Circles

Circles, (first draft completed in 2013), is a "collection" of sixty poems that form "loops" taking the traveler through a gammut of emotional experiences before completing the circle and ending up looking into a night sky. 

After "starting the loop" we enter the "first circle of desire" via a series of images to a "last circle of desire" filled with five elements in the form of five exotic women, before "completing the loop" sees the traveler deposited on the "sequined hem" of the universe and once more gazing at the stars.

Awe

Alone on the shore of eternity’s sequinned hem

And all that it enfolds

Endless realms stretch beyond my mind

And all that it can hold

Yet creation’s womb was smaller than a grain of sand

So tonight I playfully mask heavens glory

Cover everything that ever was

With my mortal hand

As You Were

Why did you do this to you?

Comprehensively change

Lack the heart to push through

Find yourself somewhere new

Why did you change your sweet face?

Languish, unknown, unseen

Where the sun never shines

Ageing, growing new lines

Yet I remember when you were beautiful

I still see you as you were

Why did you do this to you?

Choose to run from the truth

Spread to fill a sad lie

That everything is all right

Why do you hide in the dark?

Re-inventing the wheel

Hid under layers of dust

Where all emotion corrupts

Yet I remember when you were beautiful

I still see you as you were

Why did you do this to you?

Always push me away

My love still lingers behind

Another captive of time

Yet I remember when you were beautiful

I still see you as you were

I remember when you were beautiful

I'll always see you as you were

Daughter of the Beat

At first, like everyone we ever see, she’s an image, an assumption

Gazing from the page at me, from a time before I’d even heard

Her name, let alone stood on the cusp of these innermost thoughts

Lain bare as words for all to read.

I know my walk in this garden of candid prose will be unique

Seeking more than others seek, I'm following a path that’s

Mine to find, revelations from between the lines leading to

Appreciation.

On the day the photograph was taken, if I’m not wrong, her eyes

Reflected more than a cameras lens. An energy reaching out

Decades on – a fragile being, aware of her mortality

Knowing she’ll soon be gone.

Smiling, I'm enjoying alternating shades of light and dark

Finding depth beyond a perfect face, colour beyond

Black and white, happy that words can endure death

Making more than fitting epitaphs – they tell a story.

It’s through her words the beat goes on, she herself

Has gone but if eyes are indeed the gateway to a soul

I wasn’t wrong.  Turning the final page I also offer words

Hoping she’s found the peace that she deserved.

Equilibrium

My love is like a liquid, drink me slowly, don’t walk by

I’m as thin as tissue paper, as weightless as a sigh

Don’t leave me lost in darkness, a victim of false pride

We can get along so well if you don’t look deep inside

Don’t ask too many questions, accept what you see

I’ve no means of telling lies, I just speak truthfully

I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you, sainthood’s not my claim

Meet me half way between your pleasure and my pain

Leafing through the years we may find just cause

For the odd way that I see things so different from yours

A meeting of bruised apples fallen from a tree

Echoes of an Eden where we’d both prefer to be

If you can feel my sadness for the people that we were

Join me in my longing for a place we’d both prefer

I like to think there’s hope, the tunnel ending in a light

We’ll find out soon enough which one of us is right

Heart Shaped

This heart shaped memory

Sunk into the ground

Is marked with simple stone

In manifest devotion

Love lies subterranean

Drowned in the breaking

Of time’s restless waves

Sailing on an endless

Landlocked ocean.....

Hyena

I pick the bones of my elysian fields

As clock hands work their way around

A sad face marking passing hours

Spent scavenging your memory

From pictures that besotted me

I pull ragged little bits of love

All night through my longing plays

Like an insular game of lone charades

A dark sarcophagus held your heart

I tried to crack its outer shell

And win your shining x-ray smile

With futile hopes that lie exposed

You left with such indecent haste

Now burning questions sting my lips

As I lick this poisoned chalice clean

Savouring its strange metallic taste

At the end of the path that leads nowhere

All the answers to the riddle writhe 

Within me, myself and I - like a splendid carrion,

Served nightly in a thin membrane of dreams

Lump

The lump inside you

The lump in my throat

My metaphor

Your metastasis

My anger

Your acceptance 

My resistance

Your reticence

My diatribes

Your diagnosis

My weakness

Your will

My pulse

Your peace

My rage

Your rest

My present

Your past

Me here
You gone

Awake

Asleep

Vocal

Voiceless

My elegy
Your epitaph.....

