How To Start


I cannot start

without the dagger pain of a wooden splinter

cored deep and burrowing in the dark.

Bearded dog, limping Cuckoo wasp, the painted 

canvases are tumbling dominoes 

but I cannot start. 


Once I wandered onto property that was not mine

and an old man came screaming up 

on a swastika-stamped ATV and the damp moss

spat his beliefs in my eyes, and I was startled

by a mind that was not mine.

I could start then.



Her Body


She lifts her body with her body, 

moves her body with her body, sits down

on a hard mahogany chair that holds her body

while she tends to her body, as it is a creature

that needs be tended. Cutting lentils

and cooking rice to sustain her body,

boiling water, infusing safflower

that will quench her body, her body

moving her fingers (a part of her body)

with fine finesse and ease. She thinks

nothing of this marvelousness

that is her body; her body 

is a sack which carries her brain around

which is also a part of her body, 

wishes she could be without it, contemplates

the necessity of fingernails and earlobes.

She navigates the stairs with her body

that was built by bodies

with the help of machines and tools

that were imagined and designed by bodies, 

who sweated, labored, debated

and shaped them alive like art. She enters

with her body, exits with her body,

works with her body, talks

with her body, embraces with her body,

treats it like a garden bush,

keeping it satisfied in its self-containing self.

Her body is the ultimate instrument,

that could even make other bodies

if she so chose; in her womb,

with her body, and the brief assistance

of another body, she can form a being.

(She does not consider much

how this is an attribute of gods.) 

She lifts her body to reach the books 

on the top shelf, lies her body with her body 

onto her bed that cradles her body, 

an idea her body came up with  

to reconfigure itself. And so

she dreams in her body, 

sees orbs and faces and feels pine needles

and loses time and place and law. 

Her body is a distant echo; for seven hours

she is more than her body and she likes this, 

she thinks this is a miraculous feat.

When she wakes she is a body again. 

She rouses her body, walks her body

to the kitchen with her body,

to the kettle with her body, her body

a marvel, to be sure, her body

a majesty of cells and electrical impulses

and movements of bone and lore.

She counts her dollars, heads

to the grocery store, buys a vegetable body, 

smells it, feels its leathery hide, wonders

if a potato is aware it has a body,

she walks alone the five city blocks 

back home, considering only 

the consciousness of the sky. 





Dead Finches



They say the bird is a messenger. 

Two finches die in a heatwave but who’s around?

The folding and unfolding skies twiddle 

with my heart-ends, my valves summer yellow, 

chambers blanketed in snow. Again 

a lover sends down the rains, but all I get 

are rasping gulls with shrieks that puncture sleeps 

as musky as cow pastures, as heavy as gold.

My messengers are in procession down the nave 

of a church with no one but straw dolls in the pews.

Birds die everyday. I’ve broken bottles 

with more than liquid in them. In mourning

there’s a need for a story (even if cruel). 

Words unwritten are words unused.





The Play




The curtain rises, and there are faux-animals 

human beings dressed in gowns  

of lions, elk, cicadas, foxes, toucans 

whales on their stomachs moaning upon the floor

so they sway, declare they are grass blades 

heaped together, a meadow, a symphony 

and yes, they are singing 

singing with not just their mouths dressed

as maws and bills and proboscises but with their eyes 

their arms, their bellies, their hands 

they are trying to tell the story 

the story of what it means 

to be on an oblate ball of clay alone 

orbiting its way through unrelenting space 

and what it means, they tell, of how they all lean

together upon one another's shoulders 

how they have sex with each other

eat each other 

die and will head

into the same soily, cool bed 

how they fear and love each other 

and are pulled 

arrested

driven by yearnings and cravings 

to rub against, break things open

watch it, see it, touch it, all of it, grow, change 

it all so painful, heavenly, astronomical

so they sing, of when they first realized 

that they could not leave, that they, all as one

existed on an island, and if it goes 

they all go, gulped by an exhalation of energy

dark matter and quantum particles 

and together they begin to act out the end

by suddenly spinning like tops 

they fall into and over each other, calling out

hollering roars and coos and clicks and baas 

and gasps and cries that are human

and taking off their pelts, as humans 

they collapse, impact, all as one, to the stage



except the whales, they merely roll onto their backs 

and reach their flippers up toward 

the lights shining above, and this theater 

all the way to the back rows and utmost rafters 

is silent as a tomb.      





Shake



All things rattle to your touch.

You are an earthquake, with feelers for the moon. 

Monsignori pray for you. Playwrights scratch out 

the tremor that takes place inside your pen;

little things make you quiver,

like lost daughters, dead pets, gone friends. 

As the mother hen you bear the egg.

As the second youngest of the Babe and the Pop

your shoulders shake from all the wave of 

Seven Sibling Wonders who came. 

You stick to shampoo, like glue, 

and all the windows leak whispers to you.

You pluck a cigarette, and shiver in the drag.

As the grass whipping, you smile.

The dandelions sprout in droves 

and you reach to uproot—but you don’t.

Mama, you get me to commit 

the genocide.





Lime Kiln



Around his steeple, a neckerchief

embroidered with the lie his father gave. 

So, around the point, the strong gulls live,

songs like raking nails to the ear. 

Dry myrtle, in the hand, spittle

aside the mouth, we forge course 

through the arching buttresses of stars. 

He knows the hammer. He knows the bouts.

What swings lays waste to things unmoving.

I reject his common beliefs, his white napkin

that dabs away the gore of his stinging words. 

Daytime the chronometer, daytime the stick

measuring the waves at Lime Kiln.

My hands cross the hours. My hands 

silt smeared and boney old. He harbors

his clean justice, his pure head

in the flailing wings of birds thriving.

I see the dead ones, on the stones.

Full of ivory threads and matted plumes. 

Renwick Berchild is half literary critic, half poet. She is lead editor of Green Lion Journal and writes at Nothing in Particular Book Review. Her poems have appeared in Porridge Mag,Headline Press, Whimperbang, Free Verse Revolution, Vita Brevis, Streetcake, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. She was born and raised on the angry shores of Lake Superior, and now lives in a micro-apartment in Seattle, WA. Find more of her work at www.renwickberchild.com

The Loan
	   By Steven Hill

It comes back to me in pieces,
in reflective bites over breakfast cereal—
the smile of moonlit miles,
walks under freckles of stars 
two bodies, folded in a hammock,
childish words for you, carved in a tree
so close, the summer grass as we crawled.
And we rubbed, I and thou,
cheek to cheek,
hair to hair,
cheek hairs brushed by dew, 
drizzle like feather clouds
like memories of my baby blanket, 
star-crossed patterns peering 
at each other through our
windows—
what marvelous shelters,
you and I,
what a lighthouse,
what a beacon glowed within you and
beamed out at me 
through your windows.

And then—suddenly—it was all gone. Poof!
This life is on loan, it turns out.
What we thought was ours belongs somewhere else,
drifted back home
leaving a pile of bones and
scattered remains, ashes, chalky petroglyphs
shards of pottery
and a long trail of relations like ribbons 
	to carry on with what they too have borrowed.
 
Dandelion’s time had come to leave upon the wind,
not returning when spring 
	pushed up through the soil again.
We thought we would all live on the same block forever,
a shady cul-de-sac with 
	a box elder swaying over the creek,
the water feigning timelessness,
tree rings to infinity.
But a storm got the elder, the years dried the creek,
your kiss became a memory
our conversation a hushed prayer,
the doctor’s words a trace
	whispering through the moonlit lace,
the last light I saw reflected in your graying eyes
showed the telephone disconnected, 
the boisterous neighborhood grown silent
bat and ball, lifeless in the on-deck
a field no longer sown,
the grandfather clock chiming 
	over a hearth gone cold.

Everything in its own way announces the final curtain, 
we trowel a foundation, 
mark ourselves with a lifetime of endeavor
and then we are called to relinquish the monument;

	no, it relinquishes us

	Dull chatter in the background, announcing itself at the door,
with a rap and a rude harrumph,
waistcoat fastidious on the coach driver,
ah yes, the coach awaits, the door creaks open,
passage for one.

It’s a marathon and then
nothing, 
silhouette instead of stone,
		the universal groan, 
pace yourself, passage for one,
you won’t be takin’ it with you,
this life is on loan.

“Matters of the heart make your world worth occupying.”
― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction

With the state of the world, we’re inviting Synchronized Chaos writers and readers to support various charitable and mutual aid- supporting projects, including efforts to support international writers and anthologies to benefit organizations. Please feel welcome to send in your writing, to purchase these anthologies, or to spread the word on social media.

