Dear ruiner of all,
Indeed, in destruction lies your own pleasure,
Amidst sorrow and sadness, springs up your own joy,
Your success sight, is to watch other success dimming.
Devil, I know your laughter is ignited, when a tranquil heart turns violent,
Your smile is sparked, when a blossomed flower withers,
Your solace reigns, where lovebirds suddenly be at daggers drawn. 
Devil, I know the contentment you crave, is to put humankind in grief.

Surely, I know in miles you have ruined,
Leaving every single stage of this journey scathed and shattered,
Incessantly stabbing the innocent flesh of this vulnerable heart,
Mercilessly carving there the holes of bitterness,
Heartlessly disposing of this injured heart to the abyss of sorrowful thoughts.

But, Devil, do not yet, yell of conquest! 
For the end, still vague to foresee the outcome,
For my defeat now, can transition to triumph,
That my wound would meet healing in the end,
And my feebleness would wear the garment of mightiness.

Devil, do not ever laugh yet!
For even in your laughter, is no tone of lastingness.
Dear Devil,
Remember, if you do not laugh last, you do not laugh best.

Chapter One
 
I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t happy… I don’t say this to sound conceited, it’s just the way my people are since my earliest memory.

Every day like clockwork I’d wake up and find myself with a smile on my face, going through the motions of my life as if on a permanent loop blissfully unaware of how empty my rooted happiness was or how futile my purpose was at this point.

Until one day, on my way to work I found myself waiting for my train at the local Muni station, like I always do, when suddenly a young woman bumped into me out of nowhere. As she pushed past a paper fell to the ground from her backpack and I instinctively went to hand it back to her until I realized she had continued her path running in the opposite direction. 

Why was she running? I thought. No one runs anywhere any more, there is no need, and what was she wearing?

 I continued to stare in her direction intrigued by her movement until I realized I now was becoming the distraction in everyone’s path to work and began to go on my way thinking how strange this instance was. Still holding that single paper in my hand unaware yet of its significance in my life.

It wasn’t until I was sitting on the train, in my regular seat, that I realized I was gripping on to that very paper. Like a shock to my senses, I felt that curiosity spark inside me. I don’t remember ever being this curious before…

I uncrumpled the paper to find a single sentence written plainly in the middle of the otherwise blank piece.
 
Why are you so happy?
 
Why are you so happy? I laughed to myself as I read such a simple question thinking how odd of a thing to just carry around, until it hit as I sat there frozen in fear with the predominant smile on my face quickly fading as I found I had no answer. Why am I, so happy?
All I could muster for an answer is just that everyone just was happy. Since the dark days when my parents had passed over thirty years ago, I felt as if I might have been in this very moment the only person in my society who had questioned this. Well, except for that girl... Who was she? Was she happy?

During the dark days our people found so many stresses in their daily life, so much pain, so much unnecessary sadness blanketed our society or so I remember from the propaganda slogans plastered all over our city when I was a kid...

So funny I had not recalled that memory until now…
It sounds stupid I’m sure but before this piece of paper. This crumpled up piece of paper that could have easily been ignored and discarded at the perfectly accessible waste bin next to every train entrance, I never found myself questioning my life… questioning this society. It just wasn’t something that was done.

Or at least from my experience it wasn’t something that was discussed. Everyone was just happy the way they were. It never seemed odd to me really because it was our standard of normal. Until this stupid piece of paper ruined my life.

Made me an outsider, made me question everything that I was perfectly happy with moments ago. I felt a strange surge through my body like a warmth running through me that wasn’t welcome and a narrowing of my sight as I stared blankly at the ground until I realized what I was doing with my hands clenched and my face down towards the floor. It wasn’t until I lifted my head that I noticed my strange nature had also surprised the people around me with the many faces of spectators looking at me in confusion then looking at a poster on the train above my head that I never really noticed before.

It read:
Happiness is a standard. If you are unhappy, we are here to help. With a number following the message.

Why had I never noticed this before?
My whole life I never felt this way or had been looked at so questioningly as If I am sick.

You can’t be sick.
Why did this frighten me so much? I thought to myself... If I was sick, I could get help…That’s what they taught us.

Like a battle in my head, I fought the idea of whether I should tell someone, but fear overpowered me. I sat there and found myself faking a smile in response to their stares and like clockwork they smiled back and went back to what they had been doing previously. I felt sick, fake. Hidden. Behind this now pretend façade.

I spent the rest of my trip to work with a smile on my face and a busy mind trying to understand, trying to force out this confusion hoping it would pass, still holding the piece of paper that so taunted my reality.

As I looked around, I kept finding myself wondering if they were all happy too. Why are they so happy?

