women-and-Hector-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Ralfkay – a tome, a marvel, laying the charges against antiquity’s muscled, thick hearted male heroes, and the principal women who would save them, if only it was permitted, Bravo
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No Gods, no Heroes, only women and Hector
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15021661-No-Gods–no-Heroes—only-women-and-Hector-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – An excellent poem. Crafted well.
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Creativity
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15022491-Creativity-by-AllisonGrayhurst
eric svenson – So happy I read this poem … It takes the topic of Creativity and Big bang creates a new world with powerful images and metaphors … A poem for all Creatives … the solitude and loneliness … Valley lows and mountain highs
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Flies
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14990174-Flies-by-AllisonGrayhurst
DeeDee Cooper – Very nicely done, so many emotions and concepts you can take away with them with this poem.. thank you for sharing
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Wax Museum
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15001099-Wax-Museum-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – I love this poem. It moves on many levels.
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When Air-Borne Beings Fall
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15003951-When-Air-borne-Beings-Fall-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Night slips in – I really love this. Incredible use of words. I’d love to write more like this. Powerful
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.To Wait Without Drowning
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15005829-To-Wait-Without-Drowning-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Hodgetiger – Some amazingly vivid and powerful imagery and metaphors at work here, the spaces between worked very effectively too
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Seamless
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14991479-Seamless——-by-AllisonGrayhurst
jennareborn – The way you expand upon a concept is really amazing. The flow is wonderful, and the message rings true. Really enjoyed this. Thank you.
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Seamless
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14991479-Seamless——-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – I tried to listen for who may have inspired you amongst the poets to write as you do. I love this poem; I shall mark it up to be read again and again.
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Transfigured
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14993351-Transfigured-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Roxymel – beautiful beautiful write, its truly poetic and also has the classic touch of many famous poets
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Silence
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14993434-Silence-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Jonathan Moya – Every little detail, image and metaphor, the flow of language is showing the hand of a natural and assured poet.
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Silence
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14993434-Silence-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Robisms – Amazing metaphors in here… “if my eyes were an ocean where the whale/and the seahorse gathered, then I could see mercy/in the shark’s primitive teeth” love that part!!!!
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You Were There
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14993404-You-Were-There-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Z – this is art. absolutely extravagant. expressing so so much in such simple phrasing. great piece.
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Saltwater Sprint
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14994613-Saler-Sprint-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Noble Knight – Brilliant wording well done amazing work of wonderful art masterful job
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The Quenchable Drain Within
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14995247-The-Quenchable-Drain-Within-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Jerold Toomey – That’s deep and thoughtful. To find comfort in failure is a rare commodity.
Amazing.
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Show of Light
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14995270-Show-of-Light-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Noble Knight – Intriguing work of art a grand poem very well written marvelous job
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I moved like a moon
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14987184-I-moved-like-a-moon-by-AllisonGrayhurst
ArdenB – A very beautiful and touching poem – I love how vivid your writing is.
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Something found
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14987669-Something-found-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Xenial Xenagogue – Wow.. this was soo Excellent, i enjoyed reading this.
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Time like . . .
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14987666-Time-like-.-.-.-by-AllisonGrayhurst
richandpoor – Thanks for your original innovative intriguing poem.
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Dostoyevsky
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14987236-Dostoevsky-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Freedom came lov – On However someone would take this message of wisdom
This one should be read over and over and over again
This one
Yes. This one this particular poem reading is a great message wow thank you for sharing this poem reading I will be following some more of your work,
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Time does not
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14987686-Time-does-not-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Josephine Golden – Beautiful use of metaphor and personification. It truly made me pause and think about my situation at this moment. Thank you.
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Do not define me
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14991486-Do-not-define-me-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Papa Mama Jama – amazing write, lots of depth and polish with superb articulation and focus, good work here
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Walkways
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16957786-Walkways–part-14-of-16–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Jslamb – It’s amazing how your words turn three-dimensional in my mind—and, at the same time, unleash ghosts of emotion to haunt my soul. I suspect that’s because there’s a spiritual aspect to everything you write, particularly in this one
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Walkways
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16943677-Walkways–part-6-of-16—by-AllisonGrayhurst
Bill Schiller – This is gorgeous with turn-of phrase and potent introspection .. quite compelling
Inspired.
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Walkways
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16939939-Walkways–part-4-of-16–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Dicksonsammiel – Wow, this is so deep and profound. I love the imagery here and the tone is divine, beautiful piece…
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When the last tie is broken
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16915636-When-the-last-tie-is-broken-by-AllisonGrayhurst
DW0723 – Woow!!! Such a beautiful breath of words, a deep vivid imagery of what could or should never be.
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You Were There
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16911374-You-Were-There-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Symmetry59 – If I said this was brilliant, I’d be doing to a disservice, Allison. This poem needed so much to be read and heard in such a way as you’ve gifted us with. You are one of the best poets I’ve ever heard, and I mean that. It actually choked me up. Thank you so much for sharing. You deserve to be heard.
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Sheaves of Time
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16909528-Sheaves-of-Time-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Symmetry59 – I can count on two hands the amount of poets who have ever invoked this brand of emotion upon me. You are a true poet.
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A Day For My Own
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16907800-A-Day-For-My-Own-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Symmetry59 – I’m at a loss. You are amazing.
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It starts
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16888838-It-starts-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Mel mel – Thanks for sharing this different type of a literature poetic writing I have never seen something like this before but it’s is very interesting and unique in the way that you have written this thanks for sharing
Great poem
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Transfigured
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16904538-Transfigured-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Symmetry59 – Wow! You have this grown man sitting here in tears. I can’t believe how good you are.
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Through the girdle
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16899455-Through-the-girdle-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Symmetry59 – You are genius and a blessing.
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Why have I died
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16876890-Why-have-I-died-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Graphein – very deep your writing touches deep and the structure makes you think about who we are, thank you for sharing I am going to look forward to following your work
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I see differently
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16875195-I-see-differently-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Illegal Love – This was a beautiful reading. Very intimate words in my opinion.
Inspired.
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End
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16862112-End-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Pisces Man – My goodness! Hearing a poem being recited surely has a greater impact than reading it, and this poem really thrilled me to say the least.
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Flies
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16858631-Flies-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Howard Gipstein – I love this! It’s so well-crafted and has some amazing lines and images. Also, your reading of it is excellent!
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If it is what you want . . .
https://allpoetry.com/poem/16853467-If-it-is-what-you-want-.-.-.-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Howard Gipstein – This poem is profound and beautifully written and read. it warrants several readings.
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Because,
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15743786-Excerpt-from-poem–Because—by-AllisonGrayhurst
Papa Terminus – I really like the sense of inspiration this penning it has comprehensive philosophical tone, which expresses self awareness and deep spiritual development…I loved a mother’s love has no limits, it stretches past darkness, obstacles remains fierce and tender at once…there is nothing more unconditional then a mother’s love, even if people say they hate their mother, a mother never stops loving them.
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Mid-air
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15737664-Excerpt-from-poem–Mid-air–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Unapologetic – Wow. I can relate to this free verse poem so much. I can feel the words. Beautifully penned.
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Ambrosia
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15733543-Excerpt-from-poem–Ambrosia–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Jslamb – Your work is ever the kaleidoscope … changing, spinning, colorful, creative.
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Which Way?
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15727440-Excerpt-from-poem–Which-Way—by-AllisonGrayhurst
Blue2U – This is so wonderful. It made me think of all that we try to gather and acquire are not what is meaningful in life, its the little things that make life worth living. An Amazing poem
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Illusions Burned, Radiant Light Restored
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15689251-Illusions-Burned–Radiant-Light-Restored-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Bananahead – I can literally feel your emotions as I read these words. I have felt some of these things too.
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World Away
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15729537-Excerpt-from-poem–World-Away–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Papa Terminus – I simply love the spiritual acumen in your original poem, it has a power sense of nature and philosophy the words really captures the imagination, very deeply emotive write
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I have been born
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15680845-I-have-been-born-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Synonym – wow. The poem was great, loves the ” flaked into existence by force, by will and desire”, it was really beautiful.
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Lumin
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15622738-Lumin-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – You write so well Allison. I am a great admirer of your poetry. This I will add to my favourites.
Amazing.
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Like A Wave
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15567647-Like-A-Wave-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Ebby – I’m obsessed with this poem, its so well written and poses such an interesting image! keep up the amazing work
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Pythagoras-Ovid Royalty
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15492108-Pythagoras-Ovid-Royalty-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Dreamblue94 – This is a profound analysis of sociological factors in the development of history.
Amazing.
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Breastplate
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15488216-Breastplate-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – Dedicated poet with a wide palette of sounds and colours.
Great write
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Simple
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15474700-Simple-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – Excellent poem. A very talented poet with great imagination
Great!
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Because,
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15468814-Because–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Manpreet – This is absolutely beautiful, so poignant, so charming, soft and calming. “The ditch is now a road” – there is evident and pure faith in this poem which reflects beauty and expressed by a very talented hand and heart. Well done!
Amazing
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A Dream Suspended
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15463367-A-Dream-Suspended-by-AllisonGrayhurst
J A Overton – this is great filled with great vivid imagery, great stanzas well written
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The bells
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15225143-The-bells-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Obinnex -There are personifications used in these fascinating verses: ‘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’.
Wonderfully inked! Inspiring! 😊 👏
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The bells
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15225143-The-bells-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – Almost prayer-like. Intelligent and well written poem
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The bells
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14985212-The-bells-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Papa Terminus – I really enjoyed the personal philosophy and the spiritualism of this poem, it felt like a spiritual experience or a revival…it moves with alot of passion…really excellently penned
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Wings
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15429110-Wings-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Myamberdog – Wonderful Allison. This poem had feeling which to me is #1 reason to write a poem. And it had hope as well. I listened to you read the poem so expertly…….pacing and inflection to perfection…..
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Bird
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15424927-Bird-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Brett Larue – Great work you do a excellent job finding patterns that flow
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Times
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15422796-Times-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Blue2U – What a beautiful expression of the emotions that live in our hearts and minds. Absolutely beautiful
Great.
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Mercy without Miracles and Miracles without Mercy
Papa Terminus – First may I say this really introspective relationship to the spiritual side of literature…this penning really captures the philosophical side of religion…and the sad beauty which expresses the sense of miracles through faith…quite compelling read…
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It is not
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15354810-It-is-not-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Valar Dohaeris – So woeful. I could feel the ache in my own bones. Time will remember
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better
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15350874-better-by-AllisonGrayhurst
T.S. Curtis – Your imagery is really beautiful right from the start. I could see everything you painted with your words. Beautiful poem!
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better
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14974253-better-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Violet inked – this reminds me more or less of my own life. and I’m sure many others too. a read that invokes a million thoughts in the reader’s mind, each bit and piece can be attributed to a moment in our lives – the burden, the letting go, the desire, and our wishful thinking. great write!
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Only for a time
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15346646-Only-for-a-time-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Jw writing – reading this poem is heartbreaking, jaw-clenching, and heart melting all at once. i am stunned by the quality of this poem. keep writing!! you are so inspirational
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Because I love you
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15296538-Because-I-love-you-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – I love how your muse brings you such gems. I like the calm manner of the poem and how it unfolds it tale. I enjoy reading it aloud or listen to you read them. Your use of words informs you are a true poet, a true seeker of truth.
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The Ride
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15281796-The-Ride-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Francine Farina – So very mystical and beautiful. The imagery is rich and has its own voice. I especially liked the last few lines.
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An Infant
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15052178-An-Infant-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Vera7 – Very beautiful writing filled with love and tenderness. A lot of effective poetic means create a wonderful atmosphere of joy and peace. A very strong final line-“the beginning and the potential all in one”
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Pathway
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15251982-Pathway-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Archie Waugh – “PATHWAY “…. The title itself speaks in volume and so do the poetry…. Beautiful piece…. Brilliant write….. Blessed and enjoyed to read ….Clever write….. Keep up…. Amazing…. Heart touched…. ♥
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I moved like a moon
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15147629-I-moved-like-a-moon-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collet – You do write powerful poems. Rich in imagery and good word choice.
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I moved like a moon
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15147629-I-moved-like-a-moon-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Elxsha San – I haven’t got any words to say after reading your one cause it really put me deep inside the poem along trading, from my opinion it’s having a lots of meaning in it.
Amazing
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A Journey in Four Parts
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15064721-A-Journey-in-Four-Parts-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Andja Bjeletich – God, this is absolutely stunning, I really love it, especially the repetition of snip.
Inspired me.
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It’s been months
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15052210-It-s-been-months-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Line Gauthier – Your command of the language and your storytelling skills are splendid. Beautifully crafted.
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We sorrowed far when the sky tore
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15052200-We-sorrowed-far-when-the-sky-tore–by-AllisonGrayhurst
Adareia – The theme running through this is so bittersweet and it truly moved me. Made my day!
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All one child
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15050231-All-one-child-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Air Anchor – this is a beautiful poem which aptly express the awe at the creation at large, thanks for sharing! extremely inspiring!
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The Stain
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15040335-The-Stain-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Tawilliams1964 – It felt like I was entering into an experience that tossed me about from one emotion to the next. Thanks!
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Blind Spot
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15034784-Blind-Spot-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Noble Knight – Marvelous work of very well written poetic art masterful job
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Everything Happens
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15018803-Everything-Happens-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Papa Terminus – You know I feel the sense of spiritualism and the deep engrained philosophies of society and how you relate the spiritual side of things with the natural order vs. Man made order, which really struck me as inspriational in a matter of fact sort of way…your words really encompassed the soul and the mind…which speaks to me of political naturalization and the laws of faith…but faith has no law…really a multi-layered penning which I quite enjoyed
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Almost to the Other Side
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15016837-Almost-to-the-Other-Side-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – This is a lovely poem: it speaks volumes in few words, conjures up pinpoint accurate images, as if listening to Wittgenstein after dinner. Love it.
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Love is our master
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15009391-Love-is-our-master-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Jcenortonus – So many lines to love! I adored the line about “here, there and always home.” I love the progression of a desolate place to a final one of beauty, and the image of the roots is wonderful. Great images, well-chosen words, feeling lines, and a terrific ending.
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Miles Without Grace
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15005814-Miles-Without-Grace-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Blgrn8 – I could feel the loss and grief. Very atmospheric with the description of October in that specific place.
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Thieves Of Muse
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14995374-Thieves-Of-Muse–by-AllisonGrayhurst
The Poetry Man – Now this one is a standing ovation! Great masterpiece!! Just plain awesome
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Quagmire
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14991512-Quagmire-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Terry Collett – A poem to read many times; the sparkle and colour of this poem with religious overtones is a food feast for the brain and soul.
