The Day Is Like

 .

The day is like

the day before

the worm arrived

in a jar at my doorstep.

Before I took the worm in

and fed it lettuce leaves and fresh water.

Before I had something to care for,

when loneliness was the largest difficulty around

and isolation pounded beneath my lids like

a cancer.

The day is tick tock and as slow as waiting

for that needed call to arrive.

I collect the noises from outside

but have nowhere to put them. I open my mouth,

but my voice has gone underground.

The sun looks in on me, but evades my skin.

I don’t hold my breath. I let it in and out.

I let the day be a blank wall.

And sometimes a day like today is like

an empty room and this empty room

is a treasure.



Copyright © 2006 by Allison Grayhurst


First published in "The Buddhist Poetry Review" 2012

So go ahead and tell me, child.
Would it all have been worthwhile
To tread upon Eliot's allusiory notion
Having bitten off the matter with a smile
Negating warnings, blinded by devotion?
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
During our days to ****** and create
Amnesic to past transgressions of a dying fall
Divulging the insidious question upon our plate?
Daring to disturb the song of the universe
Repeating the same indecisions and revisions
In which we must ultimately reverse?

If only I could live among the
reflections in the water--
for they are more real
than I ever have been.

Though they may disappear
with a churning, gusty wind
or a starless night, aren't they
more perpetual than we?

Perhaps they are ghosts, shadows;
or perhaps they are just as weighed by flesh
as we are--but can we know?
How the grass is certainly greener there!

We are but specters of vapor, imprisoned
in our carcasses. Are we so human
that the intangibles, the ineffables,
the divine ideas are beyond our grasp?

How short life is, dear one! Is it not more fit
to remain for a while, emblazoned in light,
than to wink out of ****** existence
without ever having lived?

It flows through the veins of the forgotten.
It lives, yet has not taken air in years.
It is ashen of colour,
Hard-hearted of thought,
It lies dormant until it doesn't.
It feels lonely.
You mean it makes them feel lonely?
No. It makes them feel loved,
For feelings are love,
Even the ashen ones.

It flows through the veins of the forgotten
Where the sun will never reach it
But every now and then
A wind breaks through
And brings autumn leaves
Or spring blossoms
Violet snow
And for a day it exists in colours
And on the quiet days
It recalls

Webs of star dust enwrap the weary and the subdued,
of those that have lost hope or wish they had some to look forward to,
of those stumbling over the earth’s obstacles in vain for want of something inhumanely impossibly to attain that which has long been forgotten to weave by human hands for it has grasped the more stolid and sultry materialism as its ultimate pleasure,
and of the many more devoid of Lady Luck’s bounties upon thee for there are many unfortunates I can ponder of and which I am helpless in fathoming their confusion.

What of them? Despite the comfort of radiance, they forget the meaning of that flickering light in their horizon,
to understand, truly,
what it means to be human, to feel
it has been lost,
even if that fine web may suffocate them,
only the peril of finite existence can truly grapple their soul in totality.

Ardour and bliss of consuming visually Nature’s bounties have long since been reduced to decorous eloquence,
the wondrous night skies with its constellations mapping infinities of destines;
of the earth and her planes stretching endlessly as carpets of green,
powdery gold of the sand shifting in its own mixing bowl
and of the roaring oceans that drown the screams of the lands in its calm,
none whatsoever can save a desolate soul least they may themselves see a part of them in the silent life that beats and screams around them.

They’re a fog of confusion, a conglomeration of unnamed thoughts and ideas that warrant recognition and are hopelessly left unknown,
wandering in their haze of misery and curiosity,
without any thought perhaps it isn’t wandering that might be salvation
but merely stillness for it may truly make their ears hone into the song of the world that sings endlessly to its beloved creatures to renew their vigor for a new dawn on its face,
to have the orbs glimpse the dynamic multitudes of the earth and whatever it encompasses perhaps to have one find themselves in the constitutions that breathe and throb around them,
oh what would they not do to see and hear? But they’re hopeless, downcast and disparaging,
for they’ve been blinded by the whispers of masked crusaders plotting their demise
with the ploy proving victorious by every second
unless they deem themselves capable of strangling the ropes of deceit that bind them in their despair,
Only and only then,
can the life around them aid in salvaging them.

Tell me my purpose
If I was dead before I was born,
And will die when I am dead.

If death is immortal,
Eternal,
Necessary;
Yet life is frail,
Conditional,
Temporary.

Tell me why I am here
In my joy,
My fury,
My agony.

I suffer,
I change.
I am pushed to my limits and beyond
Burdened with freedom and empathy.

Tell me why I feel such emotions
That last
And alas
Here I am
Triumphant.

So
“Give me hell,
Give me heaven,
All your visions of life.”

A child that loves nature
Nature is everywhere
and everything...
...there is no unnatural thing

Humankind grew out of nature like all
else living or non living in the common sense.

He wants to create something living, breathing
out of mud and blood and sweat
Cause the only difference is love
in a living and less living organsim.

A stone can feel satisfied and does respond
to environmental action
but he...
does not feel.
Until it gets so loved
that it becomes
living beeing.