Press play and let the music wash over you as you read.
Salute.
(A lone voice whispers)
I was once addicted to a beautiful stranger
Unknowingly using them like cheap cocaine
But as I look back on my life after my last confession
After speaking to Father Poe
I now know
That when I got down on my tired old knees
Before the rusty cross
My beloved grandfather made in our back garden
On Christmas Day in 2008
During the last Great Recession
To pray in the falling rain
For salvation
I know now I fought the devil for freedom that fateful night
At midnight
After wearing his X proudly for year's
Like the Mark of Cain
I've sacrificed all my precious time
Crucified my family and friends
For my only lover
Who I thought would last until the very end
A stranger who suddenly appeared when I was weak
With sweet answers to everything and anything
You could seek or name
And even though now I’m free
I still wear loneliness golden chains
Like just another of the cursed
From the Brotherhood of the Profane
For that's how the Tall Man
Designed me
So my therapist told me
Broken
Fractured and to be endlessly consumed
With vivid surging memories of bloodstained mental campaigns
Baptised to ride the inhumane storms of life
On a wooden ship called Hardship
And to grow and sink nightly in its many hurricanes
But now
I'm no longer a stranger to pain
And as I age
I still just use it like cheap cocaine
Walking bravely alone
In the falling rain
Knowing the Devil knows my name
And that’s why he leaves me alone
For he remembers our battles
At midnight
In my grandpa's backyard
When I once played his games
I’m glad God won though
For it’s him
I now travel to see
As I ride this life
Seated content with strangers
On one of his many slow-moving trains
High on all my pain
My old memories
Which I’m still addicted too
Like when I held hands with my old friend
Mother Cocaine
I can safely say this good old reborn Christian boys coming home
I just hope my Mary Jane is waiting for me
And when I get off that last stop
And finally arrive
By singing her a holy love song
About my fight at midnight
With the God of Cocaine
In my grandpa's backyard
When I was alive
Copyright John Duffy
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