Why is this a bad thing? My subconscious tried to ask me… but it was so strange now after I had been asked why I was happy. I now found that since I did not have an answer to this question that my mind tried to find the most logical step forward. That maybe if I looked at others, or asked them, I might find an answer. The right answer… the needed answer.

No, that’s too much of a risk.
And then I thought… What if they aren’t happy?
 I mean they had to be right? They were all smiling.

I’m not happy and I’m smiling.
I’m not happy…  Like a shock wave to my reality, it hit me. I never meant to think such a horrid thought… not happy… This cannot be true. That would mean I am sick.

You are not sick.
But I must be…
You can’t be sick.

It felt as if I was handed a key and then a door for that key appeared that I never knew was there and as I went to open the door the key disappeared from my hand, yet the door remained. Locked, taunting me, begging me to open it.

What was on the other side? Why am I on this side of it? Which side was free?
 
I tried my best to be reasonable, to get myself to stop questioning the purpose of my happiness because it only brought me sorrow not having an answer, but once the question is asked it becomes impossible to forget, especially such an intriguing one…and once you begin to look for something you notice it everywhere. Moments in your everyday life that make you question. That force you to remember the mystery hidden inside… Why am I happy?

Jeez I do not remember this commute being so long… and so boring.
 

Michaila Oberhoffer was born and raised in the foggy San Francisco Bay area, a place she is still happy to call home. Satisfied with a great meal, a refreshing drink and a bit of nature, Michaila wishes to live life simply doing what she loves. A lover of all things philosophy and science, she believes that being human isn't about being intelligent enough to know but wise enough to question. She can easily be found sitting at a patio table at a coffee shop or at a local brewery, trying very hard to allow the thoughts in her head to become coherent enough to publish, settling for the comforts of humor and speculation. THE ROOT OF JOHN'S HAPPINESS is her debut novel.

Smoky Lullaby

The birds are getting stoned and it’s all my fault.
I can’t help wanting to unwind with some creature nearby, who maybe just once feels the same
way I do
And the feeling buoys my troubled heart upward
makes me want to consume all of every thing.
After a day of soaking up the people, the places, the thoughts and feelings,
after a day of being the devoured, I want to be the one who devours
Desire desire desire
I am you, you are me
So long as I am coaxed into my dreams and not stranded with my nightmares
So long as the birds who agree to stay in the yard, and the bunny who always inches toward me
to bum a smoke of my green, smoke-filled lullaby


The Female Skin Trap

The woman’s desire to be small is so much more than being sexually attractive.
We want to take up as little space as possible,
We want to shrink into ourselves
We want to be swallowed by the clothes we wear
I say,
Fantasizing of the skeleton utopia,
Oh to drown in the oversized cottons and silks
Not strangled by the linens that somehow feel like myself, my thick skin smothering anything
that dares to contain it
I am tired of bursting at the seams
Of feeling every inch of myself and more
Squeezed, tightly packed, suffocating in my own skin
My layers double, then triple, then rip me to shreds
We want to be microscopic, thin and tall as a blade of grass
Free from the shackles and perceived in surface area just a few inches less-
Until nothing can contain us but ourselves


Earthly Appetite
The earth is a stomach- no, a womb-
Digesting and spitting up and mixing and separating and protecting and defending its creatures
When it's done absorbing and disbanding me, it hesitates to regurgitate anything I’ve said or not
said
The earth is a womb.
Every morning I am born again, and the world spins like a coin
Neither mother nor father to its creatures
And the sky rumbles and growls when it is hungry for more
Swallow me whole, I beg of the sky, who may decide to tell the whole Earth
Who are you but the sum of your parts?
Sometimes, Earth, you make me wonder whether you are tasting us, savoring and delighting, or
merely eating us for the nutrients required to survive..
Land of enchantment, or Badlands?
We’re drawn to places that promise to change us
The elements are different, the water and air a different taste
The homes sculpted of clay, its conception still visible to the passersby
Below the watchful Half crescent eye, neither waxing nor waning
The flavors of an ancient and eclectic landscape blending seamlessly-
Green chili, red chili, lavender, prickly pear
Back to the land we go
Places we’ve never inhabited feel like our roots, and how?


HUNGER
What do you do when you’re starving, and nothing tastes good enough?
What do you do when you’re ravished, and everything is unappetizing?
What do you do when your mouth waters for something that doesn’t exist?
Taste whatever it is that you crave so badly, spit it out, swoosh it around,
Draw some conclusion-
Leave no crumbs, sop it up with a hearty bread and make sure to lick your fingers
Then throw it up

Spring Twilight Porch clear Sky Moon Above                        

Spring twilight porch clear sky moon above.
Son, said Father. 
The boy looked up.
Know how we all walk upright on two feet? Not on all fours? 
The boy lightly nodded. 

