….

Laid low, laid out like soulmates never meant to meet

in this life, in the spectrum of folly and limitation.

A painting layered, re-mastered, re-mused and then,

burned by neglect.

Miniature moment of perfection, condensed

to hold a legacy in swirling matter, hard and glittering.

Fractures as long as a walkway

stretching the borders of a great body of water.

Stringing thoughts like a child’s dream. I know,

but I’ve learned not to take synchronicity so seriously,

learned there is only choice, and chance caved into,

selected to stand as fate – the end result, resulting

in a theory of complexities and open systems.

Stuck in the ground, protruding stilted like a statute.

Tell me it is true, that nothing pure is subjected to disease.

Crickets in the late morning.

When I am fixated, it is fantasy, false as poison in soup.

When I am lucid, liquid budding, my fingers are flames,

and all that they contact pulse with their heat.

Various clouds like currents perpetually pumping –

financial lack, and I, myself, curled up on the bottom stair.

Beds I defend, determined to lay in, over and over

hurting for considered crimes. Erasing perimeters, I clutch

at fraudulent mercies, securities of working furnaces

and washed hair. How to love damaged flesh, radiate love

for what is broken, far beyond romanticism, dangerous

as a cockroach and forever mutating –

translucent shells and pores – radioactive

and growing more grotesque under slabs of rotten wood?

Love, I do not understand you as I am older

and keeping up the climb. Medications and

broken down dishwashers.

Debt like ghosts that stick to my aura, smothering out the colour –

Oh weedy garden! Sparrow on my roof, talk to me for a while.

How can I love, middle-aged, half over, clear

of a younger person’s hope and indecision?

Pointing at ecstasy (a snail on my forehead) pointing,

pointing, stung.

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:

Walkways – the poem

.

You can listen to the poem below:

….

Piercing, lingering, chiming out a hymn, lullaby on a chain.

Remorse to wade in like a sea-salt bath, absorbing

the past into the present cellular flow.

Mounds of construction sand, building and restoring roots

without life, chopped down at surface level.

Ideologies fuel, then turned to cinder by anger –

justified violence that violates the laws of love.

Skittering up stairs, the last time I held a leaf I held

your focused form, unable to stay the distance,

but stayed nonetheless near rudimentary desires.

I am cut like a lawn, smooth as carpet. See me now,

skateboarding, jettisoning over humps and bridges.

The wind – position me inside your storm. The last time,

strength enlisted an empty street – such vines

and beautiful stones!

Mercy in a crack, a masterpiece of twin creation,

outside art galleries – living wood, sleeping shapes,

inviting holes… holy as sex, sweet hands entwined.

Release into me as I release into you,

in mutual receptivity, clear direction, directing energy.

Dew drops evaporating, shining.

Our masthead – brittle, breaking. Even so,

how we are combined! Such glow.

It is glorious to know you like this

and not be afraid.

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:

Walkways – the poem

.

You can listen to the poem below:

….

Smudges, under siege, patches of calcified tissue

and the swamp I enter in – fuming with failed love –

connections broken under the Buddha fire. Detachment

will not save me – nailed to the pavement stone, looking at birds.

Summer where have you gone? Smells rise to meet me,

and the air is still humid, pressing on my cortex,

corrupting my ability to choose joy.

Grasshoppers hopping. Will my heart be broken?

Again, again, squeezing, squished

fermenting at the sides, foaming and fizzling, burning sage, but

it is not good enough, not enough to teach me the strokes

or how to steady the raging chaos gestating large

in the pocket of my throat. Continents on fire, inside organs necessary

to function – why the children? Why not me?

Livingroom-light-globe like a crystal ball,

opaque but powerful enough to predict possibilities.

I was never here before, never heard the angry rodents

vocalize, never slept with aching joints, dreams

of running low and ferns and moss

covering Zen-garden displays.

What else are we going to do here, but procreate, create,

dissipate and die? Van doors left open.

Lawn chairs on the road for pickup.

The windmill, the tilting tops of trees, heavy

with clusters of fresh pinecones.

I am an orange peel, orange, peeled, drying

next to the sewer grate.

I am limp with the weight, the burden of random happenings. Always

I love you and always, I am breathing.

Take me into the arms of your protection.

I don’t want another day.

Mass of thick porous grey hovering, no space for hope.

Why the children? Couldn’t you spare just them and all

the up-for slaughter animals?

I am done with this place, the tripping curb,

callous indifference – the rippling consequences

of blind destruction.

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:

Walkways – the poem

.

You can listen to the poem below: