Light Pleasures

How deceptive is the feather
tiny strands on a strong shaft
lightness its very strength
bearing greatness aloft

Catching the light
in its oiled fingers
delighting the eye
with a prism of filtered colour

The feathers touch is
serious in its levity
each nerve ending wakes
from desperate slumber

my skin reaches out
towards the feather
goosebumps offering
each downy hair

delicate and teasing
in a wicked elision
of death and rebirth
the dead, discarded feather
gives me new life

Olivia Harris

small but strong

Sometimes when I speak, I feel my voice is slipping
past the ears and understanding of the world
As if I were, somehow, less of a person
less important, less deserving than my peers

Those who call themselves strong and powerful
those who think themselves unassailable
to all of you I say, there are no human fortresses
All that is real for us is pain and tears

Not everyone believes themselves invincible
the world resounds with cries and hollers for attention
but some of us, the meeker sweeter ones
sit and hurt and bleed inside,
Feelings turn to varices, until time
forces the haemorrhage

Olivia Harris

The Blade

I am a knife
Sharpened by life's whetstone
But also worn away,
My sparks scattered on society's gravel
My bone handle discoloured by rough treatment.

What can a knife be without a hand to hold it?
I am rattling, alone, in the dark
The drawer of life is shut
For me, only dust, and the crumbs of past encounters.

I cannot bury my grief in a shroud of rust
Even that is beyond me: I am stainless.
I must find new life blood to save me from
Fatigue of my very mettle
And to hide my reflection from myself.

A hand to guide me
A heart that beats
With selfish blood
Then I will feel human again
Once I can share my pain.

Olivia Harris

The Pheasant

I dreamt in a dream, I passed through your intestines,
Warm as the womb, dark as the night.
In the dream, you were a pheasant
Sprinting, dun-speckled and free, through autumn fields.
Our idyll had to end; the force of peristalsis
May not be trifled with, no not by lovers,
Nor by kings.
But our dream, alas, it was cut shorter still!
The thundering gun, the pulsing ebb of life,
And then the hunter's knife:
It spilled me into rain-grey desolation.
Smooth cozy caecum forfeit, there I lay,
On stubbled ground where sweating oafish men
Had lately raped the hillside of her hay.

Olivia Harris