If grief could speak

 

(A lone voice whispers)

As the silvery midnight sun slowly rose

I drank my smooth twenty-five years old malt whiskey

Tasting exquisitely my Monday blues

I looked up to the faraway twinkling stars

Wondering where do
those lost really go

After this mortal show

Is it to alabaster endless halls filled with young or old familiar family or friends

Warm conversations and continuous soft music and priceless red wine

Or somewhere else

Cocooned between this world and the deep divine

Just relentlessly exchanging stories and memories

For there is no longer time

Will they still remember us and send us a sign

A soft kiss on the cheek

A red robin or maybe even a random white feather to always remind us

They still wait for love drunk

Longing for a much sought after embrace

Like a drop of spiritual moonshine

Will we ever see them again
Or are they simply lost forever

No matter how hard we pray and mutter
Amen

Copyright John Duffy

Just thinking about my beloved sister and the endless numbers, who take their last breath every day. Salute.

 

If Angel Gabriel Could Speak in 2021. The Year of Covid.

(A lone voice whispers)

I have lived and walked for more than a thousand years

Amongst you

The ever-growing and changing masses

I have heard and answered so many heartfelt prayers

Spoken in the long shadows and convinced so many to stay the course

Whenever they felt doubtful as things seem to fall apart at the seams

Or just got increasingly worse or perverse

To always remember

No matter how magnetic the seductive pull of temptation

To appreciate how green their own grass is

I've held soft and hard hands

Consoled the young and old and tried to comfort

So many crying silently in the painful mazes of their own darkness

Its unspoken number is truly unfathomable

I have been a whispering Mage appearing in diverse forms before so many others

Sent by the Almighty on High to try to nurture and encourage

Endowing them with a higher power to always find the strength and courage

In rekindling their inner flame once lit so long ago by a glorious sacred candle

To stand strong and be willing and able

For I'm indomitable

An angel sent to bring hope to even you and all the others who may feel inconsolable

For I'm just a bringer of inner peace

For God is my strength and my ministry

One that speaks of everlasting mercy and promise

No matter how dark your worlds many changing political landscapes or forests

My favourite name of all is Archangel Gabriel

And if you find one of my billions of white feathers that I sometimes leave

Especially for those beautiful heartbroken souls

Whatever their pain and tragically emotional reasons in 2021

The mournful year of Covid 19 to grieve

To help find hope or whatever they need

To once again be encouraged to believe

As you live through your limited mortal life

Just pick one up and keep it real close in your coat or trouser pocket as a good luck locket

For it will help bring you peace and tranquillity

Throughout all those morose long cold winter or hot summer nights

When you need to rekindle
your old belief in a religious phenomenon

Whilst seeking to conquer or accept

Your physical or mental vulnerabilities

To help you carry on

No matter what seemingly hard endless times

You may appear to have fallen on

Copyright John Duffy

If Love could speak

 

Press play before you read. Salute.

(A lone voice whispers)

Yes I, from whence all gloriously emotionally notorious pain

And sexual heartbreaking anxiety but soul-rousing feelings stems

Like the precious aroma of an exquisite expensive perfume

Invading like an insidious thief

Any particular room

I'll invite you  

If you dare welcome me in

To see the world through new crystalline lens

As your soul finally matures

As it's put through my exceptionally complicated

But sophisticated extraordinary fires

To be eventually willingly or unwillingly cleansed

Copyright John Duffy

Image by the so-talented Marco Tenaglia

The Jilted Grooms Monologue

 

(A lone voice whispers)

Is there nothing more wicked that you could do to me in front of everyone to see

As I sit here alone in this beautiful vicar's annexe room

But all said done
I'm still crying out for you and for some much-needed hope and sympathy

All I ever wanted was your blessings

Love and understanding so I could change

And find peace for all those sad times I went missing after work

I know you heard me crying

When you saw me in church last week before the wedding

Praying and kneeling

Trying to burn away all those old feelings and temptations which are still terrifying

I just wish you'd forgive me

For deep inside
All this old pain is constantly swirling and rising

And it's why I'm no longer smiling

For life without you as my fabulous wife feels like I'm slowly dying and being cut open by emotions sharp knife

Raw sensations which just keep twisting

Growing and shouting to be heard in this eerie silence

I know there can be no more hiding

No refuge from the irrefutable truth why you left

No more buying expensive sparkling diamond rings to turn off your warning bells and sirens

No more red wine and opening shining elegant gifts

No matter how perfect the timing

So I'll just keep trying to cope

Hoping in time I'll grow strong enough to keep fighting

Strong enough to find out who's waiting on the other side

Strong enough to stop drowning in tears

Strong enough to find hope and try to restart celebrating

And in time
God willing

Find me that piece of treasure that will instantly light up my sad life like you once did

Like a bolt of bright lightning

But until then
If you ever see me crying

Just know it's my price for trying to come into Gods house to exchange vows

Whilst carrying an invisible suitcase filled with stories of cheating and lying

Copyright John Duffy

 

Did you know reincarnation exists?

