For the courageous

(A piece for a recent online group)

 

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This is for You

Oh yes

I know you're struggling for I've been there too

And that's why I'm just writing this so you know

You're never alone

Even though I've no personal connection centred around really knowing you

The truth is we've all in some way shared the same sad path 

Oh yes

Me 

You and so many others

Fathers, daughters, sisters, sons, mothers and brothers

Even though this river of seemingly endless pain we all swim through daily

Seems so deep and in the middle of every night 

We all sometimes cry and pray for the peaceful salvation that comes from a deep sleep

Even though we struggle to walk and our tired limbs and all our joints 

May creak as they painfully ache whenever we feel weak

And our tired eyes may leak as we deep down inside

Lose strength and unconsciously weep

Take strength for that pain you and me have endured doesn't last forever

The better days will soon arrive

It may just take a while

The days and weeks may fade into months but that better day will eventually come

When you can finally walk or ride out 

Into the bright sunlight and look at the blue skies and courageously shout

It's great to once again be alive

This is why this was written for just You

If you ever needed a drop of advice

Oh yes, I know you've been struggling for I've been there too

And that's why I'm just writing this so you know

You're never really alone and if you feel lonely just always remember

There's always someone who'll listen and try to answer any questions

In all those wonderful groups

All you have to do is just pick up the tablet

Laptop or phone

From January until the very end of every December 

To help you begin a new year 

Filled with a renewed strength 

To bravely face the world without any fear

For there are so many caring friends in here who understand anything you may ask 

It's why they too joined to be part of one of those online wonderful community centres

(C) John Duffy 

The Transference

As we bade our final goodbyes when the sun even bowed its head as it saluted from the skies

We knew we'd see you again when the armies of ants surrounding the dandelions suddenly stopped and looked up

Copyright John Duffy

(Image shared under fair usage policy) 

A lone voice whispers

Richardo speaks

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I'll always remember when I first caught a glimpse of you

It was in nineteen eighty-two as it rained like a crazy scene right out of Platoon

I saw you standing by the roadside on fifty-fourth street

Looking lost in a jostling crowd

Waiting for the traffic lights to change

Appearing all alone with a tattooed on heartbroken smile as the storm and drizzle

Merged with the roaring thunder which seemed so loud

I can remember watching the rain beat a crescendo of four to the floor in a strange tempo

Like on Quinto drums across your face as you all waited impatiently for the green light to go

I can faintly see if I push

All your makeup run and still taste that sweet aroma of your Chanel number five perfume

Even in this half-light

I can still see brief flashes of your soft smile and beguiling wild eyes in this very room

But like all the world's well-written love letters left behind

To be found by broken-hearted foolish lovers when it gets dark and the bedroom is now just regarded as a tomb

I've come to learn that written within every one

In each carefully structured line is a shiny red and black bejewelled dagger

A soft knife to the heart

Just hidden within solicitous thought out lines

Announcing unceremoniously with guile that all things are falling apart

Cunningly dressed up with sentimental metaphors in rugged sentences and personal paragraphs

Paraded in dramatic straight black and white pragmatic lines to be read by hungry eyes

Soon doomed to be wearing bright crimson uniforms

When pain can no longer be disguised

Lines overgrown with  

Wait and I'll come back when you're ready

I just need more time  

It's not you it's me

I understand why I uncontrollably used to cry

Now that I can truly see since you've been gone for a while

You see deep down when I pause and reflect

I guess I knew you were always filled with such despicable lies

Especially after talking to my mother

The cheapest therapist I ever met

She did warn me

Sometimes the truth will come out no matter how much they lie or try to fake it

It's just because some women just see men as another cheap franchise

To be acquired and rinsed  

  

Used like prudent merchandise

Only then to be sacrificed by heartfelt love letters

They've probably copied like the ones they've already left to so many others

Who they left clinging on to the false hope that one day they'll return

On the gleaming tall shadowy altars of the  

Unfortunate

Who are forever traumatised because unlike me

They'll never learn

For true loved can't be bartered or ordered

It must always be worshipped and endlessly earned

Copyright John Duffy

The voice of ARADIA

A voice whispers from the Black Scrying Mirror

ARADIA Speaks

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Did you know that the Devil just loves to come up with a wide Machiavellian welcoming smile

Like a thief in the middle of the night to collect sinners

Just like Jesus attempts to come down more and more each day

Accompanied by angels 

To collect those who tried to stay but occasionally may have strayed 

From a narrow path while trying to follow the advice of his many much-lorded saints

The one's in the Bible who will forever be humanities true winners 

Did you know you are all like beautiful evocative masterpieces and stunning striking visceral tapestries

