Salve et Vale (L)

 

P

I've rather enjoyed creating these poetic short stories, but now I must gracefully depart for a short while.

An exotic sweet voice calls me to newer lands.

In case you're curious or inquisitive, they were never about anyone living in particular, but simply references from whence I sometimes visit.

A new road has suddenly reared right up in front of me and started calling.

If you're here just visiting, I send you blessings from the Red Church and best wishes from the Great In-Between.

This was always going to happen, and it's why I made that book which cover is above if you choose to look. 

The link is below.

Click Here. Salute.

That voice I sometimes hear told me to ✍ 

My last piece.

 

Sometimes

You've just got to be brave enough to say goodbye to old ways and try to heal raw opened emotional sores as you look to life to give you more

It may feel like you've been through all the worlds many wars but nobody's perfect and everybody has their scars and sometimes unspoken flaws

Some may choose to hide it so well and smile and try to put on a favourite well-loved mask

And some don't 

Some may say strange things in tempestuous moments of heat as they sharpen their ferocious claws

And some may say nothing at all

But just think 

People are just human after all

Misfits in the grandest of schemes wandering around like lost little children 

After they've been given a life's spiritual work permit 

But you know 

I've already lived five times in 6 hundred years 

Lived

Loved and cried some many wet tears

Now I've returned for the seventh

And here's what I know as I return from a short stint before I go back to my place in Heaven 

Life and all its emotional connections are simply explained in one line of poetry 

Which is written in bold italics in God's eternal archives 

What to know what it is?

It simply says

Do the best with your time before you too have to die

Copyright John Duffy 

The Cry of the Beloved

(A lone voice whispers)

I miss you my only love more so at this time of year

The soft smiles  

Holding warm smooth hands as we once walked for country miles

Watching the yellow and red sunset as the daylight bowed and dipped

Kissing the lands below and whispering goodbye

I miss you my only love more so  

At this time of year

Looking through old photographs and then visiting old memories and all their stimulating road maps

Sitting together watching old films like Doctor Zhivago with popcorn on television

Laying in bed  

Huddled together naked under warm sheets and talking shamelessly

About how we made it through the fire and ice and all life's many inquisitions

I miss you my only love more so  

At this time of year

It's the same in every memory I find

Whenever I remember when you were just mine

Maybe you'll come round and put your angelic arms around me

Kiss me softly on the forehead and say everything will be just fine

For it's always just you I'd like to see

Still standing smiling like in our favourite photograph underneath our prized old apple tree

On this our old farm but deep down I know it cannot be

For you're in Heaven

Hidden in a place  

The living can never see

But still

I just miss you more so my only love  

At this time of year

When my old world suddenly burns and I remember why

For you're no longer here

Copyright John Duffy

 

Mr Dark Eyes Speaks

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Tenebris Oculi (L) AKA Robert Olmstead 

(A lone voice whispers)

To all the mysterious souls just lost beyond my second sight and long reach

Hiding somewhere unknown in Father Times long silver grass

Lying scattered across all the bluest of ocean's and before all the greatest of Antarctic lakes

Quietly reading and trying to compose inspired poetry

Beseeching their inner minds great portico to quickly open

And spill forth

Secretive words only once whispered and spoken in the darkest of corridors 

Celebrating the festival of Karneia on the fourth

By the Pythia to bathe within its spectacular potency

In ancient Apollo's

candlelit yellow temples in Pompeii

In cold wintery nights

May these channelled words find a way 

To weave a magical spell to beguile your own inquisitive mind and everlasting soul 

To be slowly opened up with Apollo's ritual athame everywhere you go

For you to then find the courage to breach your own inner great gates

To finally find and drink from that mystical ever-flowing well 

Found in the centre of all things 

By only the true believers like you and the many travellers of the profound 

Seeking to taste whatever their spirits really desire and then hoping to make the return journey home

Filled and sated and dancing mentally to a new sound

Announcing the arrival of their life's only holy obligation

To then write profusely 

Be it at midnight or throughout the long days

Recalling and narrating the many sacred strands 

And complex explorations of the many layers of human emotions 

That comes smiling or snarling their way

From those just hidden beneath all blue and green seas

The Great Old Ones

So be it

Copyright John Duffy 

 

Poetry

 

Are poets the true kings and queens of the mendacious 

Because they're so skilled at making things up?