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Vow
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14989141-Vow-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Ralfkay – thank you for your passion and captivating company on this journey of loving disappointments
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If I knew this haunting
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14982276-If-I-knew-this-haunting-by-AllisonGrayhurst
rune – great vivid imagery and word choice “the mound of dry bones that used to be flowers” amazing line.
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You Are
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14978388-You-Are-by-AllisonGrayhurst
Sonatavivace – as compelling as Sylvia Plath’s–
in theme and pathos. A poignant poem!
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Comments made on poems shared on this website
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Sculptures
LOVE your SCULPTURES!
The fact that they are down the side of the page of the poetic words – so PRESENT with
their “inarticulate” sensuality – the primal direct message.
They are so BEAUTIFUL and POIGNANT – filled with Feeling.
And they are photographed very well – ! The photos really allow them to come through.
Allison’s Poetry, Life, Love and Sculpture’s grace our lives with their passionate, heart-felt literary and artistic offering!
I love the choice of one of her sculptures she chose for this cover! (If I Get There – Poems of Faith and Doubt, a collection)
Her sculpture are heartfelt, haunting, beauty, sensual – wow, thank you!
Taylor Jane Green
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Sculptures
saw your books in person, held them in my hands, opened them and read at random. They are so, so lovely. I loved the covers with the photos of your sculpture – all people, mostly faces. They were presented as they are – with no intention to manipulate, just straight-up, fresh-faced for all to see. like children are, so very dear and unaffected, your sculptures are beautiful. Just like the writings, full of consideration, questions, and trust (nakedness, whatever one wants to call it…there is great strength in vulnerability).
Thank you.
Just keep doing what you do.
Jordan.
Oh – I forgot to say one thing…I just took another look at the sculptures and there is “someone home” inside of each one, there is someone alive in there, inside of all of them.
Beautiful. Don’t change, stay pure.
Jordan.
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Sculptures
It is an incredible collection of Art, glad to see a post of them.
Bruce
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Jumana
Part 1 – Intensely alive! Intense sharing! Honouring our own ‘quiet desperation’ journey (as Thoreau called it) – so incredibly articulated and laid out here; and as always, ending in jubilant revelation and resolution.
“Like a slap on the ocean’s ground, it came, rippling a great tide. The twisted face of misery lost its value. It was a miracle . . . to actually be plagued by nothing. There was no struggle, only sight. Only love. The seams of existence cracked, and along with them, the skeleton’s life I held and named from vast experience. I was alone, without potential, without hesitation. The panic of the heart, the scream of inner deficiency, all of that, past.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Jumana
I am on part 3 and will read more of this — your awakening. It is very intense. The humility is very apparent, the willingness to receive, the willingness to be loved and known, loved and fully known…
Anna Mark
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Something found
To the marrow of the bone description – one wonders how she makes it through a day with such intensity of observance of the subtleties of life’s moments both inner and outer: the fireworks of the earth’s outer displays (tree roots, crows, conjoined legs, “windows stubbornly closed”) and the human being’s inner life (“a relieving smile”, “unintended solitude”). Thank you for your witnessing of all the layers, moods and moments – all embraced by your eye and unflinchingly given ‘voice’.
“Flowers are small. I can hear trains in the morning
when windows are stubbornly closed,
when I am walking and it is dark,
and the space around fills me with the ache
of unintended solitude.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Quagmire
Both sides of life and responses to life articulated in an amazing ability to appreciate and nail the essence of both the cerebral and the sensual.
“We have these telescopes, our catacombs of understanding,
but we also have pilgrimage, crust, heartbeat, dying,
soccer fields and song.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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You Were There
This poem is like a haunting painting to walk through – like a rain in poetic Paris streets – its aesthetics making it all bloom far beyond its words. Thank you.
“I called to you in mornings,
weak with doubt and faced
by terrible extremes.
I ran to you when in the quiet of my room,
the walls oozed unloving shadows
and my heart could find no connection.
I talked to you in restaurants, in words
I dare never reuse.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Girl
Best description of faith embodied – what a picture – thank you!
“She dances as though she
could not fall. And though they gasp to pity
her poor body against rocks and ridges,
she continues to move like a beautiful sound,
sure of the hand that guides her.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Seeing Under Seeing Over
A true soul moment on an authentic soul journey – finding the light in the dark through humble acceptance of all that we are and are not – blind moments, blind corners – the determination to not abandon self no matter what. Those moments when I cannot “even see myself.”
“I have no intellectual
confidence – no real fans.
I have only myself, my darling nothingness.
I have the dark shadow on the darker land.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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No Hope – For Good
Yes! It is so important to LISTEN, instead of HOPE sometimes. Precision of insight into the complexity as usual, Allison Grayhurst!
“But now I see that hope is murder to the seed
of this emerging beginning.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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No Hope – For Good
wow, for me this presents a new angle, supporting a new POV/
Hope as the bad guy, antagonist. Thanx again, friend.
“..never runs alongside something spectacular..” is my favorite/ I liked yr reading, G
namelessneed
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Beyond Instinct or Dreams
A litany to the wholeness of life – sweeping feeling with breath-taking moments of nature’s cathedral of existence and our tinyness of fragmented moments of purpose, blessing, frailty – comfort
“That is why some fear is good, is intimate as love.
And the sky is breathing and the oceans, the seas,
the rivers are breathing. And the beetle and the rooftops too.
Trees sway with the clouds.
The butterfly and guppy are great as mountains.
All chimes of tenderness or tragedy,
seeking its necessary role.
We bear the weight.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Beyond Instinct or Dreams
I really like this poem, Allison. You have such an inspired word choice and inner voice…
Eric
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First and Only
Breath-taking, heart-felt, strong like wind, tears of joy, meaning, feeling – this poem waters an orchid deep inside me. At a time when pornographic advertising, music videos and the general pornographic imaging matrix we now live in is short circuiting how young people understand the individual self, love and human sexuality – this kind of witnessing and sharing about what is possible in human romantic relationship is critical, needed, hugely important for the sake of the continued existence of truth, hope and possibility related to human sensual and soulful love.
“The first time you sang, I felt
a fiery and surprising happiness.
The first hug we shared on the church steps
as the music played below was like a wave,
strong and soothing
rippling along my back and arms.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Let The Joy In
Beautiful, Allison. You traverse such long corridors, probing to ponder over possibilities, touching your way to the sunshine. Souls searched as such are sacred soil, sanctuaries of thought and Edens to the eye.
Eric
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Blown
Brilliant. Beautiful! Reads like a delightful bath! And an excellent capturing of life in words, as usual.
*
BRILLIANT! Brilliant. Beautiful! Reads like a delightful bath! And an excellent capturing of life in words, as usual.
Just what I needed to hear today.
“Carried through the radar-stream
into an easeful position where
the goal is getting nearer at a slow pace
and old patterns are disintegrating,
remembered but not renewed.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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A Better Life
Archetypal – so many of us can relate – beautifully written.
“In the beginning
I rode a burning steed,
crossed a violent river
and destroyed my home.
But now my footsteps are slower,
I never climb the rocks or chase
the landed hawk. I collect shells
for my garden and sing to the great
ocean’s waves.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Only for a time
One of my favorites! Breath-takingly beautiful.
“In my eyes, the gulls are angels
arriving face-to-face at my second storey window,
speaking of God’s grace, personal, sharp and pure.
For the last time, chaos will have its say
and cowards will rule my playground.
This is the time of great beginning,
a time of the final letting go.
The birds are beside me, speaking in ways
I again understand, while the world is carving
new structures of dread.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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The laws that find me bind me
Profound and pungent and defiant and wise as ever.
“Save me from cherished traditions and filing-cabinet dreams.
Save me from my bodily needs. Transform me into an angel or into
the one transformed from the angel – never to come here again,
except to hold my only true love
and to cradle close the heads of my sleeping children.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Our Time
Gentle, haunting, far away – and close as mouse.
“Last time, a being was born
from this authority, ecstasy became heavy,
exploding a thousand golden flowers.
Next time, I will stop counting and be like time,
there without an echo.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Tell Me
EXACTLY HOW I FEEL TODAY in my dialogue with Spirit!
“Tell me, deprive me of government, of natural things
that others have, but tell me what you want me ready
for. Hire me with this particular fruit. Let me be noble,
eliminate my doubt, my fear of being wrong or cruel. Take me
into your music, pound my spirit with your weight and
effort. Tell me what rabid ghost I must put down.
Help me
put it down.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Doubt
PROFOUND in its height and depth and uncanny shape-shifting of language to create the fruit she speaks of at the end of the poem.
“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?”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Rest
Wow, this is compelling! POWERFUL!
“I climb the scaffolding
fearless of my natural fears –
lifting mortar into a pale, bricklaying and laying out bricks
to seal a song, ready then
to pull out of the quicksand and feed you
in your darkness.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Undefined
Fascinating and evocative (summons new images to my mind) Allison. I’ll read it a few more times to properly appreciate it.
Eric
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Undefined
Oh Allison, heart-achy yet heartmoving ahead w/cool clean thoughts, soft clanging symbols & staring into a steamy mirror before stepping out into the hallway. love
namelessneed
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Waiting
Here are my favourite lines in this poem:
I don’t believe
in waiting, being patient while aroused.
I like it because it rings so true with what the experience of waiting is, like reining in the horses.
Damn my world
for changing, for making me ready, but falling behind,
insufficient to nourish this latest being that has arisen.
How the world doesn’t seem to move fast enough, but even if it did, would we catch it? or see? or believe? I feel like we are always so poor.
Anna Mark
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Thinking Outside
This is great – this has the essence of that hard won simplicity which is the greatest prize in poetry.
Seb
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Thinking Outside
I LOVE THIS. It took me right back and described perfectly what I had felt so often in my childhood with those beetles and that time.
“and the high-pitched beetle
fills the wind like a calming drug.”
An exquisite expression of the interiority of outdoor
moments at the change of seasons.
“In this place as summer fades
the quiet demands self-truth.
To pull from inside
a lacerated pride”
An intertwining of inner learning and transformation amidst the language of nature speaking to and healing us, all around us.
“Shadows mend the divided self
and love is an activity
to understand while counting birds
overhead.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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I Will Run
The intensity has kept up all these years. I can see, smell and taste this.
“I will go now
into the constellations
like into a field of marigolds.
I will run now like a drunkard
at dawn. The waves
of morning’s early light
will be my medicine – the blue
& purple & orange thin arches,
all aglowing.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Show of Light
For me, this is like a love poem to Life.
“Why is it like this – this untimely shift
from requiem to rhapsody
as your voice and manner tilts my heart
like the wind would direct the ripples in a stream?
I hurt alone in bed, resigned
to the falseness of your mouth, then
with morning, the lushness of your love
recites an elegy to my fear and once again,
adoring, I call you one with my own.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Where are you? I’ve been calling
No one can say it like Allison Grayhurst.
“Are you
here, or just a synchronized inspiration, energy
as icing for one day? It is not enough.
I need you here, not galactic but like a man
before his wedding hour, needing me too,
focused entirely on my fulfilment. Where are you?
In the sparrow-droppings? In the kitten’s fear?”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Grazing on the flow
Gives majesty to life – all sides. Beauty and substance re her grandfather – poetry creating magic of life.
“I love what is between us when truth does not torment,
when I imagine our paths like my grandfather’s
when he rode, relinquishing status, etching out his destiny
on a brokendown caboose, offering jewels of coal.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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In This Garden
Archetypal. Stunning. Satiating to the soul – does justice to loss and shock, as well as faith and beauty.
“all my poems are with me now,
the accumulation of my dance,
the rejoicing, and the coldness of loss.
Around – so close to the daylight.
If I had lived before, then now I am thrown
behind the door where eternity, not life abides.
Mortal year that has replaced my air
with this huffing and bewilderment –
how strong was the wave that has washed me over.
There are great things to come, though death
has forever changed the shape of my smile.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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For My Children
BRILLIANT! A CLASSIC. EVERY WORD.
“Burn until
every muscle aches and the tension pulls
the labyrinth of your heart and mind into a straight line
with straight direction – nothing wasted.
Love, because it is hard, because it is
unusual to have the courage needed to love.
Love, because there is nothing else, because
it is the only heaven known, because it is
the only thing impossible made possible, and
when the dream is over, it will be
the one reality left embedded,
going further than, deeper than
the nucleus of your cells.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Too Long
This love poem feels so specific and it’s beautiful to read.
Anna Mark
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Draw Near
Love these lines – it is all like a picture reverberating with deep truth and large archetypal knowing.
“One day the drift drew near
and lightning touched the lips of angels.
The light was left only for the mighty.
So we sang. So we sang.
The murderers were shelved
beside the mighty because the only difference
was degree.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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I Sing
Sheer beauty.
“to learn how to better love
and lessen the dread
to call the angels to my side
and help myself shed
to accept myself as fallen
and to help others who have fallen who sing
but have
no words”
Appreciating The Difficult
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The Quiet That Comes
FELT every quiet with every line, bringing those small moments into searing “view”.
“The quiet that comes
at a fork-in-the-road, quiet
as we listen to the direction of the breeze
and hope for a voice to bellow forth at our queue,
is the quiet of waiting, the time between
pressing-play and music.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Weather
So well expressed and described – it’s reality said poetically of weather and storm – and then the underpinning of it all – time and movement of the seasons, the seasons of a year, the seasons of a life. I LOVE HOW IT ENDS in true stability:
“The road I base all my faith on is under my sleeve
sure of me, regardless if I turn or if I follow.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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The bough breaks
A classic. Words that tingle and weave a depth story. Brilliant.
“and we are sold by the scars upon our throat,
by the longing discarded that never knew it
could end
and by the only relationship we are all
bound to have – our stronghold with or
not with
God.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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The bough breaks
There’s a painting by Peter Doig called ‘Pelican’ which he’d painted from seeing a man catching a Pelican at sea and the man giving him a stare as he passed holding the Pelican out of sight – and this narrative you know because he wrote it all down but there is no trace of the Pelican in his painting and it doesn’t need the narrative to explain its effect.
davidstrachan661
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Within Reach
“I will not be afraid.
I will lift up my heart
and make room for what follows…”
It is, in the end, all that we who stand in life’s struggles can do. We just do not know what a few lines of hope does for another heart plagued or impassioned. Or impaled.
Eric
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Within Reach
Hello Allison — just a quick note to say that it’s a nourishing place to be — here — reading your words on a Friday after my first full week of teaching again ; ) I’m exhausted and find my mind in a good open space to read poems. Thanks for being a WordPress poet ; ) and a great Canadian one.