Most don’t know this; we didn’t always walk that way. Back at the beginning the first of us  walked on all fours. But; somehow some command from on high came, to rise from all fours, and walk on just two. Seems simple, eh, right? Yes, but—even back then, humans never could get anything done without a big noisy debate. One morning they found that new two limbed rule had been posted on a wall in the middle of the night. 

They stood sleepy-eyed, quietly regarding this, until the loudest mouth among them shouted, Okay, here! Let’s do it—here’s how—and they tried standing on their right arm and right leg, and, promptly fell over, failed. But, even before that failure, others were shouting over them, saying, No, no, no, that’s no good! Its like this—and tried their left arms and left legs, and, also fell over. Some few stubbornly tried those failed ways again and again and fell again and again, as yet others closed in, shouting, No, no, no, no—it’s this way! Right arm, and left leg, see? See—uh, wait, I—and as they fell over, yet more rushed in, crying no no shut up everyone, here; left arm, and right leg, see? See? 

And the turmoil grew faster, and louder, and hotter, until a voice shot clear, higher and louder than the rest, crying, This! Two hands! Look here! On two hands, yes!  Look how tall! Yes so tall! And I am not falling! This is the way! So, they all tried to leap onto their hands. Some could not do it—but most were able to, and—these were in the majority, so—they agreed! Yes! They agreed—this is the way! 

Until, as they learned to do it longer, heads began reddening, eyes began bulging, and pressure began building, and they--they had to let go. Yes, had to—to fall over.  But, this being the best solution so far, and one they’d all agreed on, they kept trying—and trying—and getting nowhere. But some learned to do it longer, but—they found the prolonged rushing of blood to their brains was not healthy. Some sickened. Some died. How many? Oh, who’s counting—before at last one let go, fell down, and by chance, rolled over and shot up to standing, solidly on their feet!  

Look! They cried—look! Here’s the way! Here’s the way! And they all followed. 
And that problem was solved—and that was that! Now, isn’t that  something, son? I think that’s really something. Don’t you?

Looking down, he saw his son, calmly relaxed, asleep. 
It had worked.
They went inside. 

Sculptor Arm

Michelangelo Buonarotti 
	  was the third SCULPTOR
			To tackle 
		the Carrera Marble,
That huge block of Carrera Marble,
	He who saw spirit in stone,
   Who knew that every stone
	  Has a statue inside it,
	And from his pounding,		
	   Chipping, shaping
	Relentlessly gave life to
		      DAVID—
    Six tons, and 17 feet tall
			  DAVID
	  A symbol of strength
			  Poise,
		   Confidence
			  DAVID
	 Facing the challenges
		      Of life.

    The first artists gave up—
	   Too hard, too many 
		  Imperfections-- 
   But Michelangelo Buonorotti,
Only a baby when they abandoned it,
	 Twenty-five Years later
Took up the chisel, took up the task
	With an arm indomitable
   That pounded the stone
	  To completion.
			To perfection—
	    Sculptor Arm!

My Mother’s Sky

(Eileen (Lee Porter) Grayhurst 1930-2024)

The Death Journey

Space around the memories,

walking the cul-de-sac,

house to house, in a dream

where the small school stood and the field

is just the same where you linked arms

with your teacher and talked,

bright with your awakening into literature.

The trees are stronger, thicker-trunked,

living non-violent as they expand

and take up more ground.

Space from room to room and five hawks

fill the sky, then merge with the sky over the lake

and the vast line of clouds, changing temperature.

She drives her last car drive,

into this emptiness that does not hurt

but offers no comfort.

After the drive

the love in her blazes refreshed

as she sits in her lazy boy chair,

forgetting her sickness and old age,

blazes the whole scope of her magnificence,

strongest in her compassion.

This last journey we will have together.

We will overcome together until the end

and even then

there will be no ending, just a change,

space, I cannot fathom,

space added between us, space experienced

sometimes as a shedding of plumage,

sometimes, as a wasps’ nest touched,

accidental unbearable sting.

Before I remember

blank days, atheist days

that left me sombre-hard,

but these days

are brim with harrowing storms,

prayers and keepsakes infused

with intractable meaning, memories

ripe and revered as a newborn’s flesh.

Before, my soul was below, breaking

through the body regularly, in pieces,

but these days it sits on the surface,

intact, a glass sphere without protection,

thrown and rolling, like

a lightning fuse, cracked.

These days there are no pointed steps,

but each day is like the first sun rays seen,

heightening my energy to be as kind and capable

as possible as the bringing pulse lives in a jar,

is taken out of the jar, and dying takes its fill,

and death runs in circles around the dream

and everything within the dream

that is real and everlasting is quenched

when the days are these days

sober and groaning, rising

break-and-fall, cresting hard

with this shining golden sharp

hurt, breath-taking.