Support Ukrainian Writers (listing of living authors from the country and their books which can be ordered)

Where to Donate Baby Formula (not literary per se but worth sharing anyway)

Snow Leopard Publishing’s call for short story submissions to anthologies benefiting different nonprofits related to justice and equality, care for veterans, healthcare, and wildlife/ecology.

Amazon wishlist for an organization led by Afghan women (nationals to the country who want to shape their own destiny free of warfare and imperialism and with equal educational opportunities and safety for all).

Beaupre Anthologies (seeking submissions of work related to indigeneity, neurodiversity, or horror, for separate anthologies).

This month’s issue attends to matters of the heart.

Abdulquadir Ibrahim Worubata’s work expresses sorrow at a deeply felt personal loss, while Ian Copestick renders the angry stage of grief, indignation at loved ones’ being taken. Aloysius S Harmon renders the extreme emotions of mourning in his grammatically understated piece.

The two protagonists in David A. Douglas’ short story dream their way into connection with deceased siblings, finding peace at last over their passing.

Sidnei Silva’s piece explores the varied and beautiful dimensions of rain and draws upon them as a backdrop for love between two people. Mahbub also turns to nature as a metaphor for romantic, familial and spiritual connection among people. and pleads for interpersonal peace and understanding.

Ahmad Al-Khatat’s work also cries out for an end to violence among nations and people groups, while also reflecting on love and insomnia. Steven Hill issues a lengthy literary clarion call for racial justice while Chimezie Ihekuna relates the story of an impoverished Nigerian boy determined to get an education. Pathik Mitra explores and advocates for gender justice in a creative short story while Kellie Scott-Reed probes the extent of our responsibilities to protect others in danger as well as our assumptions on the sources of the danger.

Allison Grayhurst’s poems speak of places where we find spiritual nourishment: through practicing faith, compassion, and mindful care of the land and its inhabitants through gardening. K.J. Hannah Greenberg contributes some gentle photos of animals and natural scenes.

Christopher Bernard pokes fun at the popularity-driven culture of social media to contrast with his low-tech, undying love.

Norman J. Olson describes his artistic creative process, most poignantly how his subjects become portraits of people he cares about, seemingly of their own accord.

Robert Fleming writes of love in an unusual way, in a piece where he juxtaposes romantic attraction and calculus. Another of his pieces links the earth’s rotation with that of a disco ball.

Jim Meirose contributes an intriguing tale that consists of internal dialogue and captures place, character, and time. J.J. Campbell presents a photograph in words of middle age and his speaker’s philosophical attitude towards his decline. George Economou reminisces about hazy past days of heavy substance use, old movies and ill-fated romances.

Steven Croft reviews William Walsh’s young male coming of age novel Lakewood and Federico Wardal offers up a preview of the historical film he’s creating about Cleopatra. Wardal’s intent is to portray the ancient queen as an authentic woman of her time with real human feelings and desires.

We hope you enjoy this month’s issue!

The Making of My Story

Paddling the canoe, I have always wanted to be a doctor. But I am faced with the difficulty of navigating the canoe to its bank where I could board a taxi to school. It has always been the first thing that comes to mind when I wake from sleep. 

My parents  are poor. My mother is a fish monger while my dad is a taxi driver whose lifestyle of incessant drinking and smoking would not permit him to discharge his fatherly responsibilities. By the way, I am the only child of my parents.

Going to school late has always been my hobby. Despite that, I have always had the mindset of being the person I have always wanted to be...A qualified medical doctor. 

My mother has always been supportive. She works tooth and nail to see that all school fee and related expenses are met. Though she falls sick due to stress and burdens my father pose on her, she takes it as her duty to ensure I am hale and hearty.

On a Saturday afternoon, my mother calls my attention by engaging me in what I call The Motivation. 

She begins: ' Be that person you have always wanted to be. You can't be limited by the circumstance I am facing. I am your mother, Jude. I will ensure within my powers and to my last breath that you get to study to the university. I won't fail you, as long as I live, God willing. Jude, you will reach the height of your dream and surpass it'

'Amen' I reply.' Jesus will make a way for us all'

I believe in you. Never give up! Amen to your declaration!'

