The Guide

 

Want to read a new mother load via this poetic underground railroad?

The Guide is a mystical, visionary call to poets, and perhaps to storytellers more broadly.

In the visionary tradition of the likes of Blake, Rilke, or even Octavia Butler.

Writers who didn’t just describe reality but dared to reimagine it.

To create writing that is transformational. This poem is both an invitation and a manifesto for what poetry, or just writing, can be in a world that often neglects its deeper, spiritual purpose.

Well, are you ready to escape?

Title.

The Guide.

(A lone voice whispers)

What a year to be alive to see poetry and writing still thrives

Want some new readers?

Well, I asked this once when I was institutionalized

Before in The Great In-Between 

For you see I was baptized to be non institutionalized when I was consumed by a materialistic drive

So here's my advice 

Try to write immersive experiences 

Create landscapes and dreamscapes for all readers want to escape 

For some long-lost legends, whisper 

That every spirit seeks tok walk in newer realms on their way to redemption 

So take your readers by the hand and like a leader 

Take them on soul tempting journeys into the unknown and mysterious 

Hold them mesmerized

Spellbound through words like ringing church bells

To keep them reading slowly like the birth of a caterpillar 

And when that red key eventually turns in their minds

To open a blue portal and enter them into a strange interdimensional place

Through the two great ancient white pillars

Of Ashtara and Shoka

 

To where smoke and fire

Day and night burns 

A spiritual place

I call, The Great In-Between

A mythical experience for the curious mind begins

A fog filled place where pain sorrow and sin

All things seen or unseen

Like love and happiness exists 

A wild place where darkness 

Shadows selves

Corwatturea creatures

Spirits

Angels and beauty 

Coexists 

In absolute tranquillity and harmony

And you my friend 

In that subliminal moment, that red key turns

A new reader of yours is reborn

One who seeks their Drover

As their need and curiosity takes over

To move them through higher high roads and lower byroads 

Unexplored old church lanes 

Of joy and pain 

To walk them through the fire and snow storms 

To find a new mother load 

Via this underground railroad

Unspoken poetic stories to take them under like chloroform

For their souls 

After stepping into

The GREAT IN-BETWEEN 

Will have been truly transformed and renamed 

For now, they'll walk like new aged gods and goddesses 

Baptized in that smoke 

Fire and rain

To stand up strong like their newfound Drover 

And walk forward forever

Trying to stay pure and unashamed 

As their need for more stories slowly takes over

  

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy. 

#poetry