By Benjamin Harrison
Suddenly, my introspective musings were scared away by a door opening followed by soft footsteps approaching.
�Robert?� said the voice. I turned to the direction it emanated from, trying to focus my eyes in the darkness. �Robert, are you ok?�
�Yes,� I said calmly. How long had this stranger been hovering over me, watching me, ascertaining my thoughts?
�How did you get into my room?� I asked. No one has visited me in 3 months, or maybe 3 years, I can�t remember.
�My Dear Robert,� a voice said softly. �I let myself in. You always keep your door unlocked, silly.
�Clare?� How did she find me? Were the others still with her, feeding her the fruit of contradiction and forgetting?
The sticky sweet scent of her perfume filled up the room as she moved closer, affirming my realization. Out of the darkness, a face ascended first, then a torso, and finally a full body as she walked up to me out of the shadows lingering in the corner. She was coming closer, close enough that the vast indifference of stars shone in her eyes and the smile of a seraphim unfurling its wings framed my field of vision. This certainly wasn�t the Clare that I remembered, the broken heroine with a lifeless will and a reflection that gently cradled it � a progeny banished by those who determine the worth of the world.
She sat directly opposite me with an antique coffee table dividing her renewed exuberance from my stale memory of the she, she used to be.
�How long are you going to continue this childish self-imposed exile from society? It�s not healthy,� she said.
I looked intently at her, and carefully thought through the words my fevered brain was conjuring up as an answer.
�As long as is necessary,� I said sharply. �You didn�t have a problem leaving me here to sit alone in the dark when our life began to bore you.�
�That�s not true! She responded. �You asked me to leave, remember? You thought our relationship was where desolation and nostalgia met.�
I quickly turned away from her and stared at the arms of dusk enveloping the sun through my dusty window. She has a point, I thought. It is then I realized that I really never existed, but merely filled up time with my consciousness. It was vital to wretch myself apart to birth myself.
�I just came to say goodbye, so, goodbye Robert.�
Why appear only to say you�re leaving when you haven�t even been here until now?
Before I could respond, she got up and left promptly, with not so much as a side-glance. The scent of her perfume lingered for a little while, as if to remind me that she had been here. Soon, it too died out, in a groan of dissipation.
As I looked out of the window, I waited for the dawn that would transform me into a child that is dead to wonder. I thought she would come back, but that was over ten years ago and I�ve scarcely had any visitors of real significance since Clare appeared to disappear. In fact, I�ve had no visitors.
I still wonder what might have been.
By Benjamin Harrison
She has no name. Well, she does have a name but the exuberant youth, career, aspirations, children and grandchildren that once revolved around that name are no longer associated with the weathered body we are speaking of. The essence of her self is no longer here and thus her persona has faded, rendering here a slightly different person altogether.
She is a being remarkably different from the woman she once was. The contrast is chilling. This is what death looks like. A marionette cast out of the tragedy with heartstrings severed. Her body tells me of dreams, desires, love, hate, and fear. Her eyes are vacant, but concealed in their dilation is a snapshot of death as it approached her. He leaves his smile in one of a thousand miles between you and her synapse. Everyone sees him before the end. He comes in many forms, but always masquerades as a friend. In a lot of ways, he is a friend and for those with the sublimity of devotion to principle, the dance with death is nothing more than a slideshow of one�s life�a proper sendoff, so-to-speak. Conversely, for many the friendliness of death is enjoyed only until a moment before one�s final breath. The slideshow he presents to you isn�t you. You see, you will appear to look back on someone else�s life, because you made the one unforgivable offense in this existence: you never knew yourself.
This ages one for centuries in the blink of an eye. Even the fate of Dorian Gray pales by comparison. All this voyeurism into the self that you never knew will probably reveal little to you. In fact, it makes it nearly impossible for me to get your eyes closed because they are pried open eternally in search of you. Screaming silently with tears that will never come, carving canyons of regret from the frozen cheek on a face that will ultimately disappear.
By Benjamin Harrison
Shadows dance on the ashen face of Tisdale, the name that binds this house of mystery, until they�re beaten away by sight of the rising moon. Elegantly placed wall sconces illuminate the grand foyer, itself diminishing under the solid oak feet of a spiraling staircase, strengthened by generations of weary souls that lived and breathed and died on all three of Tisdale�s floors.
This magnificent old house appears at first glance to be an old schooner, forever lost and still searching the open sea. Set out on a journey to the world of the beyond, the world barely glimpsed at in painting or in song, but irrevocably recognizable the first time it hits you head-on.