(A lone voice whispers)

Did you know

You're part of a carefully designed operation of such epic proportions

Its depth is unimaginable

A subtle design filled and masquerading

Embedded within deep spiritual emotions

A mythical vacuum

In the shape of sometimes
inconceivable silver keys home

A real reason to beseech kindness and love to atone

Whatever the seasons

We are all sinners at some level

All said and done

But it's an eternal battle

For we are limitless and constantly reborn

So it's one that still can be won

You don't have to be devout saints

You don't have to mimic faithful religious figures or their only son

You don't have to live life in dim shadows
as non-engaging devout monks

Or grace the worlds many black and white dance floors

Like quiet powerless black-robed nuns

You just have to embrace all things

People or situations
that wilfully comes

Filled with magnanimity and a sense of gratitude sympathy and empathy

Beyond ambitious devious trinity's

For it's how you'll live forever

In realms of self-imposed liberties

Rising like Mother Sun
in the perpetual East

Blowing like the early morning breeze

Filled within an everlasting ease

Engaging and delectable like a limitless
conversational piece

You can all sometimes forget this life is but one of many versions

On a short term lease

You may get caught up in the moment

Forget to look around and reflect

But always remember

The Tall Man will eventually arrive in his long black mac

To collect

It's better to do your best than to live forever in eternity

Swirling and swimming in silvery pools

Filled and undulating in waves of regrets

So rise in the morning with good thoughts within your heart

It's how you'll escape the pain in tomorrows unknown futures

Of your soul falling apart

As you awaken behind a newborn's bright blue eyes

Powered by a strange beating new heart

Copyright John Duffy

The Broken Man's Monologue

(A lone voice whispers)

I once dreamed I gave you a ray of soul-soothing sunshine

To help burn away all those tendrils of darkness and bitter shadows

Which haunted and followed your beautiful soul around

I once dreamed of walking on the soft yellow beaches

Barefoot under the blazing sun

Hand in hand as the blue carpet of the Pacific before us

Rolled and undulated in adulation as we looked on speechless

I once dreamed of consecrating this risk

My final chance at channelling happiness but now I'm sat alone

Doomed to just channelling sadness like Sylvia Plath

Tasked to thinking

“Is there no way out of the mind?”

Do all these tragic gifts come to all in time

Those sad souls like me who watch the rainfall with no one to run through it

Those who have the roaring log fire but no one to share it

Can the loneliest seconds in anyone's mortal existence

Be when they are staring at their whole world falling into tiny silver pieces with no resistance

And all they can do is gaze in unwanted acceptance

When they realize this is the new normal

A life replenished with no blessings but instead chasing a Bluebird called Repentance

Stuck in a bell jar of madness

Gripped by strands of insanity  

  

Trapped inside an airless urn that distorts one's perspective on the world

And prevents a connection with real people that could help

Comme moi, une des masses silencieuses.

Qui se cache volontairement dans les longues ombres envahissantes.

Qui une fois brûlé par aime la flamme violette, choisit maintenant de rester déconnecté

(Like me, one the silent masses.

That wilfully hide in the encroaching long shadows.

Who once burnt by loves purple flame, now choose to stay disconnected)

Copyright John Duffy

My Dark Queen called Misha

 

She came to me

Slowly walking with a certain swagger in the confines of my deepest of sleep

A dark queen called Misha

Dressed from head to toe in blue and ivy within darkened pines

Surrounded and followed by hollowed out old men who she left

Constantly seeking her divine attention as they whined

That Lady

Voluptuous and so heart-stoppingly seductive

She now nightly just visits me

Where we stride out like reunited old souls

In indistinguishable old grey and green coats

And we soar the lower levels of the Astral Realms

Striking like hurtling red arrows into its viscous spinning harems of never-ending Immortality

Long winters of whimpering lay adrift in the swirling smog as they are cast aside and pardoned

Beyond loveless lands filled with strange withering shapes and haunting igniting purple vicious flares

Striding forth like married beggars

Lost on its unreachable railways that must go somewhere

Through the blackest of its murky sludge

Towards the bright lights in the near distance

We tirelessly trudge

In-between grimy shadows and the hordes of beseeching souls below

Forever bellowing and crying out in unison with shrieks filled with primal fear pure anxiety and overwhelming depression