'Yes mother. I won't give up. My passion has always been to be a medical doctor. And that I shall become'

'Yes, that's the spirit!' She encourages. I can feel that positive vibe rubbing off on me from her.

'Don't mind your father. He can do what he likes. It was my choice I married him. But that's not important, compared to what we are presently facing.'

'But why is father behaving this way?' I ask in interruption. She sees the ugly face of anger in me.

'Don't get me upset' She warns, looking at me sternly. 'I am all out for you, and nothing less. I put my life on the line to ensure you become a better you. What you just asked is none of your business, but mine!'

Noticing her countenance, I had to show remorse. 'I'm sorry'

'No problem. Can I continue uninterrupted?'

'Of course, mother'


'Good!'  She continues: 'But I believe we will live this place and I will leave this business. You know it has not been any easier for me, even your father.'

With tears rolling down my eyes, I hugged her. 'Mother, you're always my sunshine and will never have that light dimmed, even for a split second! You've been my support and pillar. I promise you, I will get us out of this bad situation'

'Of course, my lovely son' She agrees. Unmoved by my tears, she encourage me to 'Be yourself no matter what they say'

She has to go back to her place of trading, a riverine location, not up to a nautical mile to our place.


'Jude, I have to attend to my fishes' She laughs, parting me on the back. 'See you later'

'OK'  I smile. What they great time to be inspired.

Since then, as I paddle the canoe to as part of my side hustle, making some money to support the home and in some way, my education, I am always optimistic that my faith will make me paddle away the challenges I am facing as I climb through the rigors of life tests to become what my dream has always been... A qualified medical doctor.

That has been the making of my story...

The Long and Mischievous Life of Love, Hatred and Fear 
					By Steven Hill 
			(dedicated to the memory of George Floyd)

		“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
					― Immanuel Kant

Now the streets are quiet again, peaceably quiet,
but it is the pause of the reloading,
the stillness of a graveyard;

	it is the morning after
for those without a future, 
viewing the hulk of strip malls charred to steel frame, 
shuffling through the shattered glass 
	of the fragile consensus, 
and the melted smell of tear gas, weeping over broken dreams.
It is the same twisted today that looks like the yesterday of a
	hundred or thousand years ago,
for those without a language whose hopes were turned to ash, and 
	swept by the aproned shopkeep into the ceaseless star-stream. 
The damage is done when the prospect of progress vanishes
	with the dust re-settling, 
when we cease plumbing the depths of the human soul to 
	find that broad territory in common. 
And as the clash of flesh exhausts its insanities,
	as the Us vs Them smashes together like dialectic atoms,
the frantic synthesis arrives in time for the new tumult,
the pieces pick themselves up and recompose,
sneak past the debris to find a way forward again, 
	arresting the black hole collapse to the backward,
leading the escape of runaways in search of
		a refuge from this most un-civil war.

But the silenced ones know, oh yes don’t they, 
that the interregnum always ends
and the relentless assault on meaning begins again,
leading once more to another round of tweeted reprisals;
across the broken landscape, the tectonic plates crack and separate
	kin from kin,
	ethnic from ethnic, 
accord from conversation, 
we watch helplessly as words tap the algorithm and 
sentences juice the emotion, 
	foreboding the passage of night swallowing the day.
History the bloody obituary written by 
	the last of the last survivors,
language a vehicle for unconditional surrender,
signed at the Court House adjacent to the ghastly battlefield,
	bearded General to bearded General, victorious to vanquished,
chainreacting all over the weaponized volksgeist, 
there are no winners here, only those who lose less.			
				
But what if we re-launched the invention of the feeling?
What if we sought where the tenderness may lie?
What if we weren’t beset by something so sad that it paralyzed?
Or if we listened harder to those who 
	had to bite their own tongues until they bled,
	to those who ended with the short end of the loaf of bread, 
	those buried beneath the missing tombstones of the mass graves.
What if the pure decision of the Good Samaritan 
replaced the pursuit of the Master Race deal,
or if our human desires were not entwined,
		like a crown of thorns,
		inside the political economy of our times?  
Here, at the apogee of our history,
the latest Great Leap Forward turns out to be   
	a backward fall into more backwardness.
The return to MAGA plantation greatness is exposed
	as another fake story of 
	white bwanas sipping lemonade on the porch,
attended by obedient Dark Continent subservience, 
such a human thing to do, to love fantasies that never were,
	as they disappear in the rearview mirror.

