(A lone voice whispers)
Press play before reading. Salute.Out of the great ruins at Telos
By the surging Red Sea
I stepped out
Driven
And started suddenly walking to a new Galilee
Such was the magnetic pull
Of something deep inside me
That was been recalled to its Way Station
By the pull of its own Papal Cross
A cross I couldn't see
Hiding and carefully creeping past all the baying tortured hordes
Running amok
Destroying cars and houses and burning down trees
Who called themselves The NightBreed
Eventually after a hard 5 hours
I came to Imagarta
The abandoned lands of the Hellraisers
Who love telling The Gathered Foolish lost souls
Around their horse-driven caravans
Parked in huge burning circles
Illuminated by torchlight
Stories about their master
The Insidious Mister Mephistopheles
A dark thing that'll make all your dreams seem to come so true
You'll never want to leave but instead, cause you to grieve
And you'll soon join their tribe and learn
Lifes filled with strange things
Beings and stranger people
So complex
That's why it comes fresh with no rehearsals
Past them all, I slowly crept
Ignoring the sweet-smelling temptations of soul and heaving sweaty flesh
Towards to the green flickering light
Above the doorway
That stood on the edges of Existences Beach
Which lay in the distance
Within a landscape covered in empty beer cans and litter
To reach The Great and Secret Show
Where all things are said to glitter
A place that some say
Lays beyond the Portal to the Blue Mountains in the deep snow
Where something called to and pulled my soul as it whispered and wept
A place I kept seeing in the most vivid of magical visions
I let in freely with no signs of resistance
Images that whispered they will be my last illusions
If I made the right decisions
If I chose to bravely walk the Bleeding Pathways close to the Infernal Parade
In absolute midnight
As I played the hero on my own bequeathed quest
My soul's own crusade
And stepped into a new heart-stopping realm called Cold Heart Canyon
A light and dark place
Where long days and nights are filled with hypnotic incense and mesmerising magic
Where tragic sonnets and operas about those who sold out
And now living in big mansions
Are sung aloud
Filling each room with songs about
Revelations
Damnation
Happiness and Sadness
Hymns sung by the Red and Black dressed Cabal
Like they are blessed, scarlet gospel singers
Who once entertained Great Men of Renown
Now buried in secret tombs
Deeply hidden underground in Cape Town
All this
Just to meet her
The mirage in the desert sands
The shimmering light waiting by my Papal Cross
The one who summoned my soul
One day when I woke
Lost and alone in Telos
Mia
The goddess in a vision
I once saw in a dream in a supernatural country called Minatilos
Copyright John Duffy
A piece in tribute in part, to one of the great authors. Clive Barker. The King of creating visual tapestries.