Penitentiary Dreams

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(A lone voice whispers)

I still miss your bright white smile

My living breathing Calliope

Every night 

Like I miss our first kiss at the fairground 

On that old Merry-go-round 

For they always appear as bright beams of luminous glorious lights

Shooting from the deep depths

Of a faraway Heaven

Your warmth and guile

Satisfying my manifestation of love

Given birth of creation 

Once by the Mighty Creator

Here on Earth

A glowing towering beacon to help push back 

The hordes called Legion

Prowling like hyenas

In the darkness

Around me

For you were

And always will be 

My daily taste of gladness

A philosopher who too has seen and tasted 

The wild beast wine 

Of anxiety and madness

So now I call out to you from this wild wood

Where my prison is as I am stood 

This wild forsaken place where loveless things 

In the dark shadows slither and crawl

Tormenting us all 

As we all bang tin cups on our prison walls

Stalking memories alone in uneven lines

Like a lone feral grey wolf pines

Throughout this paranormal neighbourhood 

For with you died

Like so many in here who cry

My spark of life

My ecstatic joyful Sun

My bringer of serenity and jest

So in here in my southwest cobwebbed-filled hut

As other prison cells in Desolation Row

Ring out

Like thunder

In a rising crescendo of shrieks of pain and anguish

As we all 

Self-punish

Walking the Green Mile down Memory Road

Remember me before the last harvest

Before you get old

So I can be paroled

Light a white candle 

In your mind's eyes

See our first kiss with love at that fairground 

Sat on that Merry-go-round

 

Beneath that undulating red ocean of pain

Crashing like endless Pacific tides 

Maybe again and again

So that I may still live

If only for a moment

For what I wouldn't give

Now

To breathe once more

To open and walkthrough

That old marital front door

If only for one hour

But as these loud voices  

Surrounding me get louder

And grow in power

As tin prison cups

Relentlessly bang

Like dark country drums

Hour by hour

With sounds like exploding gunpowder on black bars of illusion 

As I look out for you

From my window

In my cave

My penitentiary 

Here in my own watchtower

For 

My thousand-named queen

My rare

Middlemist Red flower

This broken piece of your soul awaits

To be reunited 

To bring peace

When your presence in The Great In-Between

Opens his cell door

As if by magic 

So he can 

Scream no more

But walk home

Into the bright lights

With the only love 

He adores

Both striding 

Powerfully 

Hand in hand

To enter into

Evermore 

To be refined like silver

Escaping 

The Last Great Reaping and Rapture

Of the Prince 

Who is to come

To build Dissolution

Row everywhere 

For all he captures

Remember me

Your Luca 

Your number 1

(C)

Copyright John Duffy