Silhouette by Mark A. Harrison
If by loving, you mean
conspicuous consumption
of one another’s souls,
devouring each hour
yet hoarding minutes
like secret treasure,
deluding ourselves
that we can keep time
tucked away, safe
in the faulty vaults
of memory – and yet
nowhere is entropy
more apparent, more
glaringly obvious
than in that
which we think
we remember.
– T.H.
(02.13.14)
Trees in Motion by Mark A. Harrison
If anything living
could house the sun
I bet it would look like you
Music from another world
makes us want to dance
hard enough to fall
into the future present
following fireflies
up into the silent
olive branches
sipping lilac soda
under spreading granite trees
Instead we reminisce
on the transience of memory
the still-green four-leafed clover
pressed between pages
of Webster’s pocket dictionary
Dust in the hallway
where we used to run
wrapped in ragged sheets
through our cheap
match-book museum
pretending to be ghosts.
– T.H.
Blue Twin by Mark A. Harrison
diminished
where the hollow of her arm
once held you safe
against all
the familiar demons
where comfortable wrinkles
once nuzzled your back
the antique linen, buttercup gold
now stretched taut, iron-straight
cold as stone and empty houses
by its emptiness refines
the very idea of loneliness
we are borrowers, only
love is never ours to keep
only to brush by, with a sigh
and a wish, like an exhaled breath
in a vacant room.
– T.H.
Study in Frost by Mark A. Harrison
Fall is a tricky season to navigate. Capricious and sly, at once whimsical and treacherous, full of sharp things hidden under blankets of leaves, radiant days of crackling sunshine followed by dark night winds whispering portents of ice and snow – a reminder of unsettling impermanence.
Ten days later, she was still on her own;
I was fast asleep, a thousand miles away
dust floated, thick as rocks
in the belt of Orion.
He wondered,
do we really breathe this?
Two weeks later, she met the road,
covered in dust from
her latest encounter
with the laws of physics;
Mud clung to her thick soled boots
in her eyes, a light, hard
as scorn from a loved one;
She stomped on the pavement
once, twice
dust settled around her in a cloud.
I was eating breakfast,
looking out the eastern window,
the burnt toast flaking charcoal
onto tongue and lips and fingers,
And he said, in characteristic delay,
are you really going to eat that?
Three months later, she clawed her way
the final few feet to the
snow shrouded peak,
Looked down at the world in wonder
and forgot all she knew.
Everyone she had ever loved
vanished in an instant;
she let out her breath in a sigh
of great peace, contentment
and relief.
I was washing dishes
in the light of early evening;
cats bumped my legs,
crying for dinner
while he, sat watching television.
Hey, take a look at this, he said
but as I walked into the room
the walls began to fade,
the furniture grew clear as glass,
the cats became twin puffs of air
and flew out through the
crack in the kitchen window,
and he, and I, passed out
of her mind,
forgotten forever
in the sudden glimpse
of sunset kissed mountain peaks,
an eagle far below;
frost bitten toes
and a sense, finally, of a future
without a past.
– T.H. (2002)
Orbital by Mark A. Harrison
When the restlessness takes over, climbs out of the heat or the dark or the sound of traffic and crawls under the skin, it’s hard to explain to someone who’s never felt it. Part itching claustrophobia, that makes you want to find the nearest pool and dive to the bottom and stay there ’til nightfall, part wanderlust, part mid-life crisis, and yet paradoxically under it all a voice that pulls at your eyelids and weighs you down and whispers “sleep…”
Empty
hollowed out
all the music
fills the banks to overflowing
comes out dirty, muddy
clogged with weeds and branches
old coke cans and bike tires
rusted and twisted
while above, the birds and butterflies
fighting scraps of sunset light
bat shadows and clouds of twilit starlings
rush and swoop and fling themselves
in fits of Brownian motion
all against the squeak and chitter
of the coming night
trying to fight against the tide
sure strokes
cutting through the undertow
but I’m getting nowhere
faster every day
always the constant, sweet ache
surges of heat and hunger
through the deep blue grey
sometimes I’m drowning in beauty
the happiness hurts worst of all
cascading broken chords
like standing under a waterfall
pummelled by emotion
unable to give it voice
like I’m flailing in the dark
for some switch, cord, or curtain
always just out of reach
and every once in a while
my fingertips brush its edge
and I can feel the faintest
electrical breath against my skin
and I’m reaching, farther up, deeper in, higher
but it’s always falling, in the end
always falling away, fading, slipping, diving
sinking down, out, away into the dark
and the door closes, nothing behind the curtain,
only air, imagined memory, illusion
fractured silence.
– T.H.
The Trouble with Doorways 