The Lost Soul in Dante's Dark Woods.

 A piece capturing a moment of decision:

Do I remain emotionally alive and continue to feel pain, or

do I freeze my heart and feel nothing at all?

A universal human struggle, especially after heartbreak.

A Halloween poem which descends into an internal hellscape shaped by heartbreak and existential crisis.

Representing a powerful psychological crossroad:

Whether to accept pain as the cost of feeling love, or to abandon love entirely to achieve emotional numbness and safety.

A haunting, mythic, and emotionally resonant atmosphere—balancing narrative, symbolism, and emotional complexity.

Title.

The Lost Soul in Dante's Dark Woods.

(A lone voice whispers)

Lost in these unlit, creepy, dark woods.

Filled with the smell of incense and rain fed screams, in this Great In-Between.

Past the moonlit shimmering frozen lake, some call Cocytus.

Thinking of you and us, standing here alone, by this great oak tree, as I now speak in poetry.

The secret language of the dead.

This deep raging despair like a hurricane, I always feel, which makes me so weak.

Tells me with sly whispers,

which strike like silver serpents, at the centre of my mind.

That any form of love is a strange and wreckless thing that is so real, and it's all I now know and feel, as I stand awake.

In this new transdimensional state.

For the brokenhearted like me near this shimmering frozen lake, don't sleep or weep.

And when the mysterious singers and traitors in this cloudy odour filled darkness, call out to me with sweet, mesmerizing snarling voices.

When their raging screaming pauses.

Each filled with such inescapable power.

My mounting pain slowly rises in my soul, hour by hour.

As I'm watched by the red eyes, of the strange semi-hidden creatures, dressed in smokey darkness and blue.

Standing in crooked but neat lines, on the crumbling translucent walls, of The Great Watchtower.

Who just love to send me, Red Raven notes, that simply say:

“Come over to us today to renew.

Our Diamond Door is always open.

Come be one of The Nixs and follow our simple ways.

To find the new you.

Come climb the Great Watchtower walls.

To drink deep from our wish-fed fountain, and dress in blue, to see past all, the Great Black Mountains.

No longer filled with urges to remember or fight for love and light.

But to become one of us, cold and numb, watching the horde forever, over the frozen lake called Cocytus.

Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius.

And the Four Rounds of Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca.

Filled with lost souls.

As a lone Watchman, of the Endless Night.”

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.