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ALLISON GRAYHURST - POEMS

4/15/2016

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Picture
Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Three times nominated for Sundress Publications “Best of the Net” 2015, she has over 850 poems published in over 375 international journals. She has twelve published books of poetry, six collections, eight chapbooks, and a chapbook pending publication. She lives in Toronto with her family. She is a vegan. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com    


                          Blue light

 
Blue light around your mouth,
cascading on covers,
paralyzing your voice,
pulling your soul
into a choice of “which destiny?”
Bread drops into your mouth,
unable to open or close.
You see this light
without seeing the light.
You dive into the doorway,
pulling free, taking steps.
You draw breath.
You draw the last straw.
 
 
 
                             I am a definition
 
 
with many loop-holes
octopus arm holes,
and then some.
I speak of a pavilion
where my ancestors bred
their disciplines
and murder was released -
an option, like a second chance,
murder as affirmation.
I was a definition,
secular, single-habit,
yang-streams exuding,
sharp and solid, marvelous as
a thunderstorm - rage, ripple into a cave
into base-neck movement,
into
simple one-focus activity.
 
But here
I lack a definition
under banners, barely audible
compromise,
excuses to not take up the sword,
battle the lies told
as traditional fables.
I swing from pillar to post
navigating ceiling heights
and floor splinters when I land
niching out obedience
to
a changeling definition.
 
 
 
                               …I exist!
 
Seal me up
and wash the river.
Sunny days to sing
“It is over, over!”
Frozen perfection,
alive but dying
cliffs and cupboards
waving hello
to the ruthless Earth,
plastic in the nest
I am hungry
I am whole
Facing mortality
to make something immortal,
encountering the dark part
of God’s loins - orgasmic
reckoning, not afraid to make faces,
stick out your tongue,
not denying the chaos of pain -
Fingertips unused
and brighter burns,
where are you?
Snow ploughs and stone,
no more copying, but
diving, owning the
pathway yet to be made
clear, owning the receptive
flowing-in of grace. Old grooves
removed. The bird knows this
and shouts its song.
 
 
 
                                     Too damaged to be renewed
 
Broken sheep,
hybrids of birds
Was there anything of myself in
that greenhouse, the end-gone
and a warm kiss ensuing?
Was it purgatory – to sense love,
give all for love and find the bottom
turned over?
For nothing that I fell, that I gave twice
what I was capable of, thought of beauty in
trivial things, had a pool of joy to soak my innocence in.
The fish is dead, bloated with shadows - from where
the shape came from, I cannot understand. I do not
understand love or God or what I believed.
It was reflection, undisciplined over-the-top harming the heart
instead of fortifying it. In this world
of hooded Christs and tornados,
the predator wins and solitude is the only savior.
It cannot hold purity. It sometimes dances,
is sensual and thrives on owning
only
what is perpetually lacking.
 
 
  
                                      Riding bareback
 
I seep into corners
flat and blending for a chance
to call faith a choice. Shadows
are not evil but ambiguous,
a vague scent of putrid uncertainty.
Themes of children’s horns
and the penetrating air. Going off ground
into the softness of a dream, supplanted by the
ethereal plane and growing
a strange set of limbs to
accommodate such relaxed pressure.
Solitude sings, bird are around me, up trees,
paddling through the condensed atmosphere.
Explore, I forgot the beauty
in discovery, a chance to mutilate
cynicism with a single blow. I blow
wild peppers out of my hands,
touch heads with the shy sparrow.
 
There is a horse, chestnut copper.
I rub the dust from her coat. I am everything
while looking into her large left eye -
a child in tune, exhilarated, heart-rate
galloping, catching its rhythm from her swaying forelock.
The sound like a star being transformed or two moons
colliding - I am taken on the path,
inches from the cliff - moving too fast to
be afraid, moving like fine sand through a sieve,
piling below, building a mythic mountain from
gravity, from quicksand-joy
imagination.
 
0 Comments

    An interesting site to check out: 
    poetrypacific.blogspot.ca
    ​

    ​

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