Anna Mark
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In Spite of Vows
A poem of triumph! Sparkling, sizzling with irrepressible life. A tribute to the power of the life force beyond that which would take it down.
“It is hers – strong ribbed, flushed,
eager to release whatever prevents
its satisfaction from being blessed
and openly achieved.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Open Valve
Filled with the pungent odour of language wrapping itself around experience,
both inner and outer, clanging out to be heard, felt, understood.
“The forest floor I am captain of
is embroidered with fine strands of rooted hope,
carpets made to curl toes on”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Shyla
Ode to a cat – beautiful, stunning, embracing. Saw it like I never saw it – through this expression of affection and communion with the soul of one’s
cat.
Appreciating The Difficult
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The Tide To Break A Vaulted Pain
Brilliant illustration – visceral and vivid – of the wasteland Eliot spoke of.
Breath-taking, shockingly awake – beauty through it all.
“The silence
rages through the airvents, and the lights
burn to a dull nothing. The white-nothing
of teeth & moon & ice & cloud.
We seek the breath
of freedom’s wake as
magic crumbles all around us in pools of
untouchable beauty.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Storm
The sense of moment and movement in this is palpable.
Seb
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Our Light Cannot Always Burn Whole
Images rich and dripping with the majesty of their meaning!
“We jog through bitter uneatable harvests.”
“Jackets buttoned to the neck, we move in these sewer shafts”
“On our bed, we are broken, letting our arms rest”
“We tell each other these things are worth
the horror of abominations
accepted as societal norms, atrocities justified as a soldier’s directed bullet.”
“messaging
our blood vessels with deep oxygen, curing, learning
to make saliva and swallow.”
“We tell ourselves sometimes we wish
we could be like those who live
never knowing an intimate tender beauty”
“At times we wish this love didn’t exist, then we could give in
to what lies beyond the cliff, defend our exit, salt the Earth
with a dramatic departure.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Husband
Okay, that’s it. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better. Thank you, Allison Grayhurst for cleansing us, edifying us – being a beacon in a pornographic world of meaningless shallows that would take down the human potential depth and breadth in this most critical and sacred area of life. Thank you for your living will to do us better.
“Because you are
my vowel, my “welcome home’ and
my sea in summer, I will sit
naked for you, never needing someone else.”
“Because you give wounds without evil,
a perspective of beauty in the weeds
and worries . . . because your faith
is unbroken by bitterness and others stand
against you trying to defeat
your incomparable strength”
Appreciating The Difficult
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For This Face Only You Could Alter
Wow! Now THAT’S a love poem – fervent, deep to the interior.
“the one
celebrated by each breath.”
“Be for me a living arrow, a communion
of conviction and gentleness.”
“spiritual
decision.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Through Arched Doors
Passionate support of a colleague – vehement affirmation of the cry of justice and truth in a crazy world. Uncanny ability to blend physical imagery and metaphysical concept seamlessly.
“You make us
drum hard
on the back of a beautiful fire.
You hold us near your mind, embracing
rooftops, stairwells, the upper half of
the sky.
There is nothing
as terrible
as your writer’s hands
that strike with light
our narrow hates
& wounds.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Aged Sculptress
I’ve had a few days away Allison and this is such a wonderful piece to come back to – the clay line was spectacular and the rhythms just perfect. Best wishes Jim
gingerfightback
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Aged Sculptress
I love this one. The speaker has such beautiful images and seems so full of love.
Carl
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Sunset
The craft here is amazing! There’s an essay itself in the way you have paced this. Awesome, in the literal sense of the word.
seb
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Call For The Hour To Clear
Your poetry always leaves me longing breathless.
Oloriel
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Call For The Hour To Clear
Srong, powerful language. Intimate – close – conviction – power of caring and taking a stand.
“But you know
what I am waiting for. Words.
Words that are bone-real like conviction,
words to swallow me “
Appreciating The Difficult
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I Find Clarity
Beautiful, strong, powerful, simple. A declaration – a strong voice.
“I find myself just wanting
to be in the shadow, away from direct
light and the attitude of sentimentality and guilt.
I find my hands are strong and my legs
are capable of walking long distances.
I find that that is enough
to complete me.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Blind Spot
Brilliant use of language – weaving the mystical with the mundane seamlessly over and over again.
“It is the spot that will not heal,
found on the floor by the fallen curtain.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Blind Spot
brush strokes…i liken you the artist painting emotion…with shadow and light…
michael mcguirt
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For Every Rain
I love the complexity of dark and light imagery in your poem. very beguiling !
Morgan
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For Every Rain
I love it so much – I could Eat It. Thank you. A Classic in my library.
“For every day of sleep
let me shoulder the rain.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Lines
Explosive! Searingly wise!
“Under the canopy of my heart
the singing happens but does not happen
the way I can explain.”
“There is nothing to gain
by maintaining the same ongoing pattern.
It must be re-directed, surprised
by its flow to be of any critical use.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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The Ride
Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” move over. Wow… I love this. Poetic majesty draped around an Heroine in a haunting and yet intimate Maxwell Parrish painting.
“Again the stars were plucked
from her mind and the world below
leapt up and sponged her with its flame.
That summer she made a wish upon her chains
and walked the deserted farmyards.
The ravens followed her through the weeds
and heat, keeping up conversation. At night
she sang to the beating of the rain…”
Appreciating The Difficult
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The Flood
Beautiful, profound!
“We were made to split the light
with voices singular and clean.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Childhood Cracked
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant languaging of things – so exquisite one cares hardly the meaning of the words – they fall so perfectly on the surface of the subconscious mind. Meaning is clearly innate and yet the poetry of the sheer aesthetics of the word formations is enough. No one in my experience, captures and creates artistry of emotions like Allison Grayhurst.
“It fell by the curb
in a lucid slumber
of inarticulate words
like a dew drop
on ice.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Childhood Cracked
I really like Allison Grayhurst’s poem “Childhood Cracked.” There is something ethereal about it — the words and phrases attract me in a mysterious way. In particular, the second line “a lucid slumber of inarticulate words like a dew drop on ice.” Whew, the phrase pulls up images and feeling of being verbally locked, having something overwhelmingly important to express yet being frozen, unable to speak. And, “Into this autumn / the doll fell” brings thoughts of fractured memories from childhood. The poem gives me a raw chill but not in an uncomfortable way. The images stay with me a while. I enjoyed it greatly.
Thomas F. Wylie.
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Do not define me
This is a wonderful piece. It’s not easy to write defiantly and to do it so gracefully.
Carl
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Do not define me
I can’t tell you how much I like this, Allison – it positively sings!
Anne
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Do not define me
Powerful expression….
Rob Taylor
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I Am This Creature (drenched in mute history)
An honest and moving journey. I especially like the image of circling a solitary stone.
Anna Mark
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I Am This Creature (drenched in mute history)
This is a wonderful piece with strong allusions and strong emotional pull.
Carl
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I Am This Creature (drenched in mute history)
Brilliant poetry – the unspoken SPOKEN!
“I was a girl, knowing nothing of drugs, but helpless
just the same, a slave to all my girlish visions
of the coming days of promised rapture.
I was a young woman, wearing drab and loose clothes,
never looking in a mirror, talking in tongues,
clenching confusion as a crutch and giving glory
to any glory-seeking teacher.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Our Days
Beautiful! LOVE it. Warm powerful substantial connection and observance of what is most meaningful in relationship.
“In the afternoon when we
finally talk, the brightness of the day
absorbs into your face and what is left
is the movement of our connection
between coffee mugs and our children’s play.
At dinner, you tell me stories.
I see the years behind us, and for a moment the
curtains of heaven draw back before my eyes.’
Appreciating The Difficult
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Our Days
Beautiful Love, Allison.
Anna Mark
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Our Days
Thanks Allison … It is beautiful …
elegamzabello
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The taste
So beautiful! An explosion of the intensity within compellingly written, as usual!
A toast to the power of the interior sensual world that so needs it’s erotic world spoken of in these terms, as opposed to the shallow and hence toxically hiding cover up expressions of pornos or pornography – versus the true eros of erotica being shown, exposed and honoured in this way.
Appreciating The Difficult
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The taste
Wonderful word choice. I could actually taste it all go down! Just ordered this book. Should be getting it soon.
Eric
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The taste
A feast for the senses.
Seb
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The taste (review posted as comment on book The Many Lights of Eden)
Reblogged this on Eric M. Vogt: Life-Writings and commented:
5 out of 5 stars
THE MANY LIGHTS OF EDEN is a Must-Read!
We each read poetry in our own way. We read words from a different angle, a unique vantage point, and like the four different disciples looking from different sets of lenses we discern what stands out to us as of most importance and pen our gospel in our own very personal and spiritual way. I prelude this review with a disclaimer: if you read Allison’s book and see its Light differently, embrace it as affecting you in your unique way. In this review I will embrace what has stood out to my eye.
When I started to read Allison Grayhurst’s collection of poetry entitled THE MANY LIGHTS OF EDEN, I was expecting it to contain verses of the highest quality. I was expecting it to be a journey through spirituality. I was expecting this book to speak of God. I was not disappointed.
Yes, it is a journey: a journey of the heart through youth, anguish, struggle, spiritual awakening, grief, death, love, loss, guilt, struggle, despair, hope, surrender, God, sensuality, imperfection, motherhood, aging, the vanquishing of the devil, indeed, many devils, the inevitable fall from perfection and the casting off of old wineskins for a new one.
Perhaps speaking of this book as a chronicle of spiritual maturing would be more accurate, the realization that there is spirituality within imperfection and that handmade temples cannot hope to compete with the spiritual temples within each of us. By the end of the collection there is a spiritual ascension, a victory over demons of the past now slayed. There is height in Love and Forgiveness in guilt. There is an embracing of the chaos of life and a positive hope for the future. And, I believe, the realization that God is higher than chaos and the Creator is more permanent than perfection.
This journey touched me. It is a journey that every person makes at sometime in their life. And this trail we trod does not end. There is beauty in the trail and its many aspects just as there is beauty from every vantage point of the admirer of a diamond.
THE MANY LIGHTS OF EDEN is a diamond. It is a beautiful collection of insights and I appreciate the many nuances of meaning to Allison Grayhurst’s poetry. Her thoughts and writings are a deep well. Drink from it, for the water is clear and crisp. This collection is a MUST-READ.
—-Eric M. Vogt, author of LETTERS TO LARA and PATHS AND POOLS TO PONDER
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It is not like hell
Brilliant. Another masterpiece of pungent, vivid language uniting passion and word to give expression to depth of feeling of life.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Beyond The Grave
This is very real, and has some breathtaking images.
The description of memory is particularly strong and affecting to me.
Anne
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Beyond The Grave
Your poetry bleeds and sings at the same time. Grieving paints in both colors and in black and white. Wonderful portrait!
Eric
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On Tour
love this – it reads like a song, like a warm and soft poetic blanket, like a hum, like a beauty ever so intimate and profound and real and true.
“He hurts with uncommon intensity –
liberation balanced between his two lips.
Like the slow hum of rain, I hear him
treading the snowed-in cities, hear his kiss
like a prayer of protection, flowering.
Freedom stitched to his smile,
he crosses the sea he’s never seen before,
as he carries his guitar
like a lover’s warm hand.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Dostoyevsky
Intense, gripping, aliveness – the raw, fierce, stunning grasp of a Great!
“Deep-set eyes like the eyes
of some brooding god,
hammering
the earth to pieces.
Breath of an invalid, gambler
& saint, weighed down by
sentiment.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Dostoyevsky
Amazing, any words I would say I are not worthy of the beauty of this poem.
Oloriel
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A Newly-Patterned Fingerprint
Is this heaven? a wish for heaven on earth? It has such idealism in it. It expresses things that I often wait for.
Anna Mark
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A Newly-Patterned Fingerprint
ESPECIALLY –
“It’s the end
of my kind,
the last of my line
unfolding. And then
all of it will be different –
both the edge and the enlightenment
both the things precise
and the things undefined.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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When Air-borne Beings Fall
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
Your work is so raw & emotional Allison.
Jueseppi B.
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When Air-borne Beings Fall
I love it!
“I would give my capsized house,
my bed, my favourite corner
just to feel the rise of their quickening tides
clap over my bones & spirit. To know the fury
of feathers skilfully slicing
the skin of clouds. I would say this
is worth my enemy’s claw, worth a mouth
full of laughter. I could speak again
of love without weight, of a saffron flower
exposing all to the sun.” !!!
Appreciating The Difficult
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What face?
Stunning! Allison Grayhurst shapes words like she shapes clay – with passion, compassion, wisdom and worth – making life sacred – time, human, shape and form.
Appreciating The Difficult
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What face?
once again, I find myself semi-suddenly somewhere else, inside.
It’s always a pleasure & welcome strain
to take you in/ Thanx again
namelessneed
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River
This a beautiful journey. I love this one!
Carl
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River
OH MY GOD… this is sheer poetry – about one of the most sacred of human experiences FINALLY being done justice to in one of those rare instances when it is DONE JUSTICE TO. Thank you for your depth, your breadth, your breath, your words and your fleshly soul.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Perfect Love
Wow….you write just a beautifully under Jocelyn Kain as you do as Allison Grayhurst.
Jueseppi B.
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Perfect Love
A amazing story of love. I like the short chapters. Each with meaning and purpose.
johncoyote
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Morning Glory
I really enjoyed how this builds and builds, and the final lines are like an epiphany : ‘I open a room …’
Wonderful poem, and so appropriate for springtime too. 🙂
I hope the sun shines for you today, Allison.
Anne
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Morning Glory
Oh my god, how beautiful.
“And from the beginning the miracle
sat on our shoulder like a butterfly”
“I give no more from the side of my mouth,
for the seductive shadow and the running crowd.
Plain as the path to heaven, I kiss the dread
and let it drift down sea. I open a room
where the light catches my breath.
I am breathing a morning glory.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Morning Glory
a beautiful poem of release and openness, I receive it
Anna Mark
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Sight at Zero
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
I Love this….thank you Allison. You brighten up a blog dedicated to politics and current news events, which are not always happy subjects, with your word magic. Thank you.
Jueseppi B.
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Sight at Zero
Brilliant! Full of Meaning, feeling, reeling stunning language capturing the poignancy and complexity of exquisite, if not always comfortable, human emotion!
“lovers assassinate love
for the sensation of pride.”
“It is my jealousy
that has woken, generous
with hate.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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By This Light
wow, this piece is beautiful, and written expertly.
abichica
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By This Light
A CLASSIC – a true love poem not only to a personal breath-taking love, but to the love of humanity and to the articulation of our shared human landscape for glory.
Appreciating The Difficult
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It’s been months
Just wonderful, Allison. I hope you are still in that place.
Eric
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It’s been months
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
Like a fine expensive bottle of Merlot, Allison just gets better with time. Thank you for this
Jueseppi B.
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It’s been months
This says so many things to me, and I feel like I can identify with so much of it. I read a few times and I’m saving it to read some more. There’s real beauty here.
Carl
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Slice the pony
Brilliant, beautiful. Full of the power and majesty of the wholeness of life.
“Because of so many things
lost and remade, I have been left without a plan
but to lean without shame or resistance on
the bosom of God. That is the role, the flesh
and backbone combined.”
“Because I know it is all for you and all is given
by you – we sing, we paint our stories – this story
rich with surprises and laden with disappointments.
I sing and paint and wish for other things,
though I am satisfied with love and with the way
you see fit to carry me across.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Denial
Myself feeling torn, weighed down, distracted, pulled apart by various pressures and desires of my own heart–I found this very comforting…thank you for a good read.
Abigail Burhenne
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Denial
The kind of adamant resistance you show to not being caught by the dirge – I love you for it!
Appreciating The Difficult
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The Holding On
I LOVE this! Passionate, strong, solid, vital, instructive. BEAUTY. Wow.
“Over the highest evergreen I race
with my emblem. I lost
nearly everything I cared for to gain
a new soul. I lost a passion and gained
a rage against death and the wilderness outside.
I drink from the underground and am blessed.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Daughter – almost five
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
Beautiful tribute from a great poet to her daughter. Thank you Allison.
Jueseppi B.
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Daughter – almost five
Reads like a dream, like a song, like a touch – a tenderness filling my heart like a strong feather.
“I live inside the gentleness of your mind.”
“In dreams I find you
beside me for always,”
AND OH MY GOD…
“your eyes rich as the colours of earth
and your rhythm, profoundly ancient
like the dance of a seabird upon water.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Underline
I LOVE IT! The power of myth, magic and mystery – like a fairy tale!
“By the last leaf changing
and the voice of rivers calling,
by the presence of an
unwilling hero
a great light is born.”
“The aspirations never hooked up,
but neither
did they die.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Now You Know
Brilliant! Peppered with keeper lines like bullets of insight in a gray world!
“Now you know the honeydew nectar
spread across the light – like a
limit – sweet but blurring.”
“agitated
like a mind unable to hold one clear sentence”
“You do not exist the way you once thought.”
“never finding the way out.
It has been this way.”
“Almost
your dream is gone.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Preparing
It’s a beautiful poem, alluding to the marvels of a life’s journey.
Carl
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Preparing
Reblogged this on Eric M. Vogt: Life-Writings and commented:
What a great poem by Allison Grayhurst! If you haven’t read her, you should. 🙂 Eric
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Preparing
Love it! Crisp, feeling, spacious, promising in its beauty.
“I am waiting for motivation, for a clarity of purpose
I sunk under the St. Lawrence rapids. When I was a child,
I watched those rapids without fear,
stood close to the edge and never wondered about the slippery underfoot,
never worried about the shadflies arriving like a plague of river insects
or about my loneliness that turned into a ghost companion
comforting me in those grey Quebec afternoons.”
“But here, in this riverless realm,
I cannot place my hands down. I cannot stretch wide enough
to feel whole.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Just Believing
“I will turn while in my days of darkness
and feast upon fireflies.”
I keep turning your opening words over and over in my mind, Allison. It sings like a mythical song. Closely identified with the theme of your piece.
Eric
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Just Believing
BRILLIANT – and dead on! Glorious, poetically transporter!
“A new groove will capture my flight
and lift chairs from the floor.
I will be the one whose radio still sounds,
whose sandwich has been eaten
and whose telephone calls have meaning.
It is just a matter of believing in mercy
and not much more.
It is appreciating the smell of my baby’s neck
and the times when reading with my child.”
“The days will turn over
and the unexpected will enter
to bless then break
my fall.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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In Front
Very nice as always, you maintain quality as easy as gentle breathing – always a joy to read your work
Bruce
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Intimacy
That’s fantastic! Well done! Your poems are always superb!
redplace
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Intimacy
Loved the cadence in this one Allison – beautiful
gingerfightback
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Intimacy
Congratulations – a breathtaking poem alluding to a breathtaking experience!
The rhythm of this poem seems to capture the moment and then release it. Beautifully written.
Anne
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When Small Things Die
This poem really grabs me this evening. It has such agony in it and to have held it in your hands for its last breaths…the image of a “feeble resurrection” is one that has never occurred to me and I find it very striking. How can a resurrection be feeble except that somehow we bring our weakness into heaven…
Anna Mark
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When Small Things Die
The beauty and the hardship of life paid tribute to in sharply emotive and compelling language art
Appreciating The Difficult
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Green Haven and You
I really enjoyed this. It was especially nice to close my eyes and listen, your voice I assume.
prewitt1970
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Green Haven and You
Beautiful, breath-taking, powerful tribute to one gone – and how life is not in this dimension or another, but both, through the poetic painting of our true consciousness.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Green Haven and You
This is a great piece. I felt as though I was floating with the scenes.
Carl
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Altered Behind City Gardens
OH MY GOD – I love this! Beautiful, breath-taking – true, true love – soul love, soul mates.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Turtle
So intimately and grandly connected to this small animal life. A true gift to be able to sense at this level.
Appreciating The Difficult
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What Hands Can Hold
A classic. One of my favorite. Peaceful, brilliant in its beauty.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Making Love
This is a great piece. I love the flow and the arc of it.
Carl 
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Making Love
Stunningly beautiful! True Eros – on the perfect Day!
“I hold you. You are my language
dying to be born.
You are the one I will never recover from,
the only companion my heart has known.
I cannot envy the stars, or
the soft-spoken trees.
For there is landscape
enough, here beside you,
where all of heaven’s disguises
glow bright,
transparent.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Miles Without Grace
Profound and deep and majestic as usual.
“Falling clouds, falling shadows
into the heart-nests
into the white morning flame.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Germination
this is splendid! i loved every line! 😀
abichica
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Germination
Beauty, Beauty, Beauty! Of a rare Heart, Eye and Depth of Love and Eros!
Appreciating The Difficult
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The Book
hardly solid, like butter left out of the fridge’ – what an exact image for such an inexact state! – and there’s a rhythm and sound to ‘hanging on hinges’ that makes you nod and smile
davidstrachan611
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The Book
Breath-taking – luxurious!
Appreciating The Difficult
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The Book
lovely, and of course I want to look over yr shoulder for the title
namelessneed
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Change
Allison, this is a powerful poem about change with many very salient and tangible images that tug and tug at what the change means, what if feels like, how it assaults our senses and every part of our lives. I enjoyed it very much.
Anna Mark
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Change
The poetry continues to grow and writhe into shine after shine in its depth, passionate cry and beauty.
“Let it come like the wave with
the salty foam. Let it reflect
my insides like a face held towards
new cutlery. Let it take my rhythm for
its own, express it in the wings of angry crows
and the trees in communion with the wind.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Path
that’s a very ‘touching’ and exact image of tenderness and trust in the last 2 lines
davidstrachan611
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Path
very nice, there is always something personally spiritual about your poetry. It is somewhat calming
Bruce Ruston
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We sorrowed far when the sky tore,
Brilliant! Soaring! Delicious!
Complex sophistication. Love it!
Appreciating The Difficult
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We sorrowed far when the sky tore,
O, Allison, I do not usually follow a poet after reading just one poem, but you have the gift and I must see your next masterpiece or two or three…
Eric
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Fill the ghosts with upward rejoicing
Ripe with the depth of life – language substance beyond measure Allison soars in her acing of the surf.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Fill the ghosts with upward rejoicing
Very nice sad and a dark ending I think
Bruce Ruston
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Back
his poem is incredible – like a rich gentle fierce painting – wow:
“Carelessly moving from place to place
but changeless as a brick under a porch
and strong as that brick”
“Take this mortal thinning and give nothing to regrets:
We sing for each other and you are free. I feel it
in the sparrows lined along the roofline and in
your tired features morphing into winter branches – richer brown,
moist – like just before a spring bloom.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Back
Congratulations Allison – this is is one of your most powerful yet translucent pieces.
gingerfightback
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Back
I am happy and thrilled at Grayhurst success and even more amazed with the depth and scope of her talent. Check out her work.
Jueseppi
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Open Book Toronto Interview for new Chapbook
I can also really connect with the quote, “Reading it fills me the strongest with my own voice — which I think all great art and true inspiration, should do.” I have yet to find my list of poets who do this for me…I can think of one.
Anna Mark
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In Labour
She just keeps getting better and better – language like a banquet, emotion like a symphony!
Appreciating The Difficult
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Endure
here are some lovely lines in here; the way you capture ‘that one hour’ and the simplicity and complexities of love. I think the image at the end is wonderful.
poetrydiary
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Endure
Your writing is remarkable.
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Endure
OH MY GOD!
I LOVE THIS!
Powerful here, there and everywhere!
The circuitry of Experience and hallowed insight of the human heart amidst the unflinching Eye!
Appreciating The Difficult
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The Stone
I check regularly for the possibility of recent work/ miss you & yr imaginable “nowness”
but yr powerful symbols plow on
namelessneed
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The Stone
It stays and the surface is its meaning…what does this say about the depth of things that need to be forgiven? this image of the rock has both solidity and transparency in it and I think this is wonderful, Allison. It is both hard and vulnerable, hidden and all apparent.
By the way — I bought four of your books tonight!
Anna Mark
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Illusions Burned, Radiant Light Restored
Illusions Burned, Radiant Light Restored (parts 1 to 25) YouTube poem
Outstanding work dear Allison. I will return tonight and listen to them all. I love your work and I hope you are doing well and having some fun.
johncoyote
Dance
The whole thing is brilliant and graphic and dances – and especially like:
“I could ride a train, take it across the border.
I could be like the young woman who fell – was she
dancing on the bridge’s rail and forgot the distance? or simply
bloated on drugs and insanity’s youthful wake?
How strange that her asymmetrical face
and lithe beauty remain, so you think of her
as one of the fortunate – because of the fall,
because she fell while dancing, and you have forgotten how
to surrender.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Dance
wooww!! great write… i always love your poetry.. 🙂
abichica
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The poetry of Allison Grayhurst
Over the last year you have challenged, stimulated and delighted me daily. I love your shimmering, mercurial metaphor, and your spirit wisdom. Thank you. I wish you deep wells of creativity, and delight in your work.
Clare Flourish
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The poetry of Allison Grayhurst
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
Allison Grayhurst is a magician with the written word, I suggest you buy or read her books. They will leave you uplifted.
Jueseppi B.
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The poetry of Allison Grayhurst
Wow! What a host of Masterpieces – so hard won and Labours of Love —- FOR YEARS! We are thrilled and give you great congratulations as your readers!
Appreciating The Difficult
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To Wait Without Drowning
Phenomenal
michael mcguirt
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To Wait Without Drowning
The last verse is exquisite.
I want to be there too
Anne
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Why have I died
woow!! so much power in your words.. 🙂
abichica
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Why have I died
Your words speak so profoundly. Words beyond words. I love your writing!
Redplace
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Learning Temperance
That makes your poetry so special, Allison, is the way you marry language to idea so that both the language and idea become surprising or unique. The start of this poem
Cradle the handle under the sleeve
and watch as the sun changes shadows.
reminds me of that magic you have. The first line is mysterious when you first read it. What handle? Under a sleeve, and then the second line, watching the sun as it changes shadows. Then the word, “Blue,” to start the second line, blue as related to shadows, but also blue related to
…the private everafter with
the future under my fingernails and an orange seed
in my throat…
This is not just the everafter that we all must face in our everyday lives and at the end of life, but the private everafter, the handle under the sleeve, the shadow on the sun, where the future is under your fingernails and an orange seed–which is a symbol of fertility in some cultures–in your throat. Given your recent publishing feat this symbol or orange seed and throat, indicative of speech out of the throat, seems appropriate.
Then the questions:
Will it happen or will it always be ‘the wait’?
Waiting in the moment just before bloom
but never arriving into full colour? Or is it only
a long pause, gathering breath for the final
swing that will bury all dullness that has gone before?
Each question queries the self, as I read this, or your personal life. Ethel once wrote a poem with a line that went something like,
Is it to be a woman?
To always look on windows instead of doors?
(*please see below, this is actually a quote from a Theodore Roethke poem called Fourth Meditation)
These questions seem to strike the same poignancy, the wondering about life and what it means in its fulfillment. These strike to the heart of who all of us are in confronting ourselves as human beings.
Then the answer to the questions and the poem’s powerful denouement:
I see a tree I have walked by many times before. This time
I noticed it and smiled.
Maybe this is not darkness at all,
but a line to follow and focus on
like a child watching rain drops – one at a time.
Perhaps if we learn temperance, patience, and only look at a tree we’ve walked past before and notice it and smile, then we will find that we are not in darkness, in dullness, in the everafterlife’s end. Perhaps, the tree and life is a line to follow and focus on “Like a child watching rain drops–one at a time.”
This is absolutely wonderful magnificent.
Thomas Davis
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When the last tie is broken
…timeless moments oblivious to thought…Like being at the place where
water and earth are like fingers massaging mud
into a vision – a weight
unattainable to the cerebral mind
These are beautiful descriptions. I think they are describing faith or belief, and the mystery of forming and being and creating.
Anna Mark
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When the last tie is broken
This poem REALLY helped me TODAY.
I memorized the passion and dedication lines.
Thank you!
Appreciating The Difficult
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Like A Wave
Beauty is curved like the wave of a rapid river
Great line!
davidstrachan611
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Like A Wave
beautiful amazing piece.. touched my heart!! 🙂
abichica
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Like A Wave
Beautiful. The journey down is indeed sacred!
Appreciating The Difficult
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In The Day
Again, you set and asure a sure tone/ a listener & reader feels a soul’s downshift/
Yr trustworthy words reach a hand back..to lead us solomnly on to yr declarations
Oddly, my favorite lines were introductory to yr messages, but I like ‘em
“In the evening, close to dark,
hair-clipping all dishevelled expectations,
pin-pointing a place to lay down, to rest and witness the uneventful view”
Thanx again & Keep on, friend,
namelessneed
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In The Day
floats on a sea of light sadness and resignation…truly tells a tale
David
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In The Day
Just the right level of allusion for me. Atmosphere of claimed contentment, seeing things positively, punctured by “One more day without”. Bathe in blessings is beautiful, and then- afterall no matter. Those last two lines bring the sense of loss crashing in on me, Saying what the person was without would puncture it. More anguish would lessen the effect for me. Without “no matter” I would forget the “without”: just quiet content, no harmonic of Anguish. I love the way you have put this together, I take a lot from it.
Clare
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In The Day
Another masterpiece – I adore it!
“In the early afternoon,
assembling the fragments of my faith
like the bones of a bird and then giving it the key
to fly.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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elegy of this day
Allison, once again, I find your responses to darkness quite atypical. How is “exposure” and vulnerability and such (almost surgical) light the answer to our nightmares? to the darkness in us? It is quite the opposite from what you want — to hide. Freedom comes from being known, I do know that, from allowing your darkness to be seen and loved even, yes even loved.
Anna Mark
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elegy of this day
wonderful, again/ I intend to enter an american bookstore sometime soon and
plop down my filthy lucre for clean & sure words in a book of poetry
good job, Allison
namelessneed
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You who saw
This is a wonderful poem, Allison. The start of it is mysterious:
You who saw the
morning fall on leaves
all rotted and brown but
kissed this darkest turn
and threw your coins to the sun.
Part of its mystery comes from the fact that it is incomplete sentence. The stanza leaves us hanging in the air–who is you? There is some sense to it. The you is a person when morning fell on leaves all rotted and brown, kissed the darkest turn and then turned around and threw coins (your coins) meaning special coins, wealth, into the sun.
As we read on we find out a lot more about “you”:
You who loved and always learned
that love is nothing earned.
You who opened your heart to a child
and let her wed and weave her own.
There is a wonderful truth about love in these lines, the idea that love is nothing earned, but is a gift that you then have to let go so that the child to which a human’s heart is opened, can then go on to weave her life.
Then the darkness:
You who felt the wanting grave
when you felt the skeleton hand of a friend
unchained.
The wanting grave, the skeleton hand of a friend unchained (from life?), the sorrow that happens even in the midst of love and goodness. The unchaining of life from death, the last remains of a friend even if they are still a friend with a skeleton hand…
Somberness leads to my favorite lines, as you might suspect of me:
You who beheld your wife like a sunrise
and gave her everyday a new light to live for.
I have failed to achieve this ideal, but I have beheld Ethel like a sunrise, and I have tried to give her light, even though I am afraid that my attempts have not always met the mark. But what wonderful thoughts–that giving her everyday a new light to live for might be possible even in the face of the darker moments in life, the losses we face in life.
A person who could achieve that central blessing deserves the next lines:
You who are so beautiful and always beginning,
like a band of circling swallows, like a whale
first seen in the wild, like the scent of home.
They are like the glory of the earth, beautiful, and always beginning, and a you that the poet describes is the sum of a thousand good men on a walk, like a chapel bell awakening, a man
…sweet and deep
as the true belief in miracles.
This is not the most powerful poem of those I just finished reading, but it is the most wonderful, Allison, and therefore I felt like picking it out for comment. There is goodness and an observation of goodness in this poem, and though I deal with trials and tribulations of people everyday at the college as they try to deal with complex lives, I still appreciate goodness when I run across it and believe I should notice it when I encounter its presence.
Thank you for this poem. It made my day.
Thomas Davis
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You Who Saw
Very powwwweruful poem. Thanks for sharing it.
randelldeanscott
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Edified
I’d like to know…did you really hear a voice? This poem is like a testimony. “Into the dictates of a personal command…” This line raises the hairs on my neck. I once saw freedom in such “personal commands” and “dictates”…but now, just not so sure. This poem seems clearly about an awakening, a calling into a new kind of way of being, away from cerebral justifications that lead to loneliness and despair.
Anna Mark
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Edified
Allison, I just read the poems I hadn’t read since my last comment. I always do that, then choose one or two on which to write a comment.
I actually found this to be a difficult poem. It starts with two questions;
“Was I bound by the artificial?
Driftwood down an interceding flow?”
Are you real? Or just driftwood flowing from a direction you cannot control? Then the poem takes a leap:
“Horse stance, back muscles rolling, lines of twine, and fishing.”
almost as if you see yourself in a great river like the Columbia out in the current tossing lines over and over again into roiling waters. This is an answer to the questions about how you really are. Then the poem leaps again with two declarative statements:
“I will not fish or tighten my spinal cord for the appearance of strength.
I will not bask relaxed in hot spring nobility or lick the nose
of prey I someday plan to devour.”
At this point you seem to be defining yourself by denial, contradicting the vision of “Horse stance, back muscles rolling…”
You will not give the appearance of strength through strenuous action or bask in the hot spring of nobility or lick the nose of prey you may someday devour in order to be who you are.
Then the poem leaps again, telling us of a 2:30 a.m. dream that fits into this contemplation of self and who you are:
“Loudly, my name was spoken. It was God, I am
sure of that. And it was angry, pressing, urging me
to wake and take nothing lightly or so hard.”
This “angry, pressing” voice lifted you “from the gardens of my despair.”
And when you understood the voice, you had inside yourself “a permit to build, to trap the past inside the future…” to “absolved by the fact/that nothing can escape the impact of eternity.” This last quotation, as an aside, is a powerful line.
The reason for including igloo before mansions escapes me, but the next part of the poem essentially says that mansions you once erected inside yourself, “cerebral justifications of indignant loneliness,” are natural and cannot be dismantled.
Then comes the affirmation in answer to the questions at the beginning of the poem:
“I heard my name spoken, calling me to dart alert
from a shrinking sleep, to walk the hallway, carve
myself an inclusive center, to answer boldly,
unconditionally step
into the dictates of a personal command.”
The voice in the dream gave you permission to be active in life, carve a center that is inclusive of life, the world, others, inside yourself, “to answer boldly,” to follow the personal commands from your inner voice, your self.
This is clearly mystic poetry as opposed to the confessional poetry of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, et al. It is closer to what William Blake wrote than it is to much of the contemporary canon and thus has a tone that is commanding while, at the same time, giving an answer to the self about its reasons for existence. This takes a careful reading to “fish” out its multiple meanings. The word fish, for instance, in the early lines is not only there for image, but for the idea that you are not going to fish for who you are or for the meaning of life, leading to the vision that you describe in the poem. But a little effort gives substantial rewards.
Thomas Davis
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Edified
Awesome…charged, clear, sharp to the point!
YES, THIS IS THE HEROIC JOURNEY STARING FEAR IN THE FACE!
“I heard my name spoken, calling me to dart alert
from a shrinking sleep, to walk the hallway, carve
myself an inclusive center, to answer boldly,
unconditionally step
into the dictates of a personal command.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Edified
Inspiring poetry Allison.
David. L
davidlandgrebe
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End
“I have been the caterpillar/Not for one more day.” These two lines say it all. Metamorphosis. The way everlasting…though, I grapple with these things (as far as not knowing, not deeply experiencing whether or not I “believe” in the sewer anymore…but, I understand it. Yes.
Anna Mark
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End
Brilliant! Love it!
“I see the darkness fully. I face the sword
to slice clean the cancer blotting my soul.
I dive in the sewer, side by side with bacteria,
holding my face straight up. I let my fingertips be
severed so I can free the rest of my body.
I am frightened, looking beyond
the murky fear into a faith, small but glowing.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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End
A wonderful ending, Alison, really paints the picture.
Eve Redwater
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When This Is Over
This is incredibly beautiful, Allison. It does not need a long scan to understand it, so I will refrain from doing that and will come back tomorrow if I can and try to do a proper comment, but I could not leave this evening without letting you know how wonderful this poem is.
The start of the poem, with its formal phrasing, leaves me breathless:
At the end of the day, the pears will be ripe
and the ones I loved and died will float before me
in waves of growing beauty.
The formal solemnity of this gives it an unearthly beauty that I’m sure you meant, brewing contemplation and making us remember back on all those we have loved who have died.
Then you talk about yourself,
At the end, when all of this leaves, then I will breathe
an owl breath, still in my tranquil sky.
“I will breathe an owl breath…” wow! What an idea.
Then the poem gets more complex, stating your intent to find someone who left you in chaos, a garden hit by storm. The whorl of these two lines leads to:
I will give life again to the little birds, insects that have no
use or concept of glory. I will return with you
to the Buddha waters, happy to know so much love.
and an expression of love that wraps all of us up in Buddha waters…and the beauty of your thoughts. Then you say that you…
will walk out my door and there will be summer,
and you and your love will
…will walk into the warmth:
ultimately loved, unequivocally whole.
Beautiful poetry! Even though it still has that complex whorl in it that gives us pause and thought.
Thomas Davis
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When This Is Over
This is so very lovely Allison, the comparison to birds, the pear, the garden, and the ending – like a sweep through nature. 🙂
Eve Redwater
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When This Is Over
A classic. BROUGHT TEARS TO MY EYES. Thank you.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Seamless
Strange rhythms are risked, foreheads pressed,
giving way
to beautiful unadulterated disclosure.”
a perfect and beautiful image of unity
nicolasguywilliams
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Seamless
I loved how you conveyed your emotions in this piece coined perfectly with such beautiful imagery. Lovely!
redplace
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Faith
and when it is found there is also a sense that it has always been there, waiting.
Anna Mark
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Faith
OH MY GOD – I love it!
“It is an emblem of uncharted kindness
that cannot fade even when I falter.
It is a name on a wall
that changes but is always mine.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Faith
Beautiful Alison.
gingerfightback
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Will you keep me
Especially like:
“so I would have no choice
but to lean on hefty roots, sleep at the bottom, wide as earth.
Will you keep me, stop me from compromising a cold solution,
from peddling the fruits of my incandescent plateau with weak convictions?
Or will you turn me wooden just to protect what is soft, and not,
interchangeable?”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Will you keep me
You have real conviction in your words. Nice work.
David. L
davidlandgrebe
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Silence
I could not help but comment on this poem–at least a little. It feels classic to me from the first lines onward.
I lift the bullfrog from the waters.
Bread, parables and staying close to a legend –
these are things of joy…
If I heard that at night around a campfire beneath a shining silver moon, I would say, softly, amen, amen. But of course this is a poem of grief, of the grave by the willow tree, a sailing ship with no port, and it gains part of its power from the contrast between the opening lines and the following lines. There are so many metaphors and such limbic power in the early lines of this poem that you could almost write a book about the poem and how metaphors relate to its emotional content and the human heart..
My father, I dream of your flame. I miss the woods
and your kind goodbyes. Tomorrow is a keyhole
that shapes my hopes with tiny possibilities.
These lines are so meaningful, telling us so much about your father in his kindness expressed through goodbyes, and how time has shrunk to a tomorrow of key holes that is left with only tiny possibilities.
The ifs at the end are exquisite in their expression, reminding us that inside grief there are always ifs, but they are not the ifs of possibility and hope, but impossibilities that fill us up with remembering.
This is a great poem.
Tom Davis
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Silence
In the spoken version ‘the hollow log’ becomes ‘death’ and woods becomes ‘words’…?
“Tomorrow is a keyhole/ that shapes my hopes with tiny possibilities” – I just like that for the way it sounds and flows and changes meaning as it goes
davidstrachan611
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Watchman Of The Night
Love it! What a majestic imaginational realm!
Appreciating The Difficult
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Wingbeats
Your poem has uniformly short lines which cleverly mimic the wingbeat rhythm suggested by your title.
davidstrachan611
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Wingbeats
A wonderful piece/ through & through
namelessneed
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Wingbeats
so beautiful.. 🙂
abichica
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Wingbeats
This is lovely. It has shades of Dylan Thomas, and believe me that is a compliment.
Romantic Dominant
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I Know That
What a wonderful prayer to read on Easter morning! No matter what faith tradition anyone might follow. The two poems I’ve read today, Allison, are as clear and fresh as water tumbling over stones out of the San Juan Mountains. Achieving that clarity is as difficult as any other task a writer might take during that lifetime. It is not a necessary component of poetry. The puzzles spun out by Jim Heinz, ExtraSimilie, have their place in the body of poetry as do more complex poems that are not as challenging as those done by Jim. You are a true poet. These two poems are worth celebrating, although the truth is that much of what you write is worth celebrating.
Thomas Davis
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I Know That
I am really digging the soul and feel of this, I get it! great expression!
renokingswordsnpoetry
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this prevails
Sheer Beauty, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, move over 🙂
“We lift up our shirts, place ears over navels,
dwarfing any future with instinctual immediacy.”
PS – Yes, this is so true:
“Holding is indefinite…
With each lip-graze our fears are gradually disempowered.
They shrink, and then we shrink-wrap them before they fully decay,
offering them an honoured yet secondary place.”
Appreciating The Difficult
.
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Hard Time Singing
Poetry does not have to stir hymns and hosannas to be poetry. Sometimes poetry gets under the skin and smashes the reader in the face and forces confrontation that is not to be quickly forgotten:
The ground that grows
the wasteful blight and
estranges the kiss and hiss of wildlife
is in me like a slaughtered tribe
that has no face.
Whew! This is one powerful description of a blackness that has descended singing angrily into the spirit.
I am in the nightmare cloud, wrapped
in tar and rotted wood. I hide
beneath the blanket, undone.
But poetry, if it is any good never stands still, but moves:
Sickness has walked around me, mile
around mile and names me this stone chiselled
in two. It is the beginning, but it is midnight
and I am marked to be unmoved.
There is a hint here that there is a “beginning…” of sickness, of stone chiselled in two,” but a stirring beneath the blackness even though “it is midnight/and I am marked to be be unmoved.”
This is not the poetry of dazzling light, but of the spirit’s darkness. Still, there has to be a beginning out of darkness even though it cannot move and the spirit hides under a blanket, trying to be unseen. Sylvia Plath wrote powerful poetry that sizzled with emotion. We feel the fire in her lines, but, in the end, she needed to find a new beginning, a path out of despair and the darker emotions. This has the power of Plath, but I see in it more hope even if the hope is lightly stated and perhaps half meant. I recognize you as a poet, Allison. A significant poet.
Thomas Davis
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Hard Time Singing
I like your use of language. . .very effective I think. Reminds me of Ferlinghetti and his Beat Poetry in the 60’s. Also (for me) has a Dylan quality to it. I really like your poetry!
paranoide4life
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Hard Time Singing
HO-LEE! WOW! No one can write this stuff like you!
Appreciating The Difficult
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As One
Intimate, throbbing, present:
Love:
“under blankets, more at ease
with the coming of private sleep than with trying.”
You capture moments in life with great intimacy.
Appreciating The Difficult
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As One
This is a love poem, Allison, but has both angst and sadness mixed in with the love. There is beautiful, original language, as in all of your poetry,
sorrow like a grey October morn
stretches between us, leaves us each
alone watching out the same window.
fascinating ideas:
We are locked like the shore to the sea,
perfectly different and merging in natural
rhythm – each shell and struggling fish
exposed, until we hide in separate elements,
bonded to our own.
“each shell and struggling fish/exposed,” talking about the inner being of human beings! An idea that stops you in your tracks and makes you think about what the poet is really saying. Each of the lovers expose themselves to the other, and then they “hide in separate elements…”, trying to escape the exposure.
and the counterpoint of a complex relationship:
Often I am bruised by your laughter,
counting pennies on the table with fierce concentration.
Though you with your hands,
hold all the mystery my heart can fathom,
pressing with gentleness my folded brow,
or blending your legs with mine, sure and warm
as the summer earth.
where the laughter of the lover bruises and causes a retreat into the “counting of pennies on the table with fierce concentration,” but also presents hands that “hold all the mystery my heart can fathom…”
What I get out of this is that the mental/emotional part of the relationship is difficult, but the physical part is “sure and warm/as the summer earth.”
The questions raised by the poem are the old ones: Can the physical excitement of love last? Is that enough? Or does the physicalness of human beings translate into a rhythm powerful enough to overcome the emotional/mental difficulties we all face? Can love of any kind break through the “separate elements” and build a bonding that is strong and lasting? What is the nature of love?
This is, as usual, powerful poetry with a sting that makes the reader examine his/her universe.
Thomas Davis
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As One
I’ve seen a lot of insipid, cliched “love poetry” on Word Press but this I like. Tender and honest, with some beautiful lines, “blending your legs with mine, sure and warm etc-
I hope your loved one appreciates it.
reverendhellfire
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Traces
Allison, this poem starts with a dark, dark vision that is almost frightening:
In the whisper of tomorrow
the wood is burning and the trees
have died.
You then take the hinges off the door, doors being the instruments we humans use to keep the outside away from our inner lives while allowing us to go outside.
…waiting as my hunger works like
midnight in my stomach, dictating
the flavour of the coming stars.
These are powerful lines! You are waiting to see what “outside” comes through the door, not afraid, filled with hunger, letting that hunger dictate the flavour of the coming stars.
Then you ask a powerful question:
…will the answer come before the grave
or will obscurity greet me every new dawn
like a hand unheld or a gate torn down?
A question which probably drives all of those who become poets.
It is humming, the sound of this underground sorrow.
It hums of poetry and the earth and the bug eaten leaves.
It burns and cannot bloom in bookstores, will not bloom
in the silence of a single decade or in the darkness of
a closed drawer.
The craft of poetry in these lines, with the repetition of the It, is wonderful. The question, and the feared answer, humming an underground sorrow: It burns and cannot bloom in bookstores…
(poetry, of course, not matter how great the poet, seldom does)
But then your triumphant ending, at triumphant from where I sit:
Outside, the children go inside, readying for sleep.
I tread waterways in my mind
and send my kisses mid-air.
For in spite of the eternal question you have asked, you watch the children inside, reading for sleep, and send your kisses to them–and perhaps all of us, “mid-air.”
The previous poem deserves comment to, but when I read this one I could not help myself. I had to comment on it. Ahh, for only more time during the day.
Thomas Davis
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Traces
Beautiful… I especially like:
“Outside, the children go inside, readying for sleep.
I tread waterways in my mind
and send my kisses mid-air.”
Holly Hope
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Traces
“I often feel that your words start with a trickle and end with a down pouring, and end again with a trickle but with the sense of a “sigh” or “breath”. Reading your poems usually has this feeling of oncoming rush and then a pause…
Anna Mark
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Far and Here
Yes! Witness consciousness! Fearlessly seeing and feeling it all, not dissociating.
Especially like:
“I am far from a solid core,
far from the plane ride to paradise,
far from the sodium dream,
but I am here
and here
I am looking around.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Far and Here
I understand you are not into accepting awards, and that this blog is all about the work, and not you, that aside, since you inspire me and my blog, I nominated you for The Very Inspiring Blogger Award. What you do with this award is entirely your business….but you have been given this based on how your words effect me….which is what writing is all about, reaching someone.
Jueseppi B.
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Only One
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
Allison Grayhurst at the self named blog: “Allison Grayhurst” has done it again folks….another elegant yet simple group of words arranged in such a way to make me think. I love that about her poetry.
Jueseppi B.
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Only One
“on the rafters a single flower is born”…to me, this poem is all here in this one line. That flower emerging from the rafters is the unborn fetus in the woman who cannot find her seat…and holding on when the world is pale with grief…the rain in the rafters, the flower…beautiful.
Anna Mark
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Only One
“What speaks of holding on when the world is pale/ with grief…” though there’s no description of color, and it’s a stripped down idea, there’s really striking imagery in there. The first commenter said it..
J.B. O’Shea
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Only One
Beautiful…Especially like:
“On the rafters a single flower is born.
I look to that single flower, like I look to spending
the afternoon with the ones who have endeared,
like the pulse and turn of my infant within
or a brief morning solitude –
open for interpretation.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Matrimony
I sense a merging here with God as well as man. I think about John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14. In fact, in many of your “love” poems I find myself floating in and out of flesh to spirit, what can be a love relationship with a person is also, somehow, one with God. At least this is my sense in your poems. They carry an intensity which feels to me like the kind of longing or love one has for God, but this intensity is also in our home, in our beds.
Anna Mark
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Matrimony
Intense, rich and many layered as usual – feels good knowing it’s to your Muse.
What a vocation being a passionate poet is!
Appreciating The Difficult
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Matrimony
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
Allison Grayhurst is a poet. She has emotions and uncharted. She uses words to guide me from darkness into revelation. That is what a good poet does well. Stop by her blog: “Allison Grayhurst”.
Jueseppi B.
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Rain in the morning
How we’d like the world to stop spinning, for even a moment, just a moment, to show us that our pain matters…as a child when I experienced a great loss, a death, I wondered why the world didn’t stop. At such a young age, I felt the passing endlessness of days.
Anna Mark
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Rain in the morning
I think we humans are always affected by weather, rain or snow, as the post office says, but also by
…spiders
that creep and curl along the
ceiling, hovering with the stillness
of death…
and our troubles and this is all true:
…To watch a love-one suffer is worse
than shame, worse than feeling
futility collapse on your throat
or a weapon held at the head…
at least in my life. It is also true that
Little by little the terror rises,
and the world outside remains unchanged.
For all the world encroaches into our head and leaves us with our troubles, the world does remain unchanged, moving from season to season, year to year, decade to decade, century to century in its endless circles. As usual, Allison, this is really good poetry.
Thomas Davis
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Rain in the morning
What cathartic comfort for angst!
You are the queen of cathartic comfort!
Certain lines should go down in Bartlett’s Quotations.
They boom like thunderous sharp true insight!
“I drink necessity’s authority.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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I wait for you.
Beautiful and intense, a salty fire.
Anna Mark
.
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I wait for you
Your sure words, forthright, intense, are bold with gutsy sensual & spiritual
symbolism, It all stirs up a spell of delirium at this end
Thanx, from another dizzy reader
namelessneed
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I heard a poet say
Wow. Especially like:
” I have known death’s jolts, have known its harrowing cripple
and crack, and know it cannot revert humanity back to that interval
before God exhaled, altering the playing field, resulting in
such a mighty fusion.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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I heard a poet say
A wonderful exploration of what poetry, beneath words, rhythm, rhyme, lines, and even meaning, is.
… it is being intoxicated with the fullness of seeing God there
with every thought – in the swimming pool while treading water,
or at the hair dresser, drinking coffee, waiting for a turn.
… True intensity is subtle,
is equal in its magnitude as it is to its intricacy – It commands exploration.
Even death, sometimes your sister,
cannot revert humanity back to that interval
before God exhaled, altering the playing field, resulting in
such a mighty fusion.
The themes in this poem are so large they seem to encompass both the self and the self in God. In the end the poet, you, all humanity, is part of the mighty fusion that the poet sees when they see God with every thought during every moment of the day no matter how mundane the moment.
Life begets life:
a forceful synergy of the round and the sharp,
splicing, splitting, until more splicing and splitting until
dependency on oxygen is born.
begets what the poet who sees the self subsumed by poetry misses in their concentration on self and self subsumed. This is fascinating, vital poetry.
Thomas Davis
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Plastic
The creativity within this poem affects me in a strong way:
Plastered with glue,
sticking like betrayal like a spider’s eggsack
to a branch. I watch your gorgeous
pontificating, watch you mourn just a little. The injury
rips only part of your body, fragments you. Grief becomes a tremor,
an uncontrolled twitch under your left eye.
The poem starts out as a startling portrait, then develops a counterpoint to the portrait, describing in wonderful language how the poet wants to let go and rid themselves of the domination of the one drawn so skillfully in the proceeding stanza. The it becomes a powerful love poem, ending in a stanza as impressionistic as the art of Van Gogh:
…but you
are still in my mind
pushing, ploughing through and through,
saving me a plot beside your plot
beside the potpourri covering a stranger’s grave.
The whole angst of the modern age seems stirred up in this stanza, negating, but confirming, emphatically, the love part of the poem and the poet-self part of the poem in the same breath.
You are a wonderful writer.
Thomas Davis
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Little Bell
Speaking the complexity and simplicity that lies within!
Appreciating The Difficult
Revisiting this poem now 2 years later:
This poem is BRILLIANT. Full of words and images and moments so accurately captured, it takes my breath away to think my own moments and experiences can be so known and shared by another.
“The bell is amputated from its string.
There will be no more ringing, no more
afternoons of speaking my confidences,
smoking them out from my private interior, onto
lips and into this stark atmosphere.”
“that leaves a bloodstain of legendary proportions,
that turns everything into a symphony, never stops
electrifying the loins as well as
the imagination.
I am on the street and things are moving –
ten gulls circling in the sky, two bluejays in a tree, and people
I say hi to, smile at so strong, that for a time I am distracted
from my solitude.”
Appreciating The Difficult
.
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Almost There
It’s like a sonnet without the rhymes and without the stanzas – no, it’s like a piece of music – crescendo, diminuendo, largo, andante….. I can see and hear its shape
and then that sublime ending: ” There will be raspberries
and grapes on every corner. Someone,
will say your name. ”
Makes me smile!
David
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What it is I want
I, too, want to be exposed as a lighthouse, to tear at the tendon heels of uncertainty/
gosh, you’re pleasing, as the sun comes ’round again, and one is trying to get one’s bearings abit. Thanx again
namelessneed
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New Era
It is time to love the gargoyles…fabulous. I will go there. Stare down the throat of darkness.
Anna Mark
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New Era
From the start I believed
in never bending, but now I am a weather-vane,
guided by singing.
Starting from here you end up living by impulse and the pity of God…It is time to love the gargoyles and create/a new form of beauty.”
This seems to be to be a poem of metamorphosis, moving from rigidity to extreme flexibility to a place where gargoyles can be loved and new beauty created. Again, this is wonderful poetry.
Thomas Davis
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New Era
You are so on target with my experience of the spiritual journey.
Especially love:
” 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.”
Holly Hope
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Seeking the Balanced Degree
Stunning as usual – your eye for the DETAIL of life’s phenomena and the using of it as metaphor is … stunning and often uncomfortably visceral in it’s power to put forward the intensity of the pain which makes the release all the more potent. Thank you.
I especially like:
“An enemy is at my table.
A horse is buried under American sands.
My heart is water:
It longs to quench the hot summer skin of sparrows.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Seeking the Balanced Degree
I loved this one. So intense.
Janet
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Seeking the Balanced Degree
beautiful poem.. 🙂 love it
abichica
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Find me
“Find me like science is found enhancing the faint glow of an almost-faith” – awesome. Nearly every phrase contains the essence of the poem, and it’s both beautiful and desperate. More soul-medicine.
Dantrewear
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Find me
Fantastic – I need to read this again and again..
scotianightpoetry
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Find me
“Gravity like glue
or something more substantial like
the sigh of a sick child.”
is excellent!
Eve Redwater
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Find me
The pain of life so perfectly articulated
and then I love:
“Will you find me, honour the primrose on my veranda,
maybe even snip one, take it to your table and dream of a voice
other than your own?”
Holly Hope
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Emptied
Your voice in this poem is so strong that it shouts to the mountaintops. The center of the poem is in the line
God, I am getting older, younger
somehow then when I started.
This is a poem of aging in conversation with God.
I need you (God)
final in my palm
But, of course, you have
only
this spoonful and a house too quiet in the
early mornings, not enough connection – a wave
that never crests, metal made into nothing.
while you long to
soak myself in this feral blizzard
approaching, always just approaching.
Why is your love so tenuous, powerful
sometimes, and then, wispy, hardly registering?
You remember, and this is the most powerful part of the poem, a planet
spiked, clustered
grass, almost blue
filled with rawness you want back, but instead age has taken you
away from sensual flavours and the mountains’ pulse.
You are getting older, younger than when I started.
Then the prayer/wish:
Put salt on my lips, paint me, now, please
in turquoise.
Good Lord, what a poem!
Thomas Davis
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Without
wow. finely crafted and disturbing, I guess intentionally; hope the madness did indeed become medicine…
dantrewear
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Without
I like ‘ let the mad ones go to India ‘; I like ‘congealed thoughts” I like the hesitation between ‘You can be anyone’ and ‘you want’; I’m not sure whether ‘Without’ means ‘outside’ or ‘not having’ and whether it is the title or the first word or both but I like it enough to think about it.
davidstrachan
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Without
Raw power, magnificent.
Juessepi B.
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Without
Especially love:
“You should let the mad-ones go to India,
trace a path up Tibetan mountains. You should be pleased to see them go,
away from your boarding school, not there to tug your pierced ears
or point out your visceral smothering of the gentle dreamers. They will go
anyway. They will stand in front. Not because they want to
but because they are not soldiers like that, forming their destinies
in boxes. You can stay in corridors, make trenches by pacing the patterns
of your congealed thoughts. You can be anyone
you want.”
Holly Hope
.
.
Days Without Water
You certainly make words work in a new way for you!
davidstrachan611
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Days Without Water
this has a hidden power, beautifully written. The last stanza is stunning.
dantrewear
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Days Without Water
Oh, my god… the beauty…
Holly Hope
.
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Better
Amazing poem. The dark undertones are brilliant. My favourite: Like a crinkled cloth left on the subway floor, I waited – dry, malformed, avoided. So incredible.
Janet
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Better
For me, this was an unsettling kind of moving/ thank you again
namelessneed
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Better
amazing!! 🙂
abichica
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Better
My own heart let me have more pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet
davidstrachan611
(quote from ‘My own heart let me more have pity on’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins)
.
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Stay
Brilliant. Brought me to tears.
I love especially:
“It is much more than an idealized place or perfect pillow.
