*True Story*
i’ve told you about the window of crosses
but there is also a window of dolls
not far away
a few doors down
squeezed into a small space
a collection of tiny faces
all sat to gaze outside
glass eyes watching
buses go by
i’ve tried to count them
to swift
or they change
the number never the same
a few doors from the crosses
glass eyes watches
the dolls haunt the window
guarding the room
in their permanent silence
Anne Harrison 09.10.17
…How life has changed in 5 years?
Sometimes I lay awake at night and self destructive thoughts creep into my mind. It’s as though old me wants to drag me back into the darkness. I do not ‘fit’ into society’s image of the ‘norm’ (never have). So I question my life, who I am? What I want to be? If I should have been a mother? Looking back – thinking ahead. Lost in what was or what could be? Yet here, right here in the now… I’m just a restless soul who can’t sleep, questioning life to an empty orange sky…
Anne Harrison
Written 09.10.12
Edited 09.10.17
…The value of friendship…
So mine is a simple life, I see friends I grew up with so fantastically successful, which makes me love them all the more, for they still have time for me. I’m not rich, never will be, I scrape enough to get by and that’ll do. Because true wealth isn’t measured in pounds and pence. It’s about being content, my life is simple. And I am content, which makes me rich in ways money can never buy. I love and adore my friends for all the support and fun they have shown me over the years, I’m so thankful, I just hope that I am a good enough friend to them in return xxx
Originally Written 05.10.13
Re-posted 05.10.17
Still valid, even four years later… Friendships change, people come into our lives, some leave, move away, drift apart and others remain like a core support.
…There is no value to this!
Anne Harrison
*True Story*
each day I pass – upon my way
a singular window of intense decay
the grime thick – obscuring view
no clear glass – no curtains new
grey dust and bird shit blocks out the light
no sign of life – not day nor night
now the curious thing is
not the dirt or decay
but the crosses upon the glass
that ward the way
palm crosses
wooden crosses
small crosses
metal crosses
hidden behind the dirt
religious icon
hiding hurt ?
craving protection?
i often wonder who dwells within
a horror movie rages
a secret locked in the dim
i almost imagine bible pages
tacked to the wall
or a trick of the light
each morning i pass it all
and again each night
no answers beyond my imagination
then one day
gone
Anne Harrison 05.10.17
I love words.
The way they dance together to create illusions in your mind.
Scenes dressed up in 26 letters. Woven with grace to inspire emotion.
But I am a bumbling fool when it comes to the liquid poetry of the master of words.
Yet I am fortunate enough to have been witness, stood in the audience, entranced by powerful beauty.
Words laced together – impossible to decipher when poetry ended and lyrics began if they ever even parted company in the immortal dance of words and music.
I found myself with my eyes closed, tears balancing on my lashes, not completly falling… I’m lost, swaying, captured by the entrancing performance. The raw energy of the audience sorrounding me. All ages, all walks of life, all gathered… Singing, dancing, laughing, crying, drinking, kissing… Such naked emotion… Such passion…
I wonder how something, someone, can be so dynamic, brash yet so emotional. I am utterly swept away, I feel like I can leave my body and soar beyond this world, into the realm of words, where I see paintings created by illusion.
The flow of music maybe slow, it maybe near still, it crashes it flows, it rises and it is manic… All at once… In a interwoven creation of perfection from mayhem.
I am an amateur with words, a pretender, I bow my head to the surgeon of words.
Finally I allow my tears to fall free and it feels like raw love.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Thursday September 28th 2017
Anne Harrison 03.10.17
He awoke.
It was dark.
He was still bound.
His limbs ached.
But it was a shallow ache compared to the unbearable ache in his chest.
Raw grief gnawed away at his very soul.
Flashback memories.
Multicoloured vivid gore.
Steaming blood on white frost.
Tears sprung to his eyes and then froze on his cheeks…
He couldn’t remember passing out, but a thick head and a tender bump on the back of his skull lead to the conclusion that he must have been struck when they bound him tightly.
Time was disorientating – The lingering darkness could indicate dawn or dusk – Not as pitch as night nor the feeble grey of day. The ill light supplied no hint to location or circunstance. Yet slow lazy stirrings gave him to believe it was another freezing dawn.
