This is a lyrical, confessional poem about loss, longing, and survival, framed as an inner monologue spoken to an absent, idealized lover (“Isobel”).
The speaker is saying:
“I’m still alive because of the memory of you.
Even though you’re gone, forbidden, or unreachable, thinking of you keeps me breathing.
My life feels painful, repetitive, and mentally exhausting. I struggle with depression and memory.
Love—especially the memory of our love—is both my refuge and my torment. I hope that one day, spiritually or after death, I will find peace, healing, and reunion.”
What the Poem Is Not.
It is not a simple love poem.
It is not about a current relationship.
Furthermore, it is not optimistic in a conventional way.
It is about staying alive through memory, imagination, and faith, even when reality feels unbearable.
A raw, emotionally intense meditation on how the memory of a lost love keeps a person alive while they struggle with depression, time, and the hope of eventual spiritual peace.
Title.
The Sadness and Madness of Mario.
(A lone voice whispers)
The reason I still breathe is you, my missing old Italian lover.
Lost somewhere away from me in here.
Hidden in one of the many blue portals.
In this, The Great In-Between.
But when this dreamy yellow sunset before me cries its last daily breath.
As it's truly spent.
At the end of this, one of my long, rigorous days of being stuck climbing over life's many memories.
Which seem covered with so many sharp barbed wires.
Lost in a recurring daydream that's all mine.
Which causes my heart to beat like an orchestral drum on fire.
Hypnotized with a spinning mind filled with whispering, spellbinding, enchanting, inspirational words.
Pleadings to my guardian angels to try to take me higher.
To help me put out all those painful, old, familiar desires.
I always think in these quiet moments.
In this silver silence about why my paradigm is unbearable.
This one I currently struggle to walk through.
Created by the Great Collector of all Divine Revenues
Are we, me and you, Isobel? My missing love.
Simply just two of the many silent prayers, blowing like tragic, lonely snowflakes.
Lost in the vastness of the eternal, endless night sky?
Infinite cries of broken songs carried by invisible soft hands?
Upward, tantalizing sacrifices offered like emotional shining dimes.
To the everlasting Light. As they spin like golden autumn leaves in full flight.
Borne aloft in the tempestuous whirlwind of Father Time's swirling grey dust.
Joining the symphonies of millions of hearts, calling out in unison.
In written or spoken rhymes.
All screaming for just someone in whom to love and trust.
Rapturous but maybe beating blue.
Does my heart still sing our now forbidden love songs and heartfelt prayers?
Loudly, like those unbearable screams once uttered at the great Battle of Waterloo.
You may ponder as your soul wanders.
Yet know this as a taste of my life's sweet kiss.
Inside I'll always know.
We shared an extraordinary moment of such divine bliss.
And as long as we quietly live apart or even die.
No matter where we both venture or go.
As long as the days are filled with life and the tired sun still rises. Sending out her golden rays to energize.
I can only hope my God-given prayers will be answered with my eventual spiritual rescue by my spirit guides and guardian angels when they stand before me.
Free of all their earthy disguises.
And even if all my life's sunsets have all disappeared and gone and died.
And an exotic dark knight stalks all the new lands.
I might then live within.
As those, I leave behind.
Stand by my graveside and cry as my soul glides by.
When those low drums of Heaven rumble and when my heart no longer burns.
As that old piano within my mind begins overflowing with poetic melodies and loudly sings.
If that familiar, eerie noise of lost love blows its silvery horns.
Once again, that drumbeat of fire that once burned pleads to return.
Announcing the arrival of the Dark Man from Depression's many farms.
Whom one should not mourn, wearing his fake crown of thorns.
I’ll dream this illustrious daydream I still treasure.
Of walking hand in hand with you.
On yellow beaches at midnight.
With the blue waves of the Pacific rolling in.
And as we stand looking deeply into each other's eyes.
With you as my eternally baptized queen, Isobel.
Married and living together forever in a beautiful dream.
A safe place I can only pray to dwell within.
Where my broken heart can heal as it no longer yells or screams
(C) Copyright John Duffy
Image shared under fair usage policy.
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