Tricky blood dripping

into upper wall cracks,

through the grout tracks

and into winter’s foreboding

months ahead.

How does it take so little to examine

the underside and know it is rotten,

flesh covered but disintegrating

underneath?

How many hands have to wash

at the same sink until the basin gets cracked

and the taps only release a trickle?

Tomorrow is today is

a slow-moving line bruised

with intensity and trauma,

clothed in brackets that shift then fall

then plateau before they fall again.

What seems unending

will end and when it ends

an ocean of emptiness will

consume. The dragon’s nest

will be disturbed and

heat will flow its lava-reach and hot depth

into the ordinary, the extraordinary

and everything in between.

This star is imploding into a vacuous

vacuum-suck and spiral break, spinal break

that breaks any chance for mobility.

When it ends it will be my end,

orphaned, no hidden curses, icons will be broken,

and saints will be laid bare, naked, exposed before God.

So end, my mother, but do not end,

be like a songbird blasting her song

before the sun even rises, glorifying,

and watch the heavenly bodies

surrounding, lifting your soul gently,

transforming you naturally

to breaststroke through

sun-bearing ridges

rising, dipping

divine dimensions.

The backside of the shadow

is awake, and losing ground again

burning in the sinkhole, into

a conclusion of harsh hard

cause-and effect.

Eyelids lower, sleep is never rest

but a patchwork horror-show

of violence and loss and things

once perfect, stolen

behind locked doors.

Underground, the circus continues

and I will never find my way out

of this mirrored maze.

I know that if I lie flat in the stark silence,

mortal eroding flesh is inevitable.

Extravagant love always has a price.

The price owed has been paid and I must leave

the turning circle, step past the fissure-groove

and sink into a faith abiding.

I will walk with you reckless

over this abandoned lake,

skipping across veiled skin ice,

thinning, seeing through, skipping,

and somehow never a crack will form

and never your toe nor my heel

falling through.

The smell of worms.

A feast that rages inside

the system-nerves, taking

the body to extreme outerspace,

thresholds of reason

and waiting in the death-year

the year of exhaustion – one day brushed

with energizing hope, and the next,

crumbled, withdrawn.

What is deception in this playing field?

What is an honest ascent that will also

echo into the roots and stay there?

The distance to carry this weighted reality

is unknown, the duty within it, and the love,

is immediate and unquestioning.

So I stay, pressed against the mountain,

pressed against this aching uncertainty.

Pressed and moving and mourning

each conversation, trusting

that the sharp pointed misery

will not pitch, that peace will expand

until peace overcomes.

Arrow stream

in between existences

splashing between shores,

forced to confront her ancient

criticism that has wrapped

my mind-frame and grown

a shadow as cumbersome

as a heavy chain.

This land she demands me to walk on

crowns me with gruelling labour,

hijacking my dignity and sense of equality.

It is a constant place of servitude merging

with guilt and a dismissal of my strength

and true worth.

This red line drawn is crossed over,

onto hot sands without sandals.

Mine is to give but not to neuter

my prayers – rage and pity colliding.

I will give but I will not have

my music reined and whipped

and tossed like a dusty bag

with the rest of the clipped toenails.

I will tell her what I cannot tell her,

by not owning her hierarchical demands

as I give, as I am placed within

this imprisoned place

as her sickness and drug-induced mania

takes control –

her petty compulsions incurable,

but my love for her

so much more.

            Kaleidoscope flaming,

her eleven colours remaining

mixed and pure and still swirling,

undimmed

by suffering’s panicked toll

Too much dust and debris

filling the vents, my lungs.

Twisted plots of imagined problems

flung across the river without

factual explanation.

So I endure and I count my numbers

to hold in my anger, hold back my tears

and keep doing the soft servitude and

diligent care I am accustomed to,

instead of doing what I want to do –

withdraw, fold up and out

for at least a good week.

Too much drug-induced insanity whispers,

whispering accusations that hold no water,

but cut and kill just the same

all my good will, my enduring effort

and my exhausted heart that believed at least

it has kept itself true.

The crow almost hits the moving car,

almost goes under the wheel. Instead

it somersaults and avoids being clipped

by inches, flying in front of the car window,

raised away by maneuvering a mounting wind.

Too much blood without redemption.

Too much condemnation for a false claim,

a winter blank and brutal,

not of my own making.

Remember, remember –

the crow caws and reverberates

into the white cells, red cells

or your bloodstream –

Remember

God gives nothing easy,

nothing worthy of keeping

that doesn’t first eviscerate

before reseeding

your radiant core.

How can I rock

between the eaten bread

and the rotten leftovers,

filling plates with putrid smells

and locked-in rage that rages in

an insomniac relentless punch

and tilt – twisting the bowels,

concerned only with petty victories?

How can I keep my self open

while needing full-on protection

from her drug-induced distancing eyes?

How can I live through another day

of exhausting intensity, with unveiled

shameless fears filling space and

the brutal-swerve

of a lingering inevitable?

How can I hold on until the end

hold out until permission is granted

to at last collapse flat out,

unfold, fold?

Last days, these days

roll like a slow-moving stone

across a stony terrain –

many bumps, inclines, declines

and turns.

Last days, restless then at peace

then restless again

as limitations close in so only

the essentials remain.

Last days are these days

soaked with this blazing wound, continuing.

These days there are no more plans

but to live through the days letting in

the undefiled grace that rises like vapour at dusk

through the balcony-door crack,

through her smile which she still manages occasionally,

keeping pace with the clawing hunger for relief

and the undercurrent smells of sickness.

These days are the last days

I can love you,

and how I love you, my mother –

your bright sailboat stalled

in the maw of this menacing wave

surging.

It is clear

that finally we are

adopted into the universe’s time frame,

that time is not counted by cards

or the constellations.

Clear that light is not light-weight

but heavy

when it transforms.

Cracked leather belts tighten like nooses,

dreams crack then shatter and scatter

their fragments down the drain.

God is in the laundry room.

God is in her laboured respiration

and in her smile she now only shows

to strangers.

It is clear dying is not death.

It is its own journey –

a body breaking, a soul struggling

and losing

no matter the effort

to keep itself here, whole.

I wish I was a snail

robbed of its shell, squished

underfoot, drying up in the

sun

so all that was left

of me was a thin crust of skin

that found its way into pavement pores,

and I could be disintegrated, be no more.

I wish I had no responsibilities

but to my solitude, my own thoughts

waking and sleeping.

I wish I never tried to love

because now I know

I have failed at love, to love,

to be strong when open, protecting

not only from the outside but inside too,

taking on others’ spiritual burdens,

not out of kindness

but out of cowardice and the delusion

that the world is anything but

a lulling zone of harsh beggary

and bully imagination.

I am a broken toy kicked to curb.

I am nothing. I have nothing and

I wish I was a snail, dried up,

sensory-dead, flat

and inconsequential.

I don’t know how to sing.

My legs have become old

and there are no more believers

around me.

Clasped in a never-opening lair

with active lava and no windows,

I cannot find the cave through the narrow incline,

trapped, submerged.

I cannot sing or breathe or be here

as I am broken down

bloodied and maimed.

I cannot continue to move,

pretend the feeling light is inside me

when it isn’t, when most days

I wish it was over and the throne of my failure

would burn with myself along with it.

Chaos, eroding sickness,

and the brutal cold reign supreme

Everything I have done

is shattered in a pit

with no way to reassemble or resume.

I don’t want to be here

I don’t want the natural law

but only God’s mercy.

I cannot sing.

My memories are false, used-up

and dissipating.

Exhausted like a willow tree

is exhausted after a storm

but the storm keeps thrashing

and scooping all strong things once rooted

to the ground, releasing them across

the lawn like a brick thrown to the head,

like a dream inhabited in its ghoulish

madness, running but getting nowhere.

The suffering, the need

and the love that keeps

it together but not always.

Nerves dosed in gasoline –

fire just feet away but still at bay.

Breathing for one day, taking no messages, hearing

no extreme complaints. The doors are closed.

The balcony window is open. I step out,

there is a sky and a hawk merging with the clouds.

How much more can I hold?

And then it will be over, and I will hold no more,

not her frail hand, not her scent, not her eyes

with my eyes in deep and struggling prayer,

not her body leaning into my arms,

her full weight surrendered.

A day of reprieve,

wearing a costume and getting

in a car.

A day when the light

is unhooked from its source

and no one will say why

We will just carry on as through

this distress is natural

as though it is a wave to endure

instead of a captive fall.

A day of reverie,

the last time of gathering

and playing the role

The first Christmas at her home

The first time she will sleep through

most of it.

A day that we thought would not come

with her still with us.

So we are grateful

and we take this day

putting our mourning aside

this day – a winter-solstice flower

bearing its last bloom

before the advancing frost.

After the end,

when the end comes

and speaking is useless,

her home will be a torch

blown out – her turquoise eyes,

curtained. Sorrow will open

like a jar of dragonflies, fireflies

released as one.

And even then, when resigned

to the careful truth, the separation

will ache like a phantom limb,

like a stillborn child held, kissed,

never receiving.