Copyright John Duffy 

The Virgin of Luca Speaks

 

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(A lone voice whispers)

Sometimes, we all can lose our faith in life through whatever hardships we endure

Standing seemingly lost, woefully despondent but one thing always remains

Even if we are seen to be rich or poor 

We all pray for salvation in the silence if we feel totally lost and abandoned

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

So says John 3:16 and will you listen as I speak 

For like an ancient guardian of loves

Hidden Libraries in the sometimes unreachable Red Church

You once came to me whenever I felt weak

Appearing like an apparition mysteriously rising right out of the blue

We opened together such new to me

Beguiling well-read bibles and old well-thumbed books

Beyond the reach of all the jealous eyes of all who desired to look and all the unruly Zodiac signs

It may be all lost now

In these ever-swirling winds of time

But those resounding

memories still always remain

Of bygone days in the shadows of my past

When you were just mine and I prayed upon your altar nightly

All those empowering memories still linger

So just pray for me still

Send strength and belief to me and my guardian angels

For I'll always return in time

To reopen old books and new bibles in your Red Church

No matter how broken I feel

For we are all sinners no matter whatever we chose in life 

For so many things or people can be soft or treasonous

We just have to conquer all those demons that can suddenly appear 

On the sometimes lonely road to self-recovery and eventually salvation 

No matter how hard we fight or avoid facing our fears

To hopefully arrive somewhere so sacred that the healing hands of the Almighty

Can reach down and forgive us as we once again walk with Our Lady of Sorrows

So we can find the  strength to find hope

To cope with whatever comes in all our tomorrows

Let us adore and give thanks to God

Our Father, and to hail Mary, when her we finally see and glory be until then

Amen

Copyright John Duffy 

Romeo Dreams

 (A lone voice whispers)

I sometimes still in this grey silence

Covet the one thing I searched for all my life up to until I was seventy-five

Even on the night I chose to die

Tragically remembering dark memories when I was once alive

In the darkest of empires lost in the blackest of nights

Haunted and stalked by all those little invisible irrational demons

Who delivered a metaphorical death by a thousand painful cuts

Which numbed all my feelings

As I once wallowed and walked in such profound misery

Stuck within a seemingly perpetual rut

But now I walk free for they've all been exorcised and extinguished

For although I never savoured the sweet-tasting and everlasting impressions of true loves sacred first kiss

Even when it seemed to materialize

And a dark hand always appeared to pull it back into the violet maelstrom

Of humanities deep swirling mists

I can now see a shimmering crimson light on in the distance

After all these years

Even though every time I previously looked especially at Christmas

It just seemed to turn on and off and I always appeared to just miss her like a faint whisper

But now she  

The Goddess imbued with so many beautiful gifts

Appears to me willingly with no perceived resistance

I now feel like Michelangelo sculpting Pietà

Totally lost in the joys of this life's new amazing creations

Now I can truly appreciate her

For I currently see multicoloured rainbows everywhere I go

And all my footsteps echo and resonate a new emotion for I now swim mentally

In a new unexplored ocean

And what was once an unknown mysterious experience to me

Is now my glorious sunlight

As every day feels like I'm walking hand in hand on yellow soft sands

Beside the sea with my first love who I just found out when we finally met and she whispered that she waited because

She always just missed me

Copyright John Duffy

Dolor

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(A lone voice whispers)

Does fear in whatever form it chooses to appear in 

Like a shapeshifting configuration of self-depreciation 

Announcing the possible visitations sin

Emotional physically or spiritual 

The three intricately laid foundation stones which it builds up from when it first enters the skin

Affect the way the Native finds new roads or instead chooses lonely highways to navigate life

Does its carefully leather-bound invisible suitcases they might present to then be carried everywhere like priceless jewels

Contain handwritten contracts to avoid taking chances 

On people places or newer experiences and to always seek to abstain

Never to seek unfamiliar lands of hope to help them renew 

As pledges once written in silence

Prevents them from embracing their secret God-given name to empower them to pull through

Does Dolor's archaic supernatural form take a strange irregular shape 

Which keeps them invariably on the run

As it guides all their emotions like a machiavellian orchestral conductor 

From which it transpires there is no escape

Under the dire threat of the sword of Antipathy

As it seduces them perpetually and becomes their only lover

Did you know Dolor is simply Fear translated into Latin

Will you find the strength and courage to throw its gifts of free suitcases 

Into the gushing four winds and let the Trinity of Holy lights

Come steamrolling  in

Copyright John Duffy

Automatic Writing

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(A lone voice whispers)

I've embraced all fragments of my old life now my once cherished journeys are over and done