Reflections of your higher self 

Created from a colourful palette of delicious tempting choices 

You willingly or unwillingly are just bewitched to paint

As you follow an ever-changing direction 

That is always distorting and never appears to be straight 

Who do you think will come calling

When your life is over and your spirit is no longer trapped frozen in human form 

But just imprisoned in stasis 

Prevented from flying or walking by those who are always watching

Who do you think will call to collect to take you home

But that's a long way away hopefully and now filled with all this deep occult knowledge

Don't you think it's time to atone and accept this as one of those simple messages

To take as a justified warning 

A gentle reminder in this very moment to try to encourage someone 

Someone to come down not he who lives underground

Someone to come down from on high when your time is invoked 

So your soul can rise up into the afterlife and just keep on soaring 

As your body lies cold in its expensive or cheap coffin

Heaven's for everyone you know 

It all just depends on how your tapestries looks to those who like to stay invisible 

Just hidden before the greatest fall of all

When your life's masterpiece 

Finally appears as an exposition in one of their many supernatural galleries 

When your time is called 

Just awaiting evaluation as it's one of the leading exhibitions 

By they who watch

In an eternal sideshow called

The Art of the Souls Transmigration

Copyright John Duffy 

A man called E whispers

(A lone voice whispers)

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As I walk alone in here 

Just looking for a strange city called Redemption and a means to atone

Surrounded by whispering crying voices in this ominous new darkness 

Of The Great In-Between

Which swirls all around humanity but to the profane like you 

It still remains today totally unseen

I always really wonder deep down inside as I move and peruse

Does she honestly still miss me that lady in black who was never satisfied

Even though I was famous and talked about every day on every world news

That young war bride I once met when I toured worldwide 

Who I once used to sit with in secret and in the low hours by candlelight 

Converse in-depth about love life and all its sometimes painful mysteries linked to death and power

Which always used to remind me of Macbeth

As we sat underneath that magical old blackened oak tree no matter where we were

Somewhere hidden in the many fluctuating realms of the forbidden 

Just connected by a portal I used to call forth by a secret incantation

Only known to a few of the last descendants of those deemed immortal

From where I was born and named in Tupelo, Mississippi

To then be known all the way to the wet sandy shores of the Baltic Sea 

Am I soon to be just a faded jaded memory

A part of a now old and forgotten legacy

People come and go in your old life I suppose 

Friendship heartbreak and love go hand in hand with something resembling Damocles sharp knife

So I'm told now I'm wiser as each day I grow old 

Some relationships will seem to last forever and some will inescapably be cut so deeply by its biblical silvery blade

That no matter how hard you may have cried shedding such sad tears or kneeled for hours and prayed

You'll eventually know that's why love and friendship entwined around treasured memories of others

You once so dearly cared for 

Sometimes chose capriciously to slowly just fade away

But if I could only just see the face of my precious treasured memory once more starting from today 

I would thank the Almighty until the final day of my baptism into a new holy Jerusalem 

If only he would bless me with the power and the magic of an endless Midsummers Night Dream 

To once again in this darkness

Sit together and talk under this new blackened old oak tree after I once again try to just summon her

Copyright John Duffy 

(Images subject to fair usage policy)

The Monologue of Mr Catharsis

 

Hey brothers and sisters 

When all the prevailing shadows of past and present traumatic experiences

Swirling like a ravenous pack of snarling grey wolves 

Appear whining howling and banging against temporary hastily built gates

Erected within all modern minds 

Including yours

To hold in powerful soul-draining emotional pain

Historical generational drama or intense unwanted physical trauma 

Poetry must be implored to take a much-needed seat to be duly exploited

Explicitly as an insidious conduit 

A sacred form of holy communion 

To usher in a new age

An expansion into unknown realms of such audacious visceral expressions 

To be seen and felt as far away as a country mile if required

So many or just the writer can see and scour its mesmerising definitive themes 

Composed from the dark hidden invisible edges of civilization

By breaching those old or young heavy wooden doors

To confront what lies beyond 

In the darker  provinces of the writer's dreams

As all the many desperate ultimatums

Emanating from the physical and spiritual kingdoms 

Beyond all their duplicitous demands

For pure narcissistic attention 

Previous oaths of fidelity or inopportune slavery 

Which once held them in stagnating subjugation 

They must all be controlled to get them  in line and wait patiently as the now anointed poet smiles 

To embrace a once untasted awareness of personal freedom

And like a rare bird who has now found its wings 

They can fly high as they slowly realise

Their heartfelt words can bring a higher degree of inner salvation 

For their freedom to do so 

Can no longer be treated as absurd

By anyone 

Copyright John Duffy 

 

For my life's nurse

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(A lone voice whispers in the dark)

Her gentle graceful touches are so beautiful and incredibly captivatingly soothing 

They seem to play a delightful melody to vanquish all my mortal fears

Like the rarest of heavenly sunsets that emerges with a twinkling smile in the midst of pink and red frontiers 

