Poems
by Allison Grayhurst

 

Sinkhole

 

The rain rolls down and

acidifies the flowers.

A month of teetering over the abyss,

barely standing, panicked with

your unnatural lack of strength

and your anger, your soft special

nakedness, needing to get off

the steep slope, find a resting log, feel

that you can defeat this gravity pull, break

the shade around your mind and waterproof

your walls.

 

How can it be so hard?

So quickly the eclipse came and covered,

thinning your resilience. The moment the cloud

loses balance, it descends from the sky.

The condition is stark, helpless

words and prayers rot beside it like cabbage

left too long in the sun.

 

My love cannot save you,

never leaves a mark. Only

waiting now for the medication

to kick in, for your psychological

equilibrium to be restored -

holding hands across the sofa.

 

I would hold the whole of your pain

if I could, hold and pull you

from the weighted mass, sinking.

 

There is nothing. Watching your eyes

not your eyes - both us trying with all our wisdom

and might but nothing shifts. A vacuum,

inhospitable to miracles or mercy.

 

O please give him green, let the tall grass

brush across his limbs, let your angels gather, electrify

his inner current, reviving, opening a path to

his immaculate freedom.

Let him stand again.

His dreams are authentic

and still burning.

 

 

 

 

 

Unharmed

 

         Silent as a predator

on the far side of a hill

nearing, reality inches closer,

hungry and stealth.

         Days inside a half-grown dream

nurturing this ideal that is unable

to fully mature and tower.

 

This hallway fills with sludge,

that hallway with toxic fumes,

and another with mealy worms searching

for a host to infest and consume.

 

If I stand still none will take me

but movement happens without my accord,

time decides, aligns everything to its filthy trade.

 

I see with one eye - linear. I can hope but

my hope is made of straw. I can grow, but in

growing I condemn myself even more when again

I will be trapped and reduced.

 

I can burst through in my mind.

In my mind, I can leave these ruins,

take flight, take shelter,

wilt the taste of defeat,

cover the lamp and pretend I hear

soft chords, harmonies

converging.

 

 

 

 

 

My Cup

 

Dream the light that blazes

over the arch of time.

Plunge in and peel.

Now. You are here.

There is no path, but the path

of intensity, trusting,

even when you fail.

Shave off the matts, the baggage of loss

that has outlived its necessity.

Step on the grass. Reach. Know you are

on the other side.

The past and its broken greenhouse

cracked walls, yellowed stems, rotted leaves

are of another country.

No loss was unbearable.

Torment has transformed,

has been set right and matured.

Happiness is a horse.

She stands before you, offers you a ride.

Be brave as a confident child,

feet off the ground,

in union, in flight.

 

 

 

 

 

Submit

 

When

submission to reality

is an example of good

behavior, and submission

to God, an example of

lunacy. What do I choose?

Can I choose or must I dive

back into the sludge-pool, struggling to

surface and keep the stench from moving in,

being absorbed?

 

Rage that takes me on a round-about,

adopting a slice of indignation coupled with

the exhausting sigh of failure.

Is this my path? I have tried

for a quarter of a century to brave it, be my best self

in it, and it works for a while, but never for long,

never before long when it ties me to its destruction,

grows things inside of me I cannot eradicated or soothe.

 

It can’t be another year without mercy,

another conviction, revelation

dashed to shards against the wall.

I can’t be another lost cause,

my entrapment a burden to all

who love me, where I am given two options

- hide my suffering or spread it -

no relief for me, harming my loved ones

with my vile and personal conundrum.

 

I can’t make it another day, flat out

giving myself over to this wretched occupation.

I will die tomorrow if I continue on,

split against

this unmovable rock.

 

 

 

 

 

I saw the Face

 

I see what I take

and I circle back

to give

nourishment into the stream,

wisdom of a kind that is just

thought, intention and striving.

 

Gaining mortal burdens, feelings

that last lifetimes, failures that

embed in the body like a blackhole

and draw everything into a calamity

of despair and senselessness.

 

We are shining, vessels that are brooms,

dishcloths, meant to clean, not accumulate.

I block the violence

of Self up against the world

and exchange it for

individuality before God,

peace that moves unexpectedly,

never still, never sure.

 

Love is nothing when alone.

I ask for healing for this unit, this tribe

of artists wandering,

trying to make our way through

poverty and loneliness, coming to terms with

things that perished that were

meant to bloom.

 

Take this family into your well-spring,

drench us in your everlasting waters.

We have no fashion or charm,

just us fitted together, sharing everything,

pierced by a sickness we cannot expel.

Expel it for us and fill the cavity

with your affluent efficient flow.

Make passages within that can be maintained,

built-upon, as we honour equally

the silver dollar, ancient ruins

and the blind alien fish

thriving far far below.

 

 

 

 

 

Sing

 

I will sing until the end for you

of centipedes and endless hallways,

of the warning stream rising

and the dead birds on the snowbank

that came back too early, fooled

by a false spring.

 

I will sing of flashing lights

and other conditions

that tempt sanity’s hold.

And then I will sing of glory at the dinner table,

a morning hug, leaving an opening for grace

throughout it all.

 

I will love you until the end, believe

in your majesty above all

although I am equally blind in the sun as in the dark,

but what I sing for out-paces sight,

is faint but obvious as a babe’s eyes glowing

in quiet delight, pulses a clear small core

in the tumbleweed confusion of everyday love as

everyday I need you more, and so

I will go on singing as I am,

rusted, cracked, always

leaning.

 

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