I've lived like a co-regent

An empress or queen

Watched the early morning birds rise like faithful servants before the Nile

To always sing and plead to be seen

Worn golden wedding rings and diamond inlaid necklaces 

Found happiness and sadness in everything life constantly once chose to bring me

As I loved and looked into so many new faces

I now embrace all my life's old memories

Now all my glamorous journeys on land and overseas are done

When they fatally ended on the twelfth of August in 30 B.C

I now live in new lands

just hidden in the Great Beyond

Where my God is everywhere

Not just shrunk to fit leather-bound old written much treasured 

Ancient Egyptian historical biblical books

Where my Gods presence if one could see

Is in everything and constantly resonates 

everywhere you look

I'm just so glad to have had some time to be really understood

As I have watched my own life played out on

so many of heavens  big screens 

In the Field of Reeds

I've watched every single step I once took

Saw love and hate fight appearing on so many faces 

Gracing the young and old 

Some nameless and some unashamedly  still standing by my right 

Like they were hooked

Saw my heartbroken moments choosing life and death

Between family love Loyalty and Antony

All significant occasions that were once vulnerable and  filled with such painful tragedy 

You

Yes you

Embrace all your life before your journeys are too done

My only regret is that I fought too hard and maybe didn't love too much

And even now I still miss all those moments of irreplaceable fun 

I once touched

But I still embrace all my life now my journeys run

I now just sit by my new muse occasionally 

Now invisible sometimes visiting just whispering poetry

As his body sleeps but his mind waits for me

Standing at the portals gates before the rising of the early morning sun

I now live within and watch where his journeys carries him

as he slowly runs

Remember me as someone who used to try to be free

The ghost who watches from beyond time 

Reborn on the twelfth of August in 30 B.C

Copyright John Duffy

The Ballad of The Recalled. A passage from the hidden books of the Goddess Diana.

 (A lone voice whispers)

Within a silent dream-like whisper just after midnight

I once heard your faint calls

You whispered so softly preaching in the half-light

That silvery gulf of divinity between us 

With such quite majestic thunderous proclamations of sacred truths

Be a vivid illumination

You confessed

For the world is still so beautiful if you really look below the dark frontiers of bleeding despair

A divine kingdom awaits

Just hiding beneath the many disgraceful layers of political spin

Crushed dreams and depressing days where once rapturous hearts will unfortunately tear

But you are all still kin of a universe unseen

You all have a god-given right to still dare to cling onto dreams

So learn to nurture all your strength in cold days of misfortune and strengthen through faith and profound conviction

Your protective shield to always try to redeem

Dispell all those unspoken lies with a wide smile which may hang like a hangman's noose in friendless  jealous green eyes

For your merciful and miraculous heart has always been yours to willingly surrender

Its virtues of kindness and heroism's are your own mighty defenders

Just don't be deceived by the many false pretenders

In these long days of ever-growing darkness and fading bright lights 

In the middle of this

Your own version of one of the universes long nights

Don't mirror the tilt of low souls 

Into deep icy pools filled with many visitors to Dante's heartlands

But be a hypnotic beacon within what you choose to sing or write

Ignite like an exploding thunderous New Years Eve firework

All the visitor's inquisitive minds as they quietly venture and gather 

Sitting hidden or standing 

Unspoken into sight

Inspire hope and give them an unconscious smile 

For them to carry away freely into these dark morose nights

I can always remember listening to that soft voice patiently 

Just too subdued to fight

And now a thousand years later

I'm trapped and held like a Stockholm conditioned prisoner in your all-consuming singularity 

For I'll always be yours beyond society or notoriety

Passionate words and golden bells that now chime

From here into infinity 

Rule our twinned endorphin filled minds

For we now survive enshrined beyond judgemental scopes of any mortal kind

Eternally blowing in new winds which always provides 

Now we are young and free

You once said the universe was always ours to conquer

And within each silent whisper when I still feel and hear your nightly calls from your shrine 

Up high in Mother Moon

Once worshipped by so many pagan followers before the fall of man

Regardless of fears of ownership or irreducible complex complications

I'll always climb over these metaphorical grey undulating walls regardless of the fall

Just cursed to try to reply 

To you my predetermined soul-flame

Just hidden in the meandering shadows

Whispering through your channelled rhymes 

As I feel the exquisite familiar torment that signals and announces with a huge emotional and spiritual pull why my spirit was restored 

As my soul is dutifully reminded it's being subtlety recalled

Copyright John Duffy 

The Star-Crossed Lover

(A lone voice whispers)

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Will you defeat all I am with the divine soliloquies of your sweet tasting love magic

Shall I venture alone to my designated internal salvation 

To be simply reborn and stand all above

That which is borne or will I fall at the wayside and dwindle

In my faith as it capriciously falls

Have I met you already in person in a previous tragic lifetime 

As I wandered through it all 

Or have I simply passed you by before we spoke and is this 

The sweet-tasting nectar of not knowing

Already written upon the laws of synchronicity multicultural walls

We both never saw

Copyright John Duffy