As the end approaches,

I will have to force the basics

of breathe, sleep, eat

for her sake and those around me

who love her equally as I do.

I will forget about hope

and then later I will remember

her eyes, alit with playful joy,

her summers spent on proud

adventures and the way she loved me,

never giving up, generous

as an empathetic and beautiful queen,

loving me

without understanding me

but trusting me

all the same.

Repeating, the days

knowing a different day will only be worse,

veiling the eyelids, opening an emptiness

that will never be eased.

Repeating but nor forever, but

longer than anticipated. In spite

of the great love you feel, you feel

used-up, under appreciated.

But this is her now, diseased and drugged,

does not diminish her glowing

life-long compassion, her extravagant tolerance

and kindness, connection to everyone, her softness

that still peels away the crust in an instant

when her heart is touched, when faith

is required.

Duty has made work in the garden

impossible, waking up,

a barren chore.

The mountains have dropped,

flattened out into a steady plane.

Energy I gave up as mine, came back,

surprising me with my own resilience,

stamina to hold the days together one after another

until they became months, a way of life and service.

This gift like a curse like a gift

necessary to pluck

my soul from a rut it had no awareness it was even in

until out, until forced to hold a different tune

and play it until it becomes naturally possible,

a place of unbelievable challenge met,

a place to live without

decisions, conclusions,

live as an open-end-nerve swimming

stroke by stroke upstream –

most times lit on fire,

a few times resting on the bank,

looking around

tamed, soothed.

I cry out throughout the night.

I cry for the thousands due to die

who still remain unclaimed.

A slow step through misery, with moments

intermittent of a pure turquoise glow.

A gradual waking into loss and the definite

abyss of absolute letting-go.

Mid-sleep panic that wakes

me with its red tentacle squeeze

crushing my mind,

and the steady breath I need to endure

another tomorrow.

I cry out but I keep it contained –

my flesh without hope

my spirit committed to this sacred duty

as the rest of me is battered, broken-branched

bearing, feebly carrying

one collapsed body, now another.

A kiss

A curl

a look out

a look beyond

a rosy anticipation.

All things compare to each other

in the dark gloom of dissatisfaction,

meaningless activity

reaching its zenith then back to the nadir and

spinning again.

Painting helps and even singing a familiar song

but these things do not break the loop

or contain more than a flawed and temporary ease.

Hands down, Hands open and the mind saying

now- be brave!

Love is deeper than darkness

more unexpected and varied than the checkpoints

of delusion, chaos and dementia.

Love then, widespread.

Take on that love

and place what weighs you down

into the wet cement blocks

of this unhappy nightmarish decline.

Do this and inherit

the dreamy peace

and its mortal claim.

Do this and be devoted

to good service, knowing

all else is bloodshed,

must be shed to earn your keep

and beeline your way to

a maturing discipline,

an invincible pronouncement –

angelic terror

where only

this slender slice of light exits

to squish through,

beckoning, supreme.

I do not know

the treatment

the reasons

for such a grand tribulation

I have only achieved this interval

of a tiny budding joy,

a respite from the imploding friction.

I do not know if it is more than

a respite, if it is a crossing over,

a victory over infection and chronic chaotic influences

but today she walks a little stronger, limping still

but improving her gait.

Today the Earth is this simple location,

open to the angels and to recovery.

I did not expect this calamity, collapse of

every dream, but my eyes are lifting.

I don’t need a massive harvest, just food

enough to sustain and faith enough

for a mild liberation.

Melody screeched to a halt,

bubble big, too big, extinguished.

I relinquished my faith for answers.

Gruesomely unattractive

in full sight

in sharp black and white

immutable, I wanted

control like some want pleasure,

like one without restrictions

or moral aptitude.

Demons aggressively demanded my trust

underserved, making up stories

to turn failures into victories.

Hell is the steel-illusion-force of truth inverted

where there is no bowing down to the greater

authority, who is God, in charge,

unpredictable, not a pawn to use to

increase power, not a valium pill

to ease my anxiety while

traversing the treacherous unknown.

In that journey there is only one activity,

only faith resuscitating,

the outcome irrelevant –

a blue streak across a grey sky,

feasting on surrender.

Sandbox throughout the vastness

take away the end of time

and I will slide like a globe,

like a planet, bursting stars

as I go, grounding suns and

drowning blackholes in my wake.

I will peel back tomorrow,

compost it into a Sunday secret

gasping for a solitude it will never find

or play-in again.

Take the hunger from Infinity and

I will be open as an abyss, spending money

like everyday is my birthday, my death day.