But the past survivals never stay buried, do they?
They ooze from the muck of the weeping mass graves, 
	the Rosewood’s and Tulsa’s and Thibodaux’s and 1919 arise 
from the cruel crypt of Hate’s harsh oblivion, 
white-world memory tries to delete from the hard drive
	the silenced evidence of ethno-cide, and 
the un-banality of evil and the sin of looking away,
	every soul guilty of all the good you did not do,
leaving us still groping toward a recognition of our real lives,
	our real history, 
the stipulated record of who really built this country,
	planted its fields, erected its towns and schools and cities,
	and laid the rail tracks to the future,
as the Four Horsemen  howled their overwhelming questions: 

Are we here?
Is this real? 
Are we sure?
Am I real?
Does here connect to anywhere?
	
If E = mc2, then how am I still here?   
How do I find a reason to put one foot in front of the other?
When will I uncover the words, consonants and vowels needed
	to arrive at the source of Something true, 
instead of circling the lonely perimeter with longing, 
	for what I cannot have, 
	for what I cannot taste and cannot kiss,
	and cannot see except in fleeting glimpses of Beauty,
that elusive Something that vanishes into Nothing. 
Yes, I see it in your eyes, my love, 
all the disappeared lives that mattered,
reflected a thousand by thousand times, 
the ones who looked after the system, previous and present,
blown like dead pollen across the centuries;
I see it in my eyes, reflected in your eyes, my love,  
the present is everything and nothing,
utterly reusable in the Grand Mortar and Pestle,
	nothing lives forever, nothing ever will,
not even you and I, my love,
	pawing through the leftovers to hoard what we can, 
to return and return as the dust of the double helix,
amidst the un-raveling of the un-civilization and— 			

	You don’t believe me, you say?
	You don’t believe this is slithering thru our DNA? 
Then why, in the realization that we are everywhere and nowhere,
why have all roads led from the many pasts to here? 
	Why, for each History’s moment, does the crossroad 
	fork yet again, to anywhere but here? 				
How do we find it within ourselves to arise from the breakfast cereal 
	into the urgency of each tangled day?
And why then do we fall down, we millions and billions,
	hearts beating fast like the Ninth in D minor, 
contesting the birthright of where we were born, 
as the Fear and Confusion plant their jeering flags
	amidst a fireworks of scorn? 

No, the streets are calm now, passably calm,
it’s dead quiet out there, beneath the noise;
despite the rumblings of marchings from those who demand a future,
despite the huddled masses barred at the border by the rusted Iron Lady, 
despite the divided “e pluribus unum” of this violent mammal trajectory,
	we thought if we plugged our ears it would leave,
	we thought if we clutched our bellies without malice, 
	we thought if we arranged the words and paragraphs just so  
that we could pacify our death-fear locked inside.

But what if the most feared thing is that which we refuse to confess:
	that Love is the strangest notion of Civilization, 
	proven to regularly run amok, 
	kneeling at the altar of heartless entropy,
		until one day we run out of luck; 				
Yet Love is also the molecular force that can bind,
and what’s bound gives the World its arrow-direction,
	in broken search for that more perfect Union, 
	you and I, a chance for resurrection,
for in the end, in the very very end, 
we are here,
	within the limits of our language,
	within the space between our opposable thumbs,
		stumbling toward governance within the parliament of hysterics,
	straining toward common ground, 
resisting the Hate that tries to overrun all representation,
	standing in defiance of the Trumped up charge and
 	the profanity of evil exposed. 

And then, as the streets re-explode in their un-poetry of un-justice,
as we gasp over our brutal re-acquaintance 
	with the imperfection of it all,
	we discover that something still lives above 
that purple bruise behind the stars,
and below the crooked tree limbs, swinging heavy with that strangest of fruit, 
our prayers re-locate the ACTG helix,  
	replicating with mercy and haloed in pearls,
until finally, we remember, just before we extinguish: 

“Our kiss is for the whole world.” 

[1] The Great Leap Forward of Chinese leader Mao Zedong was a disastrous economic policy from 1958 to 1962 to reconstruct China’s agrarian and industrial economies thru forced collectivization that led to mass starvation for  tens of millions of Chinese.

[1] A 19th century colonial and racist term for the continent of Africa. Sigmund Freud also compared adult women’s sexual life to a “dark continent.”