We fly

Ashes of grim damnation below us flow as we watch the hordes go hither and forth

We share the air for a moment or a brief night

Twins souls who dared to reach for the unreachable lights

Mountains below us dance a strange Argentine tango as we soar

Dark anxious memories now forgotten

Lay crying below upon darkened undulating snake-filled wet floors

In the distance
With hands clasped together tightly

We look deep into each other’s dark eyes with no signs of resistance

For we know we'll get there together someday

To visit old stalls within celestial halls

When we are eventually recalled

The Lady and Prince

Who move together forever as one

In Dreamland

Copyright John Duffy

The voice of Malziamane

 (A lone voice whispers)

In the deepest of woods

My fever grows

The tempo builds

Calling you to go

Drop your bags

And cancel your life

A new life awaits 

Tempting you to walk through my gates

In the middle of the night

My lone voice whispers

Come see me

It calls to you the listener

I change you forever

I'll own your soul

Your previous pain

Fears or shame

Will disappear when you appear and tell me your name

In the deepest of woods

My fever still grows

A seductive invitation

To leave your old life behind and live with me forever entwined 

Copyright John Duffy

If chronic pain could speak

If chronic pain could speak

(A lone voice whispers)

Will you please courageously save all your sad tears

To welcome me as your majesty when I decide to come your way

Do you still want me to hurt you

When I call to play

Can your tired eyes feel me slowly coming with my marching band

While they line up behind me grinning and drumming

As we slowly creep up your spine and venture like Alexander the Great

Into the deeper recesses of your mind

To gleefully open up all the blackest of doors to the darkest of sleepless nights

It's never too late

Faith never said you had to walk to me bravely 

Like a hopeless victim all alone

Over all those green hills before you start eating all those deliciously medicated pills

With no one to help as you fight

Are you strong enough to break through the zone to release all those painful secrets

Or will you choose to live a life based on a false alarm

One that rings whenever you feel my soft touch heralding weakness

My advice to you

Pray for hope to help you cope

Surround yourself with a great circle of family and friends

For I'm one of the hardest to love

But still, I'll test you

That I can guarantee

For I push all known mortal hidden envelopes

As I try to keep you in the corner

Struggling on the ropes

Whenever I call by and make you try a drop of me

Just you wait

I'll soon call to visit

You'll see

Copyright John Duffy

 #addiction #pain #diseases  #cancer  #osteoporosis  #osteoarthritis

Is all love just based on risk?

A lone voice whispers)

When you're with me
Skin touching skin

All aglow and entwined like climbing wild green ivy

Through long hot days and erotically charged nights

And I am exclusively voluntarily consumed

Hypnotised and spellbound

By your seductive powers to bind me

Until we are totally exhausted

Spent
Sated

But no longer seeking strands and tendrils of sleep

When we are seated close together

By a roaring hot fire

Looking deep into each other’s piercing dark eyes

Remembering lost lonely nights and loathsome days apart

But now consecrated and desecrated

By smouldering delicious French kisses

And reverberating within beating twin hearts

Has now Love entered our small once lonely world

And are we now touched

Has what seemed too much

And outrageously once out of our reach

Is this now what we just worship and gloriously clutch as it preaches

Do we now kiss passionately and true

Like it was our divine
common prayer

Going to newer unexplored heights

Where smouldering
French Kisses will take us

If we dare

For are you now my priceless bouquet of red roses

And I now your trusted crown of thorns

Betrothed to be together

Since the first day, we were born

Now looking hypnotically

Deep into each other’s bright eyes

Remembering lost nights and lonely days

Laying apart

Of lost smouldering hot kisses and individual beating hearts

Is this second time around

Just a refresher course

Or is it a reckless emotionally filled destructive

Metaphorical Trojan Horse

Are our long nights together
Going to slowly disintegrate

Has Love arrived

But are we just damaged and it's now too late

Will this perceived love
Transform into a new hate

But as I look deep into your hypnotic bright eyes

I know you were worth the wait

My last throw of the dice
My last hand full of cards
My last risk

Before I just wither and die

Hoping my soul found its soulmate and no longer needs to cry

Copyright John Duffy

If The Alphabet had a voice?

My name is William, will you listen?

If you were worth nothing like shades of me or affluent beyond all worldly compare

I would still try to subsist beside you and just try to love you

If you were intimidated depressed frightened

Or just weighed down with life and all its intense cold heartbreaking  baggage

I would gladly rush in to help you carry all your heavy burdens by writing

If you were uncontrollably mad or just completely incessantly emotionally and incredibly sad

I would quickly reach out with empathy overflowing with an electrifying all-consuming passion

To just embrace you in a considerable hug of complete gratification

To find a new playing field

Where we can embrace like two crazy syllabi in debauched compassion

If you ever needed some love and light in the middle of a lifetime

Anytime between early morning to way past midnight

I would just simply appear through inspired lines and prose

To hold you tightly

Simply to remind you as we run this life-changing course together

All your feelings of guilt happiness or pain are also mine too

As we swim in these dark waters as life chases us down

Filled with no remorse

If you needed anything profound beyond my care or abilities

I would just try to truly comfort you

For one can never be better than two

For ours is but a silent union dear reader

An unspoken pledge

A binding treaty between your lustful hungry emotional eyes

And my hypnotic mesmerising words

Free from physical excesses but entwined and spinning endlessly

Lost in the spiritual cosmos beyond time and space

Serenading our opened third eye

As we

With your invitation of course

Ride over crisp paper landscapes like lunatics

Dressed up in blue-black red or green

Or simply appearing born into a new unknown life

As your fingertips conduct a symphonic symphony

On your choice of screens

Where we can visit newer realms

Perhaps overflowing in deep rivulets of murky depravities

Happiness 
Sadness or even personal realities linked to sin

Well, oh inquisitive one
Shall we begin?

Copyright John Duffy

Tales From the Astral Realms

 With a wave, his fingers clad with rings of silver and gold

He too disappears as Estelle as she says she’s called 

Appears

Smiling serenely, she speaks

"I just speak of the loneliness of love, and the slow acceptance of facing the sadness, it sometimes brings.

Love is divine but sometimes so rebelliously unkind.

In a vision, I still just stand as your faithful servant.

A heart and spirit forever awaiting your presence.

A pulsating entity

Gracefully and consciously anticipating your call.

As I stand hidden in the long shadows.

By a lonely stream of fast-flowing emotions.

We in the Great In-Between just call.....

The River of Life's Lessons."

Copyright John Duffy 

The Confession of Jacob in Death

(A lone voice whispers)

To the ones who might have needed a bright light to help push back the encroaching darkness

To the ones who might have needed a friend to stand by their side 

In the great stillness as they tried to try to contend with a tragic illness

And strove to build new bridges

To reach unique plateaus where they could mend

To the beautiful ones, I'll never probably see or hear from again

Old friendships

Lovers and all those bound by something between us 

That was previously so metaphysical that it always appeared so endless

Just know this 

You were never truly alone for in all my early morning dreams and late-night prayers 

We still walked hand in hand through all weathers

For all those separated year's together 

For you're still to me so damn precious 

And when God asked me in this great magnificent silence 

I now live within now I'm free from the dark reaches of sin

In this swirling grey for my final confession 

I just said, 

Lord

I hope they who cannot be named will forgive me

For in that old life

I was sometimes so reckless 

And the Lord said,

I forgive you, Jacob 

For you were at one time just human filled with so much moving confusion 

And now in here as you and I look at all your past moments in life

As they are reviewed in a new form of holy communion

You'll eventually realize it's why you sometimes have to walk through your own fire 

So your soul can learn

As all those human weaknesses linked to living with temptation and sin burns 

It is the same with all souls

And it's why I decreed that you be born 

So you can all see the true beauty of love and feel the tragedy of heartbreak before you return

A more pure soul ready to find them once more sometime in the future 

In my Silver City of no end

And again be a new lover or friend

But this time around

Purged of all confusion weaknesses and heartbreak 

So love can help you all find a common ground to stand upon

For that incredible spark, you all once shared 

Will into eternity always live on

Copyright John Duffy 

This echoes of a voice who sometimes visits. 

Salute.

Melato Speaks

Press play before you read. Salute.

(A lone voice whispers)

My dearest Sarai

My red rose who I once met in downtime Chicago right of the blue

I just want to absorb all the sweet things

I see and worship about you

That glorious compassion reflected in your sometimes sad face

The incredible sensuality of your inviting warm smile

Which whispers of unspoken places upon luscious red lips

To revere within an extraordinary escape

From the deep rivers of this life's so tenuous rat race

The gracefulness of your delicate but firm touches

Likened to a nurse delivering care to a beloved patient

But without any watchers or repercussions

That shy dark stillness hidden behind your twin mirrors

That shines like a bright beacon to fellow sinners

I just want to absorb everything to help me breakthrough

All the hypnotic threads binding me to whatever

I see in you

Which holds me captive like a lost French soldier

Defeated at his own version of Waterloo

So when you can't see the true validity of yourself

When that incredible glimmer and shine that you inject within all those hungry souls hanging around you

Starts to fade and you slowly feel like you're falling off the shelf

Transforming into someone else's version of you that they feed and compel

To complete their spell

When you're ready to break free and that mesmerising originality needs to renew

I just want to be the only one you look to

To help you pull through  

 

Copyright John Duffy 

 

A dash of fun on a rather quiet Sunday morning. Salute.