I will give birth away from

the tempting waters of deception

that conceal choice in hesitation

that drive the mystic to forsaken symbolism,

that pull the spine from its vertebrae, rotating

in one split-second choice,

while looking at it, desiring it, looking like

something worth the price of a soul.

Boredom demands at least a breeze,

at least a far-off flutter to speak the hope

that angels are real.

Take us out of this passageway,

underground mazes, mole homes

that imply safety. The sun is a sea lion.

We will ride beside him and he will coach

us to swerve and flip,

avoid the jellyfish and the stingray.

Meaning will pour like rain on the top

of our surfaced heads –

a storm, this sickness, just another high wave,

just another necessity to dive deeper,

lungs and cells heavy, heavier

to avoid the overhead storm.

Inside, full of hot nerves

sinking without the sight of tentacles

or a slice of coral

to latch onto.

Your faculties, twisted,

breaking logic into shards.

Freedom came like a larger stone to carry,

duty like a sunburn, burning, causing

the first and second layer of skin to blister.

Useless music passes, cannot be kept

or remembered. The space is traveled

knocking against corners, bruising bones

and the remains of visions.

Stings on the pads of your feet

in the white of your eyes.

Inside, we are a tall-tower rubble,

a stack of concrete broken blocks

and bodies

and grief that last generations.

Inside, there is a ship enticing

we cannot board,

a mutual weariness,

a ghostly outage blackout,

blinding us from seeing

sharp corners, soft cushions,

the way to retrieve

a glass

in the kitchen, on the counter

of already poured, useful water.

Blended

into this scenery, this sick bed

and the watered-downed horizon.

It is weak with over-empathizing

tearing crusts off until all protection

is gone from my soft mushy core.

I cannot acclimatize to this grief,

her life-force-fading drawn into my own

bruised blood of doom, dooming my

own cells and strength into this unfair despair,

unsoothable scorch and decay.

A washing down after every visit, care-day

so I do not mimic the symptoms

of death and dying and the aching

anguish of helplessness.

This path will not lead

to a garden but to a cliff,

a farewell without ever coming back.

Each step toward the edge is torture

when taken, is forced not taken because

there is no standing still against it,

no turning around, the inevitable is absolute.

This path is darkness, and this darkness

is complete love – heavy, high above,

a terrifying incarnation.

Turn to me, I turn

skinned,

striking a blow

to the inner circle.

My soul is a peanut,

two parts, shelled, asymmetrical.

Unity is divine, to kill

is never excusable or brave or

or holy.

The bloodwind is the wind

that turns to defeat every journey

in disaster.

Take a mouthful – swirl the grey slime

of decline and the sharp spikes

of uncertainty, to swallow and know this

is what is meant to be

and what you have is this moment

to love and this moment again

to love

and the rest is not worth one thought,

is too much to take in,

so take in and yield to its power.

Chips of clear and broken glass.

Will I make this destiny-duty

intact or burn out on a hospital bed,

drained to the point of no return?

The stones are joy. I keep my smile

pressed on, my impatience under breath

and my dignity on a wire – pulled and tugged

by her unnecessary necessities.

When I am tired

the guilt pores in like

castor oil, down the wrong pipe

into the windpipe as I struggle

to regain our once synchronized flow,

but it will not return or rewind, as her love

only shows in momentary flickers now

before she dives again into these catacombs

collapsing.

She is owned by the morphine

pumping into her bloodstream

at regular intervals, pumping its purpose

to nullify her pain, while twisting mental foreign

tracks through her brain that torture her

with their relentless sticky grid

and serpents’ faces rising, telling her

she is owned, robbed of her

treasured independence, confined to home,

watching her once happy socializing light darken,

and you love her, you know her. You know

for a while

the monster will chomp at the moon,

will take the glow from her view,

soil every brilliant horizon,

will capture her honoured seat,

even conquer her spiritual home,

for a while

death’s rotting belly

will do what it must do,

bloat and swell

foul, naturally cruel.

Dream-self

destiny-self

never align

As soon as the shackles have cracked,

a new cage has formed,

taking away the morning light,

a chance to see the phenomena

of untainted being.

I have fallen into usefulness

like a bottomless sewer pit, falling, nothing

broke, just the drain of gravity in my bones

as I fall, lacking

the gift of appreciation and the possibility

of a safe landing.

Selling parts secretly owned

but never named. Scraping off

the daily dread to find a hope.

Hoping her suffering soul

will be reconciled in a flash,

unscathed when the new one begins,

budding, blooming into the opening,

the center of the ring,

enveloped in tenderness eternal.

Then the peace she gained by her natural

good heart will expand and blot out her

anxieties, her struggles for control.

She will be unharmed, in a state

where joy overwhelms with a constant

ecstasy sustainable and God is beside her

within her and all around her, swirling, caressing,

like God has always been, only now with a certainty

that even the most faithful servants

(inside time

inside gravity)

have never known.