The specters that roam the hallways are not ghostly souvenirs of the macabre. Their distant footsteps betray requited love. If one listens intently, you�ll hear the faint melancholy sounds of dueling grand pianos. The only evidence those two composers in love ever once made this house a home.
The story of Sheridan�s sword delicately hanging above the fireplace in the study might be apocryphal indeed. However, truth is inconsequential and mainly resides outside the French doors in this house of dreams.
The symmetrical but neglected English gardens, overwrought with the hands of those now forgotten, reel in the Virginia countryside while a wave of daffodils gently laps against their knees.
Yes, Tisdale is enshrouded with history, but does this lend to its mystery? The mystery in the passionate embrace between the living and the gone; the mystery of the swan that dies, without its song.
The postage stamp cemetery, separated from the main house by two modern house lots, speaks of �Edwards� and �Griffins� within its tiny hedgerow fence. Nature�s revenge has dealt the cemetery a quaint overgrown charm. The tombstones dot the landscape like little glistening teeth. Perpetually waiting to consume lost souls as they wander through.
Herein lies the mystery of Tisdale, and herein the mystery ends. The patrons are forever silent. Their voices carried off by history, frightened by a world spiraling out into the stars.
By Benjamin Harrison
Through a child's eyes
the looking glass is never
turned quite right.
A butterfly is sterilized
by a pin that holds
her tight.
The ants are marching down
an invisible line in the sand
one by one they outline
their collective plan.
Spiders licking crumbs
that are seasoned by the wind
they fold up Nature's napkins
when the dying light
begins.
The shadows chase the hill,
splintered by the trees
A bird is calling still
to his lover on the breeze.
Everything grows silent
as tomorrow rounds the bend
The child's eyes grow heavy,
his sense of wonder
ascends.
***
"Capturing First Light"
By Benjamin Harrison
Is infinity attributed solely to irreducibility,
or is time merely the beauty we can never see?
The smile of a Creator rests on Rodin's chin
of uncertainty, delicately restored by the intangible
hand of post-modernity.
Entranced by the sun, the moon dances on
to the sound of a composer that never belonged.
Deaf to the world, the galaxies swirl, but we awake
and begin thinking more important thoughts to
satisfy our addiction to ostentatious absurdities.
Some might have the realization that we are barely
here. For when we feel most alive, we mostly
feel fear.
Those few with strength of heart will capture
first light, much like the blind visionary that
saw more than night.
***
"Untitled 2"
By Benjamin Harrison
The anathema and the virtue
A figure contorting lovely, serene
Heaven�s immaculately rejoicing for
This beautifully resplendent being
The paradox and the dream
Interwoven with silently ephemeral
Things
Things that grow into changing shades of something new
Things that embrace the newborn as life begins anew
Maledictions, predictions of things
Yet to see
These things capture motion with
Graceful infancy
A tear at the center of the river mouth's sigh
Trembling sensations, those things are not I
They're feelings of hope forsaking the chance
Romantic illusions of love yet to dance
Terrors and wonders all must combine
To form the illusion of distance and time
Stop the delusion before you ever forget
The feeling of closure entrapped by regret
Don't waste the time using a sign without song
One half of an artist must die to belong
Dead meadows are calling the gilded birdcage
The songbird is rotting on branches of rage
Forsaking the soul spent trying in vain
To drown out life's thunder
With the purity of rain.
***
"Alive Like Suicide"
By Benjamin Harrison
This life is pointless
Not for you, for them
Self-help prophets in the acid bin
Jesus smiling on the needle down
Down is up until it's all the same
My heart is bleeding in
The floor below
Baked lip gloss neon afterglow
Plug it in to watch a picture run clean
Awake and dead or
Somewhere in-between
This is your world
Take it, I have to go
If you leave early
Then you'll miss the show
Don't change the channel
Or try and run, keep your
Eyes open, keep being
Numb
Snowflakes gather in a wishing well
Alive in heaven, boiling purest hell
Up the ante and you�ll get romance
Breathing slowly with naked eyes
The world is nameless but
Full of names
Diseases change us into
What we fear
Hollow vessels empty all
The same
We count our blessings with
All this fucking pain.
***
"Sublunary Nature"
By Benjamin Harrison
Yes, it is a strange desire,
But really aren't they all?
The surest measure of a height
Is how long it takes to fall
Passing moments fall into minutes
Counting backwards so it seems
The hours of light birth the night,
The years cut short the dream
For in a tale that's twice as bold
The recluse lies in wait
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