[1] Racial  massacres: in Rosewood, Florida, New Year’s Day, 1923, a white mob of 300 men murdered dozens of black men, women and children, and completely torched the town into oblivion, wiping it forever off the map; in Tulsa in June 1921, whites burned to the ground the prosperous black neighborhood of Greenwood, murdering hundreds and burying them in forgotten mass graves; and in Thibodaux, Louisiana , November 1887, white plantation owners, politicians and their paramilitaries murdered hundreds of black sugar cane workers and their families for going on strike, the most violent labor dispute in US history; in 1919, white massacres and lynchings of blacks took place in more than three dozen US cities, including Chicago, Washington DC, Baltimore and Omaha, after black military veterans returning from World War I asserted their labor rights, resulting in the murder of hundreds of black Americans.

[1] The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death, Famine, War, and Conquest, that arrive in the biblical Book of Revelations as harbingers of the Last Judgment and the end of the world. [1] Albert Einstein’s equation of special relativity. Energy (E) produced equals the mass (m) of a body destroyed times the speed of light (c) squared. That means mass and energy are the same physical entity, and can be changed into each other.

[1] Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, popularly known as the  9^th Symphony, or “Ode to Joy.”

[1] The Statue of Liberty is the figure of Libertas, robed Roman goddess of liberty, inscribed with the words “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” [1] “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”, first words of the U.S. Constitution.

[1] Singer Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” [1] ACGT is an acronym for the four fundamental units of the genetic code found in a DNA double-helix molecule: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). They comprise the molecular foundation for all organic life.

But, Sadly It Never Will


The middle of the
night, and here I am
half drunk. Feeling
the urge to write,
but not knowing
quite what to do.

I'm not sure what
I want to say.

I feel like I'm halfway
on the way to somewhere.
I'm not totally depressed,
but I'm not O.K. either.

I'm not happy, though,
no way !
Far from it !

Earlier today, I met a woman,
an old friend of mine,
who's partner died a couple
of years ago.

I hadn't seen her for nearly a
year, or so.
So she didn't know that my wife
and father had died within
two months of each other.
When I told her, she got upset,
which made me feel guilty.

But, what can I do ?
If someone asks, " How is
your partner? ", I can't lie,
and say " Fine."

Can I ?

I wouldn't want to, anyway.
It's a very strange thing, but
I've noticed it before ;
When someone who you
love, really love dies,
for a month or two you
feel like grabbing by the
lapels everyone you pass
in the street, screaming
" Don't you fucking get it ?
My grandfather/ girlfriend/
wife/Dad has died ? "

You want it to mean as much to
the rest of the world, as it does
to you.

But, sadly, it never will. 

Direction


Can this moment be a fruit,
a moist secret, picked and juiced?
Can I follow through with my leap of faith
and leap into the coal fires of survival’s uncertainty,
be selfish as the hunter who conserves nature
so he can have enough nature to kill
and make into wall trophies?

Am I a dead mouse on the porch who made it
as far as the first freeze, forgot
to build a nest and suffered the consequences?
Am I fortunate as the found street dog,
given kibble, a warm place to lay,
a pack to call her own?

Am I here maimed but alive, 
like all things living,
crippled by the weight of time? 
Why is everything half-formed?
Only young things leap and frolic, 
free because of their dependency
on maternal sustenance and protection. 

My endurance is threadbare.
If I wash and wear it one more time
it will disintegrate and not hold form.
I know nothing but
I do know Jesus -
the bridge and the tunnel below.
I know one way, one path 
all else is
phantom blood, phantom fulfilment,
just renderings humming ‘yes yes - 
take my false face as truth,
count my money, my grand accomplishments, 
my soft seats, my high seats, 
my triple thaw and my double freeze.’

The butcher is a psychopath. The liars are in charge.
Steady now, the hand, the moon dangling on a string,
say your necessary farewells.
Jesus is walking, walk with him, 
eyes forward, summoned.

Cure

Joy is but a minstrel’s flower,
lightening under the thumbnails.
Preach of mud around the eyes,
myself a centipede, fast but fragile.
I gaze and I know the way is a path is a dream
of a hawk landing and inside that dream
anguish quickens to gold, despair into
overcoming. Inside that dream, Jesus stands
insistent in a child’s purity, burdenless, fresh
as the sun always is and always burning.