Purely dying

like the universe

bottoming out,

letting it all go into

a sinkhole oblivion.

Purely fear of losing

the definite, the breathing lungs

in the body on the bed

and the heart-seized and blind from

its atomic power.

Purely God

holding the stick and strings,

concealed and blanketing,

preparing her soul for this

divine beginning.

The hall light is dim.

The curtains rustle forward.

Her eyes, once wet with anxiety’s tears,

now see the angels surround, the truth

of boundless love, for her, for all.

Last days

Dark days

dangerous death

at my doorstep,

swinging its hips to-and-fro.

Burning body, cracked, gnawed

away by insect bites, rodent bites

and the big blackhole open-mouth, forsaken.

Take what you must, but take it now,

swiftly, cover the core and the extremities

with your weight and then lift that weight

into the light of the sun, glorious

as a sparkle-water-wave-ripple

and a solitary hawk merging with the horizon.

Let her go like that hawk, pure in spirit

as she is, kind and soft as a child as she is.

Let her go into a dream that turns from

a dream into heaven’s threshold,

where she crosses over filled with your glory,

and my father looking on

with steady, welcoming eyes.

Outer nerves,

the madness of rise and decline,

undulating like an erratic wave,

the body joined to the illusion,

to past conclusions

and repetitive patterns remolded but unchanged.

Anxiety and intuition smudged

into one dim light.

I bow to the blowing wind, to the ignorance of now.

I hold her hand more now than I did as a child.

Tears rest for a while but lack any regulation.

Slow as a sloth but unpredictable as a storm.

Each day expends

what once was a normal week of energy.

Downward is the secret.

Bend in the direction of whatever gives.

The night is full of apocalyptic dreams,

solar flares and precautions, preparations

to minimize the coming death-blast charring burn.

The night season comes

and Earth is mine to hold,

witness its mark

and its gathering decay

while you sleep in an unconscious

darkening – skin around your mouth

turning blue, and inside that open circle,

inner lips peeling rice-paper fine

and your tongue like a dried log, that I keep sponging,

trying to saturate and regain its malleable form.

Your eyebrows twitch in what the nurses

promise me is not pain, promised me

you are comfortable

even though

for three days and three nights you

have lingered in a grizzly dehydrated shadow-stasis.

These days are like years, ripping away my trust,

my faith, my understanding of mercy,

solidifying the power

of bone-chiselling dread.

I love you, more in your helplessness,

in your patience for the final command, lingering,

red sores forming under your eyes,

fingers cold, purple pale and never grasping.

I stay with you in that place, even when

I sleep, I never sleep without you with me.

I love you and I hurt for you

and I want your release from this

brutal collapse of your form.

Why or even how you are lingering so long,

even the doctor can’t say.

I think you are buffering us from the pain of your loss

I think sometimes maybe mercy burns

hotter than punishment.

And these times

life surpasses understanding,

when the bottom current over quicksand thins,

breaking the chrysalis, clearing the way

for an unwanted redemption.

I am lifted

Blood on a field   Blood in a cloud

and then so many

streams flowing, unassuming.

I take your hand, lean

over you and kiss your forehead,

weeping, praying, saying

again and again I love you, thank you.

Your breaths are short, coming from below

not from your chest, but from your deepest gut,

stillness, ease, a letting go.

I drop like a bird on your shoulder.

I know you are leaving. You know

it is a beautiful alchemy, accumulation

of a life so gloriously lived. I tell you

to take Jesus’ hand and he will take you

to the golden tender light of eternal heaven.

You take his hand, and God

has become the atmosphere,

encapsulating, removing time.

Your last breath is more

a soft sigh than a breath,

not a cross-wind of struggle,

not a brush-stroke of “But wait..”

You are gone.

Seagulls fill the view from the window,

circling, joyful in their angelic form.

You are free.

My heart has merged with yours,

forest blue, deep and rich and forever.

My mother, my powerful ally,

friend for all ages – goodbye,

the six-month journey to this point

was treacherous, the last weeks, tortuous,

but these final moments were divine,

was God’s grace in full view, mercy

that healed all pain gone before,

resurrection visible like spread-out water lilies

or Elysian Fields, sublime.

            My mother, the sky is again yours,

embracing the seen and unseen spectrums.

Your sky is prophecy, feeding

the bedrock and the water’s reflection,

all parts proved sacred, identical

to the immutable moving whole.

Allison Grayhurst has been nominated for “Best of the Net” five times. She has over 1,400 poems published in over 530 international journals, including translations of her work. She has 25 published books of poetry and six chapbooks. She is an ethical vegan and lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.