. Poetry from The Great In-Between

Thursday, July 1, 2021

The Watcher Speaks

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(A lone voice whispers)


I have something so rare that it's mystifying and can be soul rousing but sometimes so seductively engaging 

That they who really know me 


Call me the living flame


For like my old Ma

Who was once born and raised beside the clear still waters of the Louisiana's deep Bayous


I inherited her gift to draw lonely souls


Like Gypsy moths right out of their self imposed darkness



Unconsciously drawn whilst deep down inside they're always smiling but constantly just wanting and needing more


Whenever I shine my bright light of illumination and attention right on them


And whisper their secret God-given  name


It's just the eternal price I pay now like my good old Ma

Bless her soul


For trying to summon a new light to shine in others and for them to try to live a new worthy life 

When they can stand proudly unafraid and unashamed 

And say to the watching stars and all other delirious eyes


I matter!


Copyright John Duffy 


Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Salve et Vale (L)


 







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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

 

Monday, June 7, 2021

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 

 

Sunday, June 6, 2021

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 

Saturday, June 5, 2021

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

Thursday, June 3, 2021

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 Sacred Tree