Saturday, February 15, 2014



Balanced Repertoire


Petals and fizzling small craters, inches
from the side of the road.
I dive
into the net and let
the struggle ensue.
I lived in corners
with the dead-mature, in flaps
like wishy-washy by-standers. But here, entering
the small soft mounds of pleasurable
taboos and smiling up in the treetops, I am sitting
on the weakest branch just to get the best overview.
My tongue
is painted many colours.
I lost you in the nuclear glow. It happened
gradually, like a cliff descending,
finally,
meeting ground.
I used to float -
a silhouette of fine cuts
and obvious edges. But I lost you and
it is good to lose extensions,
flavours of redundant delight.
Enthralled by sensual geometry,
by mountain ridges reflected in heartbeats,
wrinkles, rough spots, perfect
intricacy
equilibrium
subconscious sway, and you.
You never loved me, never knew
I was a neophyte, taker of whatever
I could get, keeper of
an ethereal garden. I
will accept my joy
regardless of lack, discover joy
in what droops to provide me canopy, also
in what arches upward, proclaiming its praise.


Allison Grayhurst
allisongrayhurst@rogers.com

Fidelity

Further in
into intimacy, surrendering
the rosary beads, the Buddha beads, the Krishna beads - necklaces
of superstitious worth, a means to be compensated
with miracles for work done - disciplined activity
performed with the anticipation of divine participation –
enduring boredom with karmic pride. But nothing works
that way or does it let go into voluminousness
just because of accumulation. Why can’t I be
the things I see? Why do I resist collapse, clasp
onto linear principles, desperate to be justified.
Intimacy is everything ever sought – to have God inside
filling, overtaking every other sensation. Movement
like locked loins or other body parts in
synchronized ministrations, joining another’s pulse,
extending the body’s confines. I will not want for more
but this surrender - the stillness of receptivity coalescing
with the arching activity of advancing without expectations of results,
to be delivered into the rhythm of tangible grace, giving into
a relentless rich flow that knows taste and substance
but no set speed. I know
staying this way is not easy,
not when the bedsheets are moth bitten and money
is stolen at the corner store. I know teeth need fixing and foundations
are fragmenting, but how can that matter when the whole
is at stake?  When whatever is taken, explored and received
is there to guide further in. When God is asking
for this union to be achieved, offering peace but
no ego reprieve - no other lovers, no compromise.


 Allison Grayhurst
allisongrayhurst@rogers.com

Other Side


Killed in the cloud
                                    that ripples softly.
            Believing we would be triumphant
made it so, and being dead we
                        learned a new way to rise and praise.
The music lies down in the seas,
                                    so I hear the dolphins hum
            and see octopi sway.
                                                Madness is part of our heritage
                        but also our navigating star.
Whisper of the wonder we walk
                        through each day, beside one another
            and our little girl.
Away from the dull chaos of the common bar
                                                this is a new plateau, a horse
in our backyard.
Up and dancing, the ground and air
                                    join together to say -

                                                                        we were never alone.

Allison Grayhurst                                                                                                          allisongrayhurst@rogers.com


Saltwater Sprint

A returning dream ruffled in my shell,
opening intermittent passages of discovering.
Crossbreezes and singular infinity,
by death and dying you buy me whole.

The slug’s flesh merges miraculously with
the curve of a leaf - white pink on green, more potent
than a drop-cliff, than rebellion.
Stroking the skin of a tree, I end up here,
in the morning, with the nesting squirrels
collecting torn newspapers, swaying with the telephone wires.
Brilliance plays like chords on the brink of chaos,
almost fracturing sanity. Suspended firm like a branch
over traffic, I hear riffs like cars arrive then leave.

Sleep, little lilac near the fence, I have learned
determination can solve most problems.
Tomorrow I will make the final break, orbit
beyond the periphery of natural selection.

God, scoop me up in your cone, don’t
let me doubt your goodness. If you are here,
I am living, I can let slip what I am capable of,
create origami with infants and animals.
I can climb the steps of any probability
just to feel you press up against my rigidity,
purify with kneading pressure
a hard illumination.


Allison Grayhurst                                                                                                          allisongrayhurst@rogers.com
 
 Heaven must be active (not innate)

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.
God is not proud but always available,
is always faultless in the body of love.
Life is raw
with no way to be protected from
cruel chance, no way but to ride the raft
down the falls and see what gets broken, then see
what gets preserved.


Allison Grayhurst
allisongrayhurst@rogers.com



















Helpless I do not know if good intentions prevail among the elected, among the appointed, leaving me apprehensive that the fate ...