It is what we made here, heroes to our own love,
bypassing blame, slaughtering resentments, screaming
through headlocks or when kneeling on the bathroom floor,
bonded to the midnight turn and years of heavy lifting.
My love, remember us again, don’t be acid or an orchard
of terrible ivy, fill yourself with renewed determination.”
Holly Hope
.
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Stay
do you know Beethoven’s late quartets where you (or I certainly) don’t know where the music is going to but it grows and develops and you follow this process, listening without understanding…
it’s like listening to his mind, especially since he was deaf.
ANYWAY sorry about such a long roundabout comment but I read (then listen) to your poems in the same sort of way
davidstrachan611
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Stay
“stroked the molten skin of treason”- every word moves the image forward, reveals a new facet of it.
Clare Flourish
.
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I would not thirst
Excellent. Some of your wording, for whatever reason, reminded me of Seamus Heaney. Very strong and certain – I think that’s why, come to think of it.
James Brandon O’Shea
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I would not thirst
so much to begin to take in and savor this very early morning.
Thanx again for sharing, my hero
namelessneed
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Samples of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry
metaphysical and musical!
davidstrachan611
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Samples of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry
Excellent writings Allison. well penned.
zaroffpoetry
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Samples of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry
OH MY GOD…
you have just become a part of my morning spiritual practice!
I LOVE IT!
Wow… I LOVE listening to the audio – it takes me somewhere – profound and important and reminds me of what is most important in life
…the poetic majesty behind it all!
Holly Hope
.
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Until The Ladder Shows
“This balcony to stand on” kills me, it’s a powerful, very sure and powerful
metaphor, or title to a major novel, or major film, or major song
yr major words talk to me again, thank you for writing, filming, & singing
namelessneed
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Crowned
This is really a good poem to read. Awakenings from periods of great pain are hard to come by and sometimes take a long time, but, as the poet David Agnew said in one of my favorite poems by him, “That is where I found the poems.” where the light of healing and a new path opens up the spirit. It is brave of you to post this series of poems, but the journey through them is powerful.
Thomas Davis
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Linked
powerful, and disturbing. “…one of those feathery few / who long to burn in your backdraft.” – brilliant
dantrewear
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Rapture When Walking
Allison, you are carving out for yourself an indelible place in searing, profound social commentatorship, as well as being an eloquent poetic voice of the inner world:
“I know all animals are naked and people
think themselves clothed, but vanity and the undercurrent
of striving are photographs etched on their exposed arms,
necklines.”
Stunning description of the unconscious, abusive lover and the patriarchal model of lover relations enacted by either gender – as we make our way slowly to a partnership consciousness society (neither matriarchal or patriarchal) – thank Goodness she is speaking to the Universe, Spirit, God.
“Sometimes, I feel you like a prying lover, impatient with our
differences, anguished by the things that separate us. You have
no use for me, alone. You claim victory, destroy my shell
and make us join, make me not so small but swallowing
everything that is you, like smoke inhaled or
perfume on the tongue.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Rapture When Walking
The divine is both enticing and terrifying, and this captures both powerfully.
gingerfightback
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Coiled
It’s inventive yet still offers such a profoundly clear message – I love it – Thanks Alison! Best wishes
gingerfightback
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Coiled
Wow! You come up with word combinations that are so evocative, I wish I’d thought of them myself : )
David Eric Cummins
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Coiled
I feel like I learn new ways of using such beautiful words when I read your poetry. Thank you for sharing 🙂
Redplace
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Coiled
I particularly liked that jerky coming-to-a-halt ending…
Shiva-Shakti
davidstrachan611
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Pathway
Really reached deep down into my soul and heart plucking at emotions and slivers of dreams ~ we are so very blessed by your gift ~ Thank You!
angelslightworldwide
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Pathway
I love this one, Allison. I’ve been looking for yr more recent work, and I feel as though I’ve hit the jackpot.
Yr site here is quite unique w/ the sound of yr voice belting ‘em out
(strong, sure, sharings is more like it) Thanx for yr bold intimacies.
namelessneed
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Pathway
OH my God…
I especially like:
“my child-grip is short, as are
my obsessive desires.
Too far down is the raging river’s floor –
I am carried off. This time I will not panic,
but sink and imagine I am growing gills. I will relax the
burning in my mind and enjoy the end and then give in
to the continuous flow.”
Holly Hope
.
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Lesson Learned
Awesome! I love especially:
“I should just learn to not be real, maybe
see a psychiatrist for all my pent-up disappointment,
for the way I want to shake the unshakable sea…”
“It will be a challenge to learn detachment where there should have been
connection and accountability.
I will not be connected, but be sweet, swallow
the stone in my throat and close the shop
with a smile.”
Holly Hope
.
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Whitewashing
making art from the things that hurt – beautifully done.
James Brandon O’Shea
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Whitewashing
brilliant cathartic description of devastation and loss…
Holly Hope
.
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A Day For My Own
I love this… and especially the line: my eyes are strong
with imagination.
Appreciating The Difficult
.
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Things I Must Learn
…there is much here…and as in many of your poems a tender yearning…
one1poet4man
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Desire
“does not come
like tolerance, learned,
worked for”
How true and observant. Wonderful.
kjpgarcia
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Desire
the soul’s great yolk is a beautiful image…desire/longing grows until all gestures reveal it. I can relate to that statement, too.
Anna Mark
.
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There are names
Stunning insights articulated with precision. Twists and turns of perspective. Creaking, and then with the crack of a whip, a crack of light thunders through.
“I have loved badly,
pessimistic”
“the steady rapture that only comes with patience”
“I sat on the bus and I was alone.
Did I know how fragile sanity was”
The power of intention and speaking it aloud.
This is a mainstay of my spiritual growth practice:
“There are names.
and allegiances that triumph
when spoken aloud.”
This is where I so beautifully am right now – learning sweet surrender. Listening with focused intent, and the intention to follow the inspired action:
“before my shelter broke
and I could be saved by surrender”
Appreciating The Difficult
.
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There are names
Beautiful and thought-provoking. A medley of language and thoughts, images that intersect the body of the poem. Truly beautiful.
Elisa Rendon
.
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It is a strange dream
This is a rich chronicle of what is is like to be woman. So much depth, color and feeling. It really covers a lot, encapsulates a lot. Everything from a tough childhood, being invisible, finding love, creating life, letting go of the life and it’s identity building properties, finding yourself again and retiring.
Powerful stuff. Beautiful poem.
Macxermillio
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It is a strange dream
I adore this poem ❤
PrettyKoolDame
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Broken Window
I love love love this to bits. Both the poem itself (the last stanza is absolutely delicious, I bow to you), and the spoken poem. Thank you for sharing Allison.
Johnny
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The Path Before
Thank you Allison. I felt each and every word on extremely deep levels.
Léa
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Sculptures
Compelling sculptures! I can’t tell if some of them are dead or sleeping but somehow it is as if it doesn’t matter. It’s only a matter of degree, after all.
OwnShadow
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If I Get There
Lovely, hopeful, and this time achingly true for me & this canvas here/ thanx again, Allison
I still dream of “the greatest step”
namelessnee
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The fault of sages
Thank you dear Poet for your amazing poetry. Always a pleasure to find your site.
Reblogged this on johncoyote and commented:
Allison is amazing. Please read and listen to her outstanding poetry and thoughts.
johncoyote
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The fault of sages
OK… deep breath! I hadn’t realized I read it without breathing so as not to break my concentration. Do I “get it” – me, the poetry challenged? I’m going to have to re-read several times, then I’ll likely come up with a personal image, or interpretation. So far, you’ve given me a jumble of feelings that are literally all over the map. Key words that make my heart jump. Fear, anger, doubt, and choking. Not bad for a single poem. At least I had been “prepared” as I’ve been reading some of your material on “Mr. Militant Negro!”
Sha’Tara
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Love is love
Wow, your poem is amazing. So beautifully written and powerful. I can definitely relate to this. Well done!
speak766
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Unharmed
Wonderful sadness that ends with the power of the mind that can free us from reality of now.
Nolan P Holloway Jr
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Riverstones
What poignancy. A feel, a tapestry of experience. Showing us how life works – all the impressions, all the input, all the images, all the sensory stimulation, all the feeling experiences, all the emotions connected to imagery – all the poetry around us all the time, that makes up a life, that makes up life, that makes up a memory, that makes up the stunning wonder of memory.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Swim
your poems are very beautiful
occultoantonio
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Swim
Wow! Powerful and beautiful.
Thomas Davis
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Swim
Wow… truly wow, what a ‘story’ – what a spectacle of feeling and caring and the heartbreak of feeling and caring, and how we are left to survive, to make sense of or simply to survive some experiences on earth.
“She told him of her duty and how love is
for another place. She looked straight ahead,
as if their hands clasping was a weakness
better to forget.
He gathers his breath and dives
into the rapids like one fierce, in flight, one
who has left his peace forever behind.”
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Lament
I adore this! It is deeply healing to me to read these words this morning. Thank you, Allison, for your healing balm in the world.
“It is lonely to be loved by God,
stretched beyond capacity by laws
of magnets, hunger and inevitable reality,
to hold open a hand and have even that
security taken…
It is hard to keep
trembling with service and acceptance, to be at ease
and know the gift will come just when it is needed – God will
choose the music, choose which danger is real and what must
depart. It is hard to not cry, sometimes…I am free but time is thick…”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Wounded
Beautiful symmetry – so aware, so caring, so honest. Such a work of the observant eye. The one who SEES far beyond the exterior scenery and happenings around us. A thoughtful mind, a timeless time within this soul. Thank you.
“Still prayers are heard and sometimes answered
with an overflowing ‘yes!’
Sometimes angels are asked to reach down
and bring daylight to the 2 a.m. dark, to honour
the burial kick and ring the warning bell.
Sometimes soulmates are photographed.
There is no magic outside of God – there is
no love that remains love without faith.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Effie
Reblogged this on johncoyote and commented:
A amazing blog and writer. Please read and enjoy.
johncoyote
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Effie
This is amazing!
willowdot21
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Effie
Breath-taking! What a profound and beautiful witness to one of the heart-breaking expressions of the mystery of life. Thank you for your compassionate witness to Life and Death.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Where I Stand
Profound with a sense of vulnerability. I love the line ‘my house was a wound bandaged by prayers and a struggling purpose’…excellent. D
daveyoungpoet
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The bells
This piece is colossal. Glinting, sparkling jewels that are blinding in their treasure – sentences that shine and wink in their light of depth and meaning. What a treasure Allison Grayhurst is. Her gift? To unfold for us life at this intensity of feeling and revelation. Who knew truth and beauty could be so intertwined and so passionate?
“The bells speak of a hurt
that is mounting the circumference
of a life”
“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.”
“There is ringing in my ears and a sorrow
triumphant … 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.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Our children are orchards
Rich, fraught with depth, relief and instruction:
“Leaves and feathers we collect with our children,
graveyards we visit to look at lost names,
where our hands seed deeper into the Earth,
rise higher than the hawk-bird into the stratosphere of grace,
grace as wind we depend upon to navigate our footsteps,
to quilt together our four-way love,
cooling the cut of arduous days and pilgrimage.”
Yes, I have experienced this and it is so challenging to do in our culture which
preaches the opposite everywhere except places like here:
“Risk that comes out of despair
as a last ditch effort to not give up
has been told in chronicles, as surrendering stories
that rain away dust and heal the hunt of weighted hunger,
nourishing spiritual belonging.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Our children are orchards
“Leaves and feathers we collect with our children,
graveyards we visit to look at lost names,
where our hands seed deeper into the Earth,
rise higher than the hawk-bird into the stratosphere of grace,”
I agree with your thoughts in the amazing poetry. Our children are like flowers. We water them with knowledge, protect them against the cold and we love them. Thank you for the outstanding poetry.
johncoyote
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The Quenchable Drain Within
I haven’t read this one/very strong symbol deliverance/mean shadows,thick vanity(& louder than prayer),distractions dissolving, & thread-bare desires/
continued love,g
namelessneed
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The Quenchable Drain Within
This poem helps me to name my darkness which helps me to move away from it:
“I see how poor
my devotion is.
I see my mind entranced
by frivolous difficulties
and mean shadows that drown
my lover’s heart.”
I love the combination of ‘frivilous difficulties’ and ‘mean shadows’ to describe
EXACTLY the pitfalls my mind becomes ‘entranced’ with! So true!
And then there is the way out! The healing:
“I am comforted through
every break and self-betrayal.
Forgiveness drives out the ache
that keeps me immobilized,
where all is stultified by guilt.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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As We Walk
Revisiting this poem, I comment again:
This is one of those Grayhurst masterpieces. Strong with the scent of sound
philosophy and insight.
I learned greatly from reflecting on this line and owned how they each show up in me:
“We are but gestures sown
by particles of love, desire and greed.”
This next line is so true and so important for me not to fall into. My expectations
about what is possible and my emotional faith in my desires is paramount to my
well being. Following my inner intuition and outer synchronicity toward that
which I think I next want – is vital to keeping my life force alive.
“There was a plague in my eyes
that has thinned my expectations, but
I am better.”
Amazing way of capturing what it’s like to dance with the various parts of oneself
and one’s partner over time:
“Being in love this long is like a voyage
underwater, swarming with glorious and
dangerous beings.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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One Wing
What images! What images indeed to describe something so familiar to so many of us – especially during adolescence – a state of being, an emotional experience – that can be so vague and confusing when we are actually in it – put to such vivid detail and concrete illustration. Thank you, Allison Grayhurst.
“I don’t know how long I will ride
upstream with my arms around this waning moon”
“Hope is a hair strand I lost in the waters,
far from any net or shore.”
Wow! How many of us feel this way about our sense of vocation in the world!
What will I be when I grow up? Who am I really? What actually warms my heart?
Illustrated eloquently and viserally as this:
“I travel this way, cold to my own heart – a piece
of rock in space, a business card wet in the gutter.”
“By light I try to commune, but like a thin cloud
that forms then fades, I have no idea how long I will stay”
Appreciating The Difficult
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In My Corner
I don’t know how she does it – but through disparate images she nails the feeling, the testimony, the inner music of the hero’s journey-challenge upward:
“Living here
in elementary wealth – nothing but
old-world, nothing but chaos.
Will the angels sing to me? I have been waiting
on their love.”
Our galactic history-herstory inimated so often – no wonder the intensity of the
soul’s anquish, shock, hope, longing and triumph.