When time itself appears to stop flexing and moving

Swirling like a god-like deity in a newly lit sky

She is the quintessence of glamour in a night-time high society ball

Filled with dancing masked courting fireflies

Who watches her every fluid movement in jaw-dropping awe

When they pause to rest on one of my beautifully wallpapered walls 

A rare evening serenading the gathering of a few enamoured spirits

Where honoured souls gather in their best dresses and bespoke suits to readily confess

Her delicate hands move like Mother Moon gently over my trembling horizons

Whispering my secret name and claiming me as her domain 

For we are now consummate lovers and no longer just worldly friends 

A bright new world is always breathed into light and lost in delicious touches in that spectacular twilight

For under the gaze of my devotion

I can only reflect her love in my hazel coloured lens

The darkness surrounding us like an old friend 

Sings a lasting symphony of happiness and lingers in the celestial as angels watch and smile

No man-made treaties or paper laws can separate us

For now, our passions in the midnight sun 

Soon will wildly run

We'll never lose this particular twilight and these baptised rays will never lose their red and pink hue

For when we first met 

I'll always remember that I willingly sunk knee-deep into your green and blue

For in that magical transference of spiritual energy

I knew in that metaphysical moment why God had sent me and it's why now

I'll always belong to just you.

Copyright John Duffy 

The Voice in a Dream

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Are we expressionists just blessed, poetic acolytes

Simple reflections of old narrators

Thrown centuries ago from one of the many grey walls of the mythical Towers of Babel

But now just constantly reborn before each Great Fall

At the peak of every new society

Simply here to tell many new and old stories in a universal poetic archaic language

One where we all stand shoulder to shoulder

Willing and able

Completely endowed with a greater freedom to stand beyond the dark Gates of Sodom and Gomorrah 

Now called Social Media

Where the new masses gather like lost hypnotised Starling flocks and appear so servient and obedient

Birthed to eventually grow to report about the emotional depravities

Linked to surviving within every new kingdom

For inside all these ensuing exotic landscapes beginning from the very first one 

A silent profound truth still lives at the very centre of each and every core and must always be subjectively explored

Heartbreak in all forms must be willingly or unwillingly endured for every soul  to seek a means to mature

This is the sacred unspoken truth

For there is scarcely any journey a human being can pursue

That does not usher in heartbreak which sometimes seems it can't be undone as it takes its grand tour

Grief  

Lost love  

Mental and physical abuse  

And so many more

The strength to rise after the fall

The belief to stand tall

The power to burn your candle even brighter to lead yourself or others

Out of the stillness and seemingly perpetuity of darkness

To find yourself again

That's how you can conquer all the many difficult strands link to just living 

For embracing its cold touch 

You'll start to treasure all those moments of happiness and purge all those sad ones

By understanding it all starts with the courage that comes from just forgiving 

Copyright John Duffy

My New Collection. 2020 to April 2021.

 The prose collection from 2020 until April 2021. Available on Amazon.

Click the link below. Salute.

Click HERE!

Shortly, I will be using some of these as monologues. 

I know they will make great theatrical pieces. 

A lone emotional driven actor reciting a selected piece in total darkness - with only one spotlight illuminating them.

 

With accompanying sad piano music of course!

Bravo. 

Until next time. I may not be posting for a week or so as I recover. 

I have a date with a surgeon and a sharp scalpel. On my birthday of all days.

Be safe wherever you are. Salute.

What if Gloria Gaynor wrote poetry

 

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This thirst has been sated now that I’ve seen you've tarnished all my old memories

So you may now fade to reappear wherever you go

Since I'm now ephemeral

 

This place we once shared has lost its feel

Turn away your blue eyes

 

For I no longer in submission kneel

Seek not to know what in here may lie

For that once precious thing has now withered and died

 

Look instead to your own life

Step bravely forward not in woe

And let your first steps not be slow

Show me no mercy to going forward as you have already shown

As they carry you to newer plateaus

When those old winds of gossip did blow

 

Worry for me not for I am sweetly wise

I instead look for words of hope and sing blissfully to newer tender skies

Our once loved emotions now no longer lay in state

As the funeral lies cold and un-mourners silently gather to celebrate

 

This I know as I was told as I finally closed our gate

But what they cannot comprehend

About this cat with nine lives

All the gossips and the un-friends

Whenever one rose petal drifts from Aphrodite’s tree

 

To fall and slowly hit the cold ground
And wither into ruins to never bloom as before
 

Another one called to me before it hit the floor

Courtship can once more lift her lovely head

 

For true love and beauty can still be found

Just not by the judgemental 
The gossips or the living dead

But only those souls who wilfully sing

Did you think I'd crumble?

I will survive

 

Copyright John Duffy