A small stone that cannot break, a love so graced
it welcomes the flooding tide. But I am broken,
eaten in tiny increments by the changing mirror -
around the evenings, around the first day’s light,
blind to all but the persistent churning.

Jesus’ great love has left me weeping, has opened
my heart, brought forth the healing, suffering mended,
miracles under a white desert sky. Be mine. Let me be
yours, travel with you, bend fully into your mystery.
The joy you give is small, unassuming, 
but is an opening like a lifting, 
where all grief and savagery
invert into its opposite, separated
from lasting damage.



Someone other


Someone said - “Be sensible,
a song is essential only if it can be traded.”
Someone squandered decades of rich meaning 
then died on the rafters of an abandoned ballpark.
“Pack up your consciousness,”
someone else said “Be out of character 
and draw the short straw with glee.”

Intellectual dreams have no limitations,
strong in complexity, strong without drama
or the heartache of disappointment.
I will dream intellectual, taste desire
as an idea, be friends with the professional 
and marry into a profession.
How much time does it take to fashion an identity, 
keep it with solid sides and a resistant core? 

Someone said - “Don’t bother
nothing is for keeps, ideals exist
until they inevitably become soiled and then
start reeking of their opposite intent.”
Many years seized you up in spasms,
aching and making
a mockery of such lofty extremes.
This planet is overstrained, never a gentle
day of just sitting.
Someone said - “Learn mediocrity if you want
happiness. Bark at the impossible squirrel 
in the impossible tree.”
Faith must be fought for, in every choice,
in the mid-days of winter and when love has gone astray.
Everyday I own nothing but this day.
Someone said - “Deal with the collapse of
what you hold as true - contemplate it like a cloud
that shifts form and wisps away.”

I heard that someone, but the joy of love
is real even when it lies flattened. Hope
is not for the faint-hearted, but for the persistent,
the reformers of gravity, the warriors against inertia. 
I say - Hope void of illusions 
draws its first breath as faith 
only in the purity of complete darkness.

Casual Garden

I keep a casual garden
burnt in places, lush by
the climbing trees. 
When in despair,
I examine the corners of that garden,
pluck the dangerous weeds
and re-set the overturned steppingstones.
I scrub the birdbath 
and fill it with fresh cold water
placing stones as platforms 
for the bees and small birds.
This garden is my favourite place to walk,
small, but with hidden nooks 
and a seat for solitude.


It took years of tending to get to this place. 
A once-thought cursed corner is now deep green
with violet hues and the prefect shade.
Still there is more to tend  
as it is ever changing. Birds come,
leave their droppings and kill 
what can be restored.
Squirrels explore, dig holes, preparing for winter.
Raccoons work their nocturnal havoc -
birdbath on its side, flipped steppingstones - evidence 
of their hunting for grubs.

God gave me this garden as a living meditation,
help when all other help is gone.
Before this, I never had a garden.
For twenty years, I had a backyard.
My children enjoyed it, my husband
took care of it.

Now this garden is my sacred duty,
an extension of my wonderous home,
mine to walk in as we all take in 
its bright varied living tones -
all four people, cats and even the guinea pigs 
have an exclusive window to view its glory.

The sounds when the neighbours 
are sleeping or away
are best. The smells are perfect 
of marigolds on the deck and the rain.
My mother says this garden is beautiful 
and she would know.
I rejoice in its poetry. 
Everything wants to live,
expand, overflow in this garden.

I don’t even know how this love affair started
or how over time it has grown into a beautiful marriage.
There is an animal graveyard in my garden -
a place in front of two tall trees, the same place 
we buried silver coins,
the best place of ease
where the white dove first arrived, 
before walking around the whole garden, 
blessing every inch before it took flight 
never to return.

When I forget God loves me, 
I look at my garden,
I step onto its bumpy terrain
and know I am one -
joined to its hallowed ground.

Revived


Sideways into the thicket
prickly roar, eyelids closed
and then a decade later, a sunbeam
latches to your arm and pulls you out,
renews your skin, the tone of your hair.
A decade lost without a voice, without
connection to your core.
Here you stand, stride, hardly limping,
a queen, tall, sure of your kinship,
sometimes still weakened by past sentimentality,
but mostly preparing for a sacred adventure, remembering
the promise to you that was made on the swing 
when you swung high as the swing could carry you -
your childhood legs gleefully kicking, your long hair 
behind you, and a smile that was more glorious 
than the first spotted spring flower. 
Whole again, set right, upright,
shedding the last of your apprehension,
growing deeper into maturity,
letting the shadows go, 
as the sweet nectar wraps around you
you start to sing - Hosanna! 
finally accepting
love is everything.