“So heavy is the window I look through. Brick by brick
I count my way up. My memories belong
to another world.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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I Long To Know
When I read your poem ‘I long to know’ a sense of nostalgia flooded me, for 23 years I have not been back to my homeland-when I sit by the lakeside or go on trail working anywhere in North America- I literally touch and count rocks, and wonder… why am I in a strange land? What is my connection here? I love the symbols of ‘fingers and soul’ I see fingers as my flesh-longing to touch, to feel, also trying to understand ‘ the connecting thread’ and my soul searching for the answers of whatever binds me to this place…thank you! jjf
Apphiaone
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I Long To Know
One of the most profound and simply put and sensually imaged longings I have ever read … the river, the stones, the desire.
“I sit beside the narrow rocks
and count each weathered stone.
I hope for love inside a stranger
and long to feel with fingers and soul
the connecting thread
that binds me to my enemy’s door.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Things I Must Learn
I really like this expression. It reaches outward, like the spiderweb that if it was only outside we would leave to the delicate world of art in nature. But because it is in our home, we feel a need to tidy up. We need more outward in our lives. I know I do.
Eric
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Things I Must Learn
I LOVE THIS. It says so much that to even comment on it doesn’t do it justice! This is brilliant. I love the wording, the love the imagery! So well said:
“to
hold your hand when the shelf cracks
and the books are all read, when the fridge
carries only last week’s fruit.”
“To lean my head on your heart and
let you speak your need, instead of curling
under the blankets like an angry, disturbed thing.”
“To be kinder than I’ve been,
to wrap a hand around the back of your cold,
delicate neck.”
“loving you better
when darkness inevitably descends.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Regret
A classic. What word and meaning use! Weaving metaphor and psychological insight together like a braided pastry that is potent and goes down well. The voice of the poet remaining present in it’s unique and consistent tone of passion and forthright addressing the situation throughout.
“I should have held it in –
a nut within its shell,
prolonged its freshness to ward-off
its rotting.”
“the strike has torn, though
it was meant to mend. And the night moves on
as sleep beckons me
further into isolation, lacking the promise
of rest or resolution.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Crossroads
This is a very sensitively written description of an inner transformation, psychologically strong but written so gently and humbly. I relate to this poem and enjoyed it very much.
Anna Mark
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Crossroads
I like your stops and starts and pauses and changes of direction
davidstrachan611
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Crossroads
BRILLIANT. One of the greatest and most relevant nuggets of poetic psychological insight ever. Thank you!
“I never opened my mouth to alleviate the
darkness, but instead I took offence
at the lack in others, not seeing that offence
as my own withdrawal.”
How profoundly and beautifully put:
“But I am changing. I am ending like childhood
ends, and I am
not so sure of myself
anymore.”
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Voice
Such sadness in the air, mute but electrically charged, surrounding the reader as he paces with you. Love your images. Those beautiful full trees of our lives that are lost and cannot be replaced, grown by years and tending of the soul. There are no proper ceremonies or markers to quite equal such memories. Or loved ones lost.
Eric
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Voice
Oh, my god – this is incredible – Grayhurst’s observation and insight into life’s intricacies is stunning. The subleties and motivations and consequences she comprehends in her poems is remarkable:
“You are trying to reach me with an old painter’s words
of resignation and reluctant wisdom – words
I cannot make use of.”
I am there, next to that delicate dance of the breeze through tree leaves in that shimmering moment:
“a shimmering sensation or
a delicate fluttering of
nature’s delicate best”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Changing Skins
Very beautiful piece, Allison! Your last line wraps the feeling up in a bright colored bow. 🙂
Eric
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Changing Skins
Sheer poetry, magic and brilliance in words. Another one of those Grayhurst masterpieces that goes below cerebral into heart, hope, light, body, being resonating with a signature of truth, comfort and joy – like a well-aimed, in-sync down hill ski triumph at top speed in perfect symmetry.
“virtues that have kept me solid”
“knowing passion like
a labour – confined to a pattern, somehow
boundless. Joy. I stand a virgin in your honeymoon.
I am made up of sunsets and dreamy afterglows.”
“I should close these shutters, marry a
soft genuine smile.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Days That Dismantle
First of all, I must comment on the powerful sculptures on the side of this writing by Grayhurst. I love the lighting and the camera angles that bring out so much in these expressions of Allison’s human appreciation sculptures.
I feel a delight of creativity, hope and optimism in my chest upon reading this, and a warm smile comes to my face:
“angels under the bed sheets
and smiles in the afternoons,
of dreams that form, fade, then form
again”
I remember when this took gargantuan effort on my part, and I remember once imaging in my head stoning a negative voice within – which is all that would hold it at bay, and did indeed extinguish it:
“Days I will try to treasure like a
jar full of fireflies,
when I will not give in, not
give space to the dark pit within.”
This says it all in a world where god is money and the mall is the temple:
“Days that mean more than money, and more
than the power that it yields.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Walkways
I love this whole piece, the little I have been able to read so far. It reminds me of a very visceral childhood memory – and as a child we can be so much more PRESENT to all of creation, every nuance and that is what Grayhurst’s work does for me – sharpens my senses to “all this is” to be seen, heard, felt, noticed.
“Light that drips down the turnpike, onto roads
and ways far away from any window.
Blocks to build shelters and shields. Flags on flimsy poles.
A neutral breeze busting cardoors and
personalized licence plates.
Paved over, I see a carcass dripping, a little yellow flower,
smaller than a thumbprint.
Rust-coloured shawl, poncho that holds
great sentimental significance holds
me to a memory, old now as a ten-year-old untended garden
or pavement cracks grown into fissures.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Walkways
This poetry is so rich – so transcendent – I can barely catch my breath to wrap concepts around it.
Rather, it is beyond words.
It uses words, to go beyond words.
I get transported, instead, to another realm.
I am catapulted to an understanding of earth experience that does justice to its layered potency.
Grayhurst gives us a place to refresh ourselves – in a cool, green valley – hidden from the dominant wasteland – where keeping head, heart, body and spirit together are seen, felt and experienced as being normal.
“Come upon me like a feather-stick –
sectioning my abdomen like a fruit. Suddenly
toddlers are conversing and the grey cat
takes in the morning. Bundle of weeds,
bundle of flowers. An opening
under the burning canopy. Lifetimes spent
collecting synergy, male rhythms and fixed lines.
God is coming down to hide in your loose-change-pocket.
I dreamt of owning your praise. Swinging from the rafters
in a game of hide-and-seek, I sought your breath,
hand of destined chores.
I played along inside the circle, inside a sack
I could hardly breathe out of. Languishing. A round bruise
forming on my left arm. Place me here. Crown me
or stake me on a tall spike. I am sand thrown mid-air.
No place to collect and land, not even a wave, a bucket,
the forelock of a horse. Not even
thinking in a straight continuation, but there, there, a pebble
between paw pads, then, a minor note locked
in perpetual repetition.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Walkways
This is brilliant! Brilliant. Reminds me of when I first read Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”. And I wanted to stand up on the city bus and exclaim aloud: “Listen to this!” A comprehensive capturing of human earthly experience in all it’s dimensions without missing a beat – beyond the conscious mind – dancing with the levels of our knowing and sensing – that we feel but do not always recognize, and rarely, oh so rarely articulate. Clearly, Grayhurst’s poetic journey has taken her to the mountain top.
“Paved paths, brisk
storm of senses, an old
opening, endless as a dug-in arrow –
head in the weeping jungle, the coolness
of autumn air brushing tombstones,
the thin necks of geese.
So much night in a single glass, body
and name together, replacing
existence with this inheritance and no other.
Rows of ships crowding the edge of the lake –
docked and bearing down for winter. The distance
grinds, gravel on my belly, cracked shells
in subterranean pages writing down dawns and victories
never experienced, only imagined.
Is it right to receive the bitter strawberry?
Drink its flesh like juice and
kneel before reality’s dictatorship?
Is it clarity? Or forgetting?”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Days To Break The Richest Dream
This smacks of the kind of hope of the human spirit above the drudgery of this world – that I had to regularly engage as a young woman kind of lost in a big city and not with a lot of spiritual tools – boy – do I love his spirit!
“But he does not fade like some do into
masculine despair which is anger,
which is not the saddle he mounts,
but perseveres with a steady pace,
his long fingers waving in perfect rhythm
inside a room, where hardships reach living
but mild.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Now I am Two
A poem to take my breath away – especially knowing it is written after years of marriage.
Such an accurate description and tribute to how true love through the ‘friction and harmony’ works:
“Always
miraculous, unexpected, awakening. Always
us, vanishing and then re-emerging with these things
of harmony and friction engulfing our scent and path.”
Profound – right through the heart – so well described – can feel it deeply:
“It is what was prayed for, what years and hardship has not
diluted, but has fused into an unbreakable bond – us –
the summoning of all our parts – ancient, immediate
so that even when death comes or fate and terrible sobbing,
neither of us will ever be again
without the other
alone.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Complete, but
One of the most magical fantasy-reality, beautiful imaginings I’ve come across in a long time – pure, innocent, dynamic, deep:
“If I was a young starling neck deep in uncut grass,
pecking at exposed roots, I would be
sky, downspout, bush, tip of a cross on a steeple,
cured of isolation, taking flight and landing when I choose and
I would choose a fenced-in backyard
where a boy’s imagination owns the splintered bench, weeds
and a dug-up secret hole. I would watch that boy plot his course
and leap, knowing no separation,
I would spread, sing
and fold.”
Again, a master picture-maker … just goes to show Grayhurst’s ability to splendidly portray the easily seen and understood – even while she attempts to conjure recognition of the more subtle and complex layers of life she is usually tackling in her poems:
“f I had claimed myself a calling
as a chaplain – ritualized pacing in university halls, my arm
around youth, accompanying my affection
with a spiritual smile, then I would have
the certainty of some kind of career…”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Son – almost one
I pick out this line, but really, every line shines like the sheer glory that is this poem. O, thank you for your heart.
“Through your eyes
of blue infant glory, fresh
as a yawning bird, I see
heavenly bodies turning
and the last of summer’s flowers
appear.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Heaven must be active (not inert)
Incredible the ways in which we learn mercy and humility through the rawness of wounds. And we are invincible through it all – for what is preserved preserves us, as Grayhurst implies at her end in this poem.
“Life is raw
as a just-made wound. It is raw
so it is open to acts of mercy
and the beginning of true humility.”
“Life is raw
as a just-made wound. It is raw
so it is open to acts of mercy
and the beginning of true humility.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Train
What an image – what a statement – reminds me of the horse running toward the train headlight coming toward it on the track – Grayhurst’s poems are like paintings – I wish someone would paint this:
“until I can sleep and stop
kneeling – head neither turned up nor down.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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In Doubt
I LOVE THIS. Another one that sings like water. I am swerving and gliding down a ski hill – it’s meaning ahead of me – but feeling it’s pristine symmetry in my veins as I descend – knowing I am going to a good place.
“Under the guise
of do or die
the heart’s mystery is born.”
“Because faith came like it did
from the tape recorder and other
underrated things,”
“the dreams that drove me to love
nor appease the breath of death on
my clothes.”
“The nail is in the wood and still I wonder
why I am, on my own
on the world’s platform
– a gift”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Animal Sanctuary
This is how I feel about every animal caged in a zoo – I understand he is permanently wounded and hence needs to be in an animal hospital – whichever the reason – this poem speaks it brilliantly – the “human-made” perch – human’s inhumanity to animal when it is for our pleasure and not to aid the animal – Thank you. Grayhurst has done it again – captured in unavoidable embrace the piercing essence of the situation:
“Spring, he will never experience again, nor know
the scent of a pent-up life released like
sunflowers blooming, or the feel of the moon,
colder but more comforting than being touched.
He is without time or tribe,
and like fire, he haunts
by just being.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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Circle
This is an extremely powerful piece. It is terribly sad for me.
Carl
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Circle
Beautiful. I especially relate to the image at the end, age still desires, your phantom wings, still the same, touching the tips of a cumulus cloud. I have been thinking about aging lately, also about arms, strangely enough and agency. I’ve also never mentioned this but I very much enjoy the sexuality in your poems. It is a strong flavour in many of your poems. Courageous, too…perhaps.
Anna Mark
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Sculptures
Beautiful, soulful expressions of human and animal spirits – made by Grayhurst’s hand – the heartfelt poetry of her soul showing up in the physical “flesh” of sculpture – the feeling and power of these beings translated through her finger tips.
Appreciating The Difficult
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The means to obliterate
What an image! What a point:
“what doldrums dictate
is in the pink sneakers of
winter blues and forcing hope into the mouth
even if it tastes like
stale candy.”
Again, what an image describing such an incredible meaning!
“You pull the waves from a clear sky”
Meaning hidden so profound in such a simple statement within it’s context:
“A toddler’s game of hide-and-seek
is worth smiling for.”
And yet again – what amazing images making an amazing point:
“Your head is in a whisper – booby-traps
revealed in the ridges and dips of your thoughts.
You want to be put in a crockpot and left there,
stirred like soup, leeks and lentils, seeping out
an authentic aroma, arriving home.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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In The Thighs
Profound images to describe the challenge of earth. The bowling ball and the chamber of the heart. The knowledge of the trees. The blessed slow moving worms who are up against the pressure of concrete. And it is all etched into the blueness of Grayhurst’s eyes.
“what everyone needs,
but the pavement is thick
and the ground beneath is rich,
saturated with worms,
moving,
thick
with worm motion
moving at worm speed.
Appreciating The Difficult
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Serpent in my Shoe
Not to compare, but this is one of the most incredible of Grayhurst’s creations to me in the creation of its illogical imagery that FEELS like it makes perfect sense, and beyond! Incredible that we can get language to do this – take us so beyond the left brain into the multidimensional truth of our world, accessed only by our expansive right hemisphere.
“Waves and lions under the
sink”
This is so true! Thank god for the existence of the archetype of the Phoenix in our psyche!
“I rise like a rose
into bloom then lose all
my petals to the storm.”
Somehow these images mean the world to me:
“I live with my drink and the smell
of too many ghosts warming themselves
over my vent.”
Discernment! Perceiving clearly, making a choice, and taking a stand!
“I hear
them talking about the petty thing that keeps
days turning and leaves no one free enough
to walk the plank.
I stand outside for a moment
and plunge all I know like a stake
into dry ground.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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On this Dock
OH MY GOD, this is another one of those poems that is like skiing down a hill with swing and swerve of sheer elegance – the moves, the connections, the unlikely pairing of words gliding us forward. This is one of those poems that makes me look forward to returning to these creations again eager for the next savouring of artistry and more.
“I listen for the perishing wind
and declare to it a vigil
of telltale strength.”
I love this image and message:
“a belief
in the many shapes of heaven.”
Poetry within poetry:
“The journey knows its evening
has come and all the beautiful clouds will drop
one by one from the sky.”
Appreciating The Difficult
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