Indeed it wasn’t long until a thin pale woman approached clad in furs and skins. She roughly checked his bonds grunting content that they were secure. She then placed the rim of a shallow bucked to his cracked lips, within fresh milk, still slightly steaming yet cooling all too swiftly – possibly yaks milk – he cared not and drank deeply with welcome relief.
The woman withdrew the milk and gripped him by the chin, dirty fingernails dug into his face as she tilted his head this way and that, then checked his teeth – Again with a content grunt.
“I am Onlo!” She spoke in the common tongue, thick with a strong rounded accent. “You are ours now – You are tribe boy.”
He wondered exactly what she meant by that, a sudden fear struck him, that maybe these wild people fed on teenage boys many many miles away from his warm safe home.
“You work for tribe now – You work – You get fed.”
That at least supressed his uncomfortable fears, but nothing could ease the heave grief eating away at his heart. Sadly he resigned himself to his fate and simply nodded in reply – to show he understood.
Onlo grunted again and worked to release his bonds. She cast her arm out wide, there was nothing for miles, just vast empty miles. “You run – Boy – You die.” He nodded again, and again another grunt in reply.
Glancing around the camp, as he rubbed the feeling back into his cold aching limbs, he saw no sign of the dozen traitors – The Kings Guards who had betrayed and murdered his father – were gone… It was painfully obvious that they had traded his life for safe passage home. Anger bubbled up from deep inside, an insane rage, only held at bay by that bitter grief he carried. Onlo had pulled him roughly to his feet, barking orders at him – somewhere between the common tongue and wild speak – that would be something he would need to learn swiftly.
“Your name Boy – What to call you?” The question cut through his foggy thoughts, he hesitated to reply. His Mother had gifted him a Regal double-barrelled name to suit her Royal nature. After her death his Father had started to shorten the name – creating a comfortable informal nickname that all used. Now his Father too was gone and he felt that the name had gone with him.
Yet he didn’t want his Fathers name to fade into obscurity (like the face of his Mother)
“My name is Kane.” The words rolled from his tongue and it felt apt…
… Onlo just grunted …
Anne Harrison 02.10.17
For over six long weeks the Father and Son had lead a dozen of the Kings finest Footmen South-East through the mountain pass, beyond the Kingdom of the colours they wore.
Following an invisible thread – woven between two souls for countless lifetimes.
No map nor compass could aid their trek, just instinct and dreams. A thin hope that they would somehow stumble across the missing Princess.
Nothing beyond the mountains resembled any form of civilisation, vast rolling moors, scattered naked trees, meagre settlements of wild folks, freezing marshes and the constant forlorn cry of the bitter east wind.
This was an exhausting march and the further from home they travelled, the further into the eastern realms, the harsher the weather, as winter decended upon the empty planes.
A thick blanket of frost smothered the land, carrying with it the threat of bitter weather – more hinderence to an already futile journey. There were no suppiles, nothing to hunt, the dead trees, decaying and rotten would not burn and there was no shelter against that relentless cutting east wind.
Yet still the boy drove onwards in his desperate search – further from people, further from normality… Marching onwards beyond the edges of carefully hand drawn maps…
… into the realms of roughly sketched outlines, crudely drawn by wild hunters – Yet even those native to this land were wise enough to have packed up their camps and resort to the west, to more barable climates.
The search party passed several such caravans – beastly men and their scrawny women, packed up on yaks and sledeges, destined for a winter gathering at the base of the Eastern Mountain Range – Beyond the reach of the vile winter…
The betrayal came, not through design, but by desperation.
Subtle secret exchanges took place, a series of left signs, silent indication of intent. Followed by a single face to face meeting twix the wild men and the starving soldiers.
An arrangement was laid in place.
A price negotiated and the scene set.
Late, on another freezing night, as they huddled and struggled to burn some damp wood… The dozen guards struck as one, in a blur of activity they errupted into violence to enact the carefully laid plan.
Blood stained the frozen ground – steaming as it poured generously from devistating fatal wounds.
The boy was screaming for his father – the wind caught his hysterial cries and tossed them around the vast bleak landscape.
Bloodstained and remorseless the dozen men bound the teenanger tightly, face down against the solid earth – yet they made no attempt to silence him… His screams were a beacon for the natives to engage with the soldiers.
Their bargian – the boy in exchange for passage home – the price… Kane’s lifeless body slowly freezing against the bitter solid earth…
Anne Harrison 01.10.17
