….

Principles of duty

overtaking sleep like a wave.

Heavy love rooted in isolation,

reflecting the depths of true giving.

A condition turns to disease, restrictions

bare down. What is ordinary becomes like

a cage. Children in the drifting storm, drifting

on condensed-traffic streets, how I love you.

How I would do everything I cannot do to ease

the grip of your elephant shackles. Mine was the angel’s

autonomy, where nothing was miscellaneous and my bed

was a rich blackness that absorbed all time. Mine was loud

without noise or distraction, just the buoyant sparkle flow

of paired-off stars and the countless debris of ongoing creation.

Mine is yours now, inside less-than-working-organs, kidneys

like puzzle pieces, seamed together by an amateur.

Where are you now, God-who-remembers, reminds me

of what I once was? My God and Jesus of the lilies,

why the children? Why this fluke,

this bizarre nightmare crawling, closer,

closer than when I had no body, no loves to look after?

And oh I am tired, worn as an old shoe that must keep

the broken glass at bay. Where are you my God, my Jesus?

I know you are here. I know something, but not enough

to deflate my bloating anxiety. It is grief all over again and I

hide myself in older hands, friendless, unsupported, remembering

the wholeness in every flaw, in the universe’s veined light

I once travelled on. Remembering that what is flawed sparkles

with a unique variation of beauty, rainbow fractions, infractions

that are blessings that seep and saturate sinews

and bones, galaxies

perpetual, renewable

where everything sings useful –

seemingly incongruent, yet in truth, masterfully

precise.

….

 Copyright © 2014 by Allison Grayhurst (poem and images)

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Copyright © by Allison Grayhurst 2014

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry” Volume 4, Number 1, June Issue 2014

http://themuse.webs.com/June%202014/muse%20june%2014.pdf

http://themuse.webs.com/latestissues.htm

.

Published in “Art Villa” December 2015

Read the whole poem here:

You can listen to the poem below:

….

Gaze, focus, hold.

Unconscious stream

of raw fluidity streaming,

rising over barriers, drowning them

with the pressure of an open door.

Cracks of circumstantial disease,

creating pockmarks to expand destiny choices, 

fashioning gifts to give,

earned by bomb-droppings

and low flying plane-explosions.

Cobweb parties, graffiti

on the skin of your back,

made with a blade as small and smooth

as the tip of a hawk’s feather.

Weaning off the burnt oak,

preening patches of grime.

Wake and rhyme, garden-keeper,

ambush your fear – it cannot be real!

Lungs run the same vibration as a flame.

It is hard, but not impossible. Gulp the sea

of senseless over-warming, pool the salt-taste

in your mouth, feel it

around your lip-rim, the sides of your cheeks. And there,

be safe, joining with the translucent swimmers, floaters

of prehistoric heritage.

.

.

Copyright © by Allison Grayhurst 2014

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

.

.

First published in “The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry” Volume 4, Number 1, June Issue 2014

http://themuse.webs.com/June%202014/muse%20june%2014.pdf

http://themuse.webs.com/latestissues.htm

.

Published in “Art Villa” December 2015

Read the whole poem here:

You can listen to the poem below:

….

Fresh, potted

bright as an angel. Death is a whip

I put down. Ill health slumber,

but God is my mercy-king. Queen

of loving miracles. I will sing to

keep the right intention and grieve

minimally for what I cannot do.

Little red tree, no higher than

a toddler-child. Disco ball,

ball blue and gold,

twirl for me, let the grey dissipate into your

twinkling glow and all my blood into your veins,

little tree

plump and flourishing, readying for greater heights,

string-stream through me, weave me into your branches,

still firmly on the ground.

Angels everywhere I need your temperance. I need

to know my children are protected by your grace,

wing-spread, and even

your cold white eyes.

.

.

Copyright © by Allison Grayhurst 2014

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

.

.

First published in “The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry” Volume 4, Number 1, June Issue 2014

http://themuse.webs.com/June%202014/muse%20june%2014.pdf

http://themuse.webs.com/latestissues.htm

.

Published in “Art Villa” December 2015

Read the whole poem here:

You can listen to the poem below: