Memories of Living

Do the dearly departed recite poetry in the dark?

Do I sometimes channel them as I hear their words? 

This came through. 

A deep American male voice of about....well who knows!

He speaks. 

Can you hear him?

Press play before reading.

Salute.

(A lone voice whispers)

Have you ever lived in a wounded ritual

It’s a lonely world in here and I still miss my best friend and lover

Justine

My old lifes wounded ritual

For I once lived in the late Sixties in the Deep South

As I travelled between Georgia 

All the way up to New York and southern Vermont

This is my short story and heartbreak 

Just spoken and channelled through another’s beloveds mouth

My memories of the Sixties

I always wondered why we were summoned 

And petitioned so cruelly by so many blasphemous names

Were we really that cursed by nearly all we met

All over those great plains

Why couldn’t we just live and sit together peacefully but bravely

Just like any other pair of the world’s greatest reunited long lost lovers

Instead of just racing blindly from judgemental villages 

Towns or cities

And sometimes having to hide in old badly beaten caravans 

Parked on overgrown green fields

Aren’t we all born free to walk under a warm summer's sun

To embrace the winds of emancipation 

As it blows gracefully under our feet

To be firmly told by good mothers and strong fathers

Never to surrender with your dying last breath

That's why we always ran 

Never to be caught for we were brought up to be arduous 

To never feel defeated enough to yield

Although we were doomed to a fast-moving life of constant running

Like a wild mystical stag

Followed blindly by his beloved deer 

In the unexplored depths of society's chaotic forests

We always trespassed carefully though

Throughout humanities deepest of woods

Always trying to keep one step in front of the hate-filled hunters

The commoners

Self-professed royalty

Politicians 

Or police

Ice queens and kings

As we ran throughout all the ever-changing seasons 

And all the many hot conflicting excuses used as their justifiable reasons 

We had our good times though since we always used to slow dance

Sometimes mentally to a lone Motown tune like

You really got a hold on me

By Smokey Robinson and The Miracles 

While hidden within secretive motel rooms

You know the ones

Those with soft music playing only two could possibly hear

The cheap wallpaper 

Filthy fans to cool the hot air and the badly worn beds and cheap wooden chairs

I still sometimes sing unconsciously to my beloved dear 

Who still runs around my glorious inner sun

And in this great silence

Just wonder where does she now constantly run

In the end I guess

We are all the sums of our wounded ceremonies

But you sometimes have to be true to who you are

For your life can’t be lived 

If it’s just verbally or physically torn apart

To live in freedom is something you must never forsake

For true love is sometimes so deep

It's just too instinctual

Always whisper this to each other

It’s my only advice

We'll face this world

The cruel names and the fire and ice together

Whatever our fate 

For God so loves us so we will never break

It’s what we  used to pray and say back in the day 

Whenever we cried or felt degraded

 

When I used to kiss and softly whisper in her ear 

When that Sixties summer sun used to bow down to bless and baptise us 

With its life-giving rays

But just like invaluable memories 

Appearing like a midnight hallucination

Walking slowly back into the encroaching dark shadows 

I always think of my beautiful red rose just forever lost to me 

In this new life of ever-growing hostile and dangerous contentious green meadows 

That the living can never see

I still will wait by St Peter's gates

For my beloved

My lifes only true love called Justine

Before we were separated and I was tragically destroyed 

By those filled with evil self-opinionated hatred

Copyright John Duffy