Hospice Stories

 (A lone voice whispers from the other side)

I kissed and loved her so damm hard with all my mortal might

That ethereal thing I once knew as Life

Held her real tight as I kneeled and prayed inside to the Almighty

That today of all days after the fitting of my syringe driver

I'd be all right

But when I looked up and opened my tear-filled eyes

She had slipped away like a clever thief in the night

Leaving me looking at Death arriving

With all his usual fucking pompous majesty

Singing and humming like a global megastar

Announcing his unwanted bloodthirsty arrival to all the other cancer patients

Who cowered in his sight as he slowly walked towards me and took a seat on my right

Copyright John Duffy

I always wondered what my late father felt after he was admitted to that ward. The dark energy. The silence. This whispered into being. He always said no one leaves a hospice alive. How sad it turned out true in just under three days.  

A spirit speaks

(A lone voice whispers)

If Life could speak to just you.
Would the conversation go like this?

To truly love
My beautiful child

Is to find an angel

Dancing in the bluest of early morning skies

To know intimately and revel within

Freely given joy and wisdom
Within its bright ever shining eyes

To know real happiness
My beautiful child is to embrace

All those subtle moments with family and friends

Before you suddenly die every day

A true wonderful narrative my beautiful child

To lighten up your own stardust filled night skies

A means my beautiful child

To rekindle trust between two passionate beating hearts

To once again re-enter the world and see through a once innocent child's eyes

As everything before you gradually unfurled

To eventually embrace the beauty of a perpetually ageing old hand

As the Almighty's bands constantly play

For it's through all those pivotal experiences

If you are willing to open up that magnificence

You'll learn to find
Love

A means to rebuild

To find a new shelter and start laying a new foundation

Alway's away from suspicious envious green eyes

Instead in a safe refuge overflowing

With courage and laid blissfully within someone's caring warm arms

For when all the pieces are maybe ready to be picked up again

You'll find the desire to begin and no longer hide and cleverly pretend

To believe you are not cursed forever

Sitting in the dark all alone

Inflicting penance on oneself, as you seek new avenues to walk down

To atone

Just remember
My beautiful child

That life

Your life is but a priceless gift and your time given is to simply cherish it

For those who chose to believe

They are truly illuminated for they simply know that

Newer adventures are always on the distant sunlit horizons

Just waiting for your touch

Hopes and dreams waiting to be breached and clutched

It's simply part of what
Life has to teach

You are here maybe
Some say

For three score and ten and my beautiful child

You will never call again

So before your own treasured part of your Life is run

Be sure to frolic

Take chances on people or places

Do it with kindness and compassion

Take risks and have some much-needed fun

Don't be a sad bystander filled with regrets when Master Death

Fires his eloquently loaded invisible black gun 

Good night!

Copyright John Duffy

Ode to the Soul

How delicate yet brave the eternal soul must be 

As it swims daily

Conquering painful struggles 

Heartbroken dreams 

Strands of Hate coursing in red veins

Grief and encountering love-torn people creating obstacles

All frayed at the seams

In the deep sludge of humanities black sea

Copyright John Duffy 

An ode to that deep inside, which carries and leads us, towards the light.

Salute. 

An old voice speaks

 

The Mage Speaks

(A lone voice whispers)

Hello dear reader  
My silent old friend

Have you returned to read my translucent hypnotic thoughts again

The one's I write here sometimes 
With my favourite black and white pen

Stories and poems collected from when I'm sleeping

When I listen to lost souls when they gather and slowly start speaking

Stories of how they miss walking in the rain

And touching their loved ones who still in the realms of the living remain

Especially now in 2021 with this virus

Lost in poetic visions we converse in silence

Walking through some streets
Filled with love or political violence

To narrow green fields or side roads filled with yellow cobblestones

As newly elected dictators try to run the old asylums

It's usually at three o'clock when those quiet friendly voices suddenly stop

That I then see a brief flash of crimson light

Lighting up the early morning night

Then they who shall not be named always appear
  
Standing on my right

Maybe twenty-five or more
Just hiding behind a shadowy door

More voices but louder 

Pleading and always talking without speaking

As I stand spiritually in the Astral Realms
Quietly listening

They talk of dark things I could never share

For if I did they said they'd haunt you too

Since they just love stalking the unprepared

I'll now go and no more disturb your sounds of silence

For even fools knows like cancer trouble grows

Hear these words and when they try to call

Knocking to tempt you up at three o'clock

Before the early morning cock crows

Like quiet raindrops which echo in white noise

As they hide hidden from view

From a strange place that no one knows

No matter how hard they beg or pray

Like the many fallen idols, they have already made

Use these words as flashing warning signs

That I send  

Before they try to get you to play
While pretending to be a friend 

Listen to these words as they are forming
And heed them as a carefully spoken warning

Those that walk like lost prophets
In between the many dimly lit subway walls  

In complete silence

Always avoid them like the plague with defiance

For they'll only bring damnation
From their secluded islands

Like seductive but sinister sirens

For they are mankind's hunters
Who stalks the living like Enoch's biblical giants

Who wants to license your soul to pledges and passports

Where there is no hope for guidance

For they wish to rule and be your new tyrant

As you are seduced by their old supernatural magic 

You now believe to be based on just science


Copyright John Duffy

Romeo whispers

 

(A lone voice speaks)

In the midst of it all

The tragic heartbreak

The ongoing pain and sorrowful stories to regale any sad Saturday night

I once smiled at the long list of offered assumptions

Personal assassinations and their much-cherished delusions

They clung on to like much-treasured gold

I thought I was a good man

I dreamed of finding a love-filled with happiness and in old age 

Grow together old

But instead 

Lonely 

I died

And now all alone 

Sent to sit here in bitter purgatory to reflect by the Almighty

For aeons

Besides a lone yellow candle for company

Which keeps back the darkness with its fluttering amber flame

I saw how I was buried

No carefully chosen music

All sombre with no real caring tears which cried 

Or heralded my earthly name

Well, it's one thing to know life but when The Angel of Death comes around

Quietly calling

Who'll shout and pray for you after your time is due

For before the end

Take these candid words from a friend who knows

And repent and be reborn into eternal glory 

It's how your story will live on as you transcend 

Or you too could be soon seated by a fluttering yellow flame 

Your only company

Which holds back the encroaching darkness

Here in these great dark lands

Known to the many and the lonely 

Cursed and into aeons 

Repeatedly calling themselves the Fallen in Purgatory 

Copyright John Duffy

A monologue from a faint voice. Conjured via my scrying mirror. Salute.  

Real music

 

The Watcher Speaks

 Press play. Salute.

(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 

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

Press play. Salute.

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