Creature


Out of step, filled
with a flame that ignites
a windfall and dreams
upward reaching, past
the umbrella and the cherished flight
of the cardinal.

One step, dancing, then tomorrow
comes and there is no dancing to be seen.
Maimed and fearful - the setting sun
coils its rays around an unhappy future and feeds
the roots with sewage.

Preferring the hope of a soft landing,
I count the pillars and a make a roof, a home.
I fall asleep with this glorious creature at my side.
I wake and it is the first thing I see. It takes me
out into a land of picnics by the water, out
of the stark slam of poverty and ancient debts that
must be repaid. 

It takes me to a greener land
where I can walk, turn corners 
and run. Where I can do my rituals, 
relieved of desperation, at one
with the hand that opens, at peace 
with the hand that holds.


Bridle


Tear and rip and proclaim
a path you cannot follow
but can taste its every nuance.
Bend into its horizon as though it
were yours, there on glorious display.

When change does not come, and it sleeps
like a long clouded-over moon, and spirits
are bones sucked of their marrow -
the most vital of these eaten by mechanical doom -
metal teeth and the turning, turning 
of grinding eventuality, wait 
and watch the images come and go.

The windows are stained
and there is no way to clean them.
Through them I see growth.
I see days I long for that may not come 
for another decade, where I will be free.
What is a day? But this thing done, this thing not done.
What is a life? Stealing wakefulness violently 
from slumber, pressing into joy 
despite the chains and another
book is read. All dreams are singular. Know
the in-breath counts. The out-breath is simply 
exhalation.




I Need My Blood


I need my blood.
I need the mornings
sightless of dark duties
and encumbering failures
that rise like a high wave
teaming with unseen predators.
I need a house without deep mud
at its doorstep and a fire menacingly
burning in the furthest backyard tree.
I need to wake up like I used to,
energized, a life to look forward to, bow to,
and say yes, I can do that, I am full.
I need God’s blowing kiss, a dream
that is more than a dead seed or grand illusion,
to step here and there solid in authenticity, 
shed the dread and the pounding trip and fall.
I need my blood
not horror-cold professionalism,
being polite while vital body fibres
ricochet against each other, bawling inside,
ripped and rolling like a fish
on a hook, heartlessly pulled
from my home and element, amazed 
by how long I am still breathing, 
here, without oxygen
or the salty waters of my belonging.
I need a bridge
to walk across,
a landscape of freedom and prosperity,
away from this decaying island I sit upon
where massive reptiles wrap 
their spiked bodies around, many 
creeping on the shore.
I need my blood,
to keep my blood,
flowing, be a voice at full strength,
no longer a sigh or a held-back moan.
I need this now
to carry on.

My branches are all but broken.
My spirit is hardening, tight, tighter
than a heavy stone.

Building a Temple


I held the hand when the body
lay sleeping, ready to erupt, erode
but it never did. 
These words are a goodbye
to the dust-bowl chaos, a vision
to act by, pick up pebbles and throw
across a field, over a fence, almost
to the other side.

The angels make a wall protecting, bending
their bodies of light like shields
over my beautiful children, as they find their way 
through uncertainties, undercurrents of terror 
and the moon’s dropping glare. 

Addiction in the ice.
Organs enflamed and removed.
But God’s love is merciful, takes us 
to the threshold, but not beyond.
Secrets are exposed, talked about without shame,
and then are burnt like charred large balls
in a sacred flame, rising 
into a steady shimmering golden canopy peace.

Sometimes the storm creates a treasure, 
a blooming happiness
after its destructive force, its taking away.
Sometimes after the emptiness, there is finally
a conscious letting go, letting in
the zig-zag flight of finches.

There is love spoken 
without conditions, love heroic.
There are ghosts silenced, pathways 
rushing forward, hearts so broken, 
now repaired, thundering forward, redeemed.





Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Five times nominated for “Best of the Net,” she has over 1300 poems published in over 500 international journals. She has 25 published books of poetry and six chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com