Miracle

I heard your voice

A disembodied plea

Pregnant with the past

Calling out to me

Across the tides of time

The place where beggars chant

For some kind of release

From all the things they aren’t

I pen these codes lines

Like spiders on a page

Like voices on the breeze

Like all the games we played

All I have is this

A mirror soul I seek

Loving what you were

Plugging holes in me

Things can’t be the same

Now you’ve been and gone

Leaving memories

I recall at evensong

If I believed in God

But half of how I should

He’d open up your heart

Like any lover would

He’d whisper in your ear

Why you should be with me

Smear mud across your eyes

Until at last, you’d see

Rear View

All I had to do was subtly glance behind me

A surreptitious rolling of the eyes

To see you there, sitting in my present

Yet somehow belonging to the past

I wanted to see if I still found you beautiful

Traced the familiar contours of your face

A numbing sadness tugging at my heart

Feelings from another time and place

I heard your voice in the here and now

Felt your presence just behind

Not something I had to recreate

From the forbidden corners of my mind

Wishing I could say I hadn’t felt the yearning

A desperate desire to re-connect

Resolutely I drove on through gaps of silence

Always one to humbly genuflect

With trepidation I felt the old fires burning

Of the love you’d chosen to reject

I’ve often tried but there’s no going back

No dressing the wounds of your neglect

Wisdom’s lines trace the pain of learning

Framing the damage that’s been done

I pull away with no thoughts of turning

No more rear-view glances at “the one”

Ripples

Ripples spreading out

From the drowning of a stone

A moment spent together

Experienced alone

The beating of your heart

Sat briefly next to mine

All consummately swallowed
By the shifting sands of time

Tiger Balm

Sweet simmering tigress

She did things to me
From an oriental karma sutra
Seeming so tame
When I stroked her stripes
Growling gently
Just like a pet cat should

When I knocked
She let me in
When I tried to fuck her
Primal spirit stirred
She pursued me
Clipping my legs
Like I were a frail gazelle

In that moment

I sacrificed myself to her
To her perfume river smell
To her tiger balm
Laden with promise

Like the bars of old Saigon

Steeped in curling smoke

I wanted to be loved
For a very long time
Not guilt-stained Agent Orange
Rolled over and over
Like a helpless flower-power
Bombing Neolithic
Gutted and hung out to dry

I became a dead student
A dirty deformed dollar
Put through a waffle iron
By a delicious whore

My wilting body melting

Like a prawn cracker
On her rudely outstretched tongue

Heaven's Dull

What shall heaven be?

For an ant a cosy nest
For a chick its mother’s breast
For a cat all warm and cream

Tis only man that shall complain
Tis only man with fickle brain
Shall want the Lord to entertain
Heaven’s dull we shall complain

Dying Swan

I want to multiply exponentially
Until the world is full of me
people with whom I can agree
Thought clones from a central tree

Mirror, mirror in the wall
Who's the fairest one of all
My own crown and coronet
A dying swan with no regrets

Sweet Nothings

Least said soonest mended
So I said nothing
Never dared to utter
My unfathomable love

Mustn't cause offence
So I said nothing
Never ran the risk
Of saying how I felt

Mustn't rock the boat
So I said nothing
Even as I bled
From your neglect

Better to keep quiet
So I said nothing
Swallowed the pain
Of losing you for good

Grown men don't cry
So I said nothing
Lest a tremor in my voice
Should give the game away

All the times I said nothing
Lie stacked like corpses
Fading in my memory

All the times I said nothing
Lie within like tinder
Waiting for a match

All the times I said nothing

Lie within like tinder

Waiting for a match

All the times I said nothing
Beating balled fists
On the fortress of my chest

All the times I said nothing
Acting a non-speaking part
Unbearably repressed

Least said longest broken
I should have swallowed pride
Better to have loved and lost
Than never even tried

The Sequinned Hem

Alone on the shore of eternity’s sequinned hem

And all that it enfolds

Endless realms stretch beyond my mind

And all that it can hold

Creation’s womb waxed smaller

Than a grain of sand we’re told

And I mask the heavens glory

On this starlit night alone

Span everything that ever was

With hands as big as galaxies

Peering through my mortal fingers

At alternate realities

Mark Harris has asserted his right under

Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

To be identified as the author of this work.