Christo comes through

 (A lone voice whispers)

Nobody knows me but I

A secret self I tried to hide from all

Until I died

For I was like the rarest of diamond

Found in a lifetime of searching

Only in the roughest of the rough

The unquenchable thirst 

Who was never sated and never knew 

Or embraced that word many submissively surrender to

Called Enough

I was born unbreakable in the darkness 

After two

On Christmas Eve 

In 1952

My mother said when she first saw me and really embraced her firstborn 

That my chestnut eyes seemed to whisper 

I see you too 

When she looked on

Such a gifted child to be constantly drawn to others with a similar light

She prophesied 

Leaving me a love letter from mother to son

Which amongst other lines simply said 

Chase happiness son as the world still turns and your candle still burns

Is that why you return as do I 

Here every night

Did you 

When I first met you by a little rock 

See something shimmering that sparkled and shone like a diamond 

As it tried to hide

Camouflaged

Like a hunter on a quest on a deserted island 

You see I need no remits

Or permits to breakthrough 

For my silver scrying mirror

The one given to me by Houdini who lives in here

Helps me escape to see you

For life 

As I look back was so cruel

Like fighting a one-sided duel within tragic ever-changing rules

Especially like when I set sail 

And just like RMS Titanic racing to her doom

Painted by Tatiana Yamshanova

Memories that still haunt me

Even in this very moment 

In this lonely room like a neverending hangover

My ship

The Fatal Maidens Kiss

 

Sank and if you're reading this

Just know I'll always carry your red balloon and crave a smell 

Once again

Of your Chanel No. 5 perfume

And that particular taste of that magical binding potion

We once as innocent strangers drank

When my first words introduced me

And from that day we first met 

Like two ships passing in the night

My beloved mother's last few lines 

She left for me to read in her will

Still echo

As I feel each line of everything she once said 

Especially the last line

When simply read

Chase happiness son

For it doesn't come too easily to the dead

Copyright John Duffy

The Tall Man, Approaches.

 A series of photos capturing my last days of being 40 before I turn 50?

How do I look?

All unedited of course. 🙌

Dreams of Mia

 (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.

The Mistress of the Voices of the Dead

 (A lone voice whispers)

Press play before reading. Salute.

Like a lone argus-eyed oblique tattered caliginous silhouette

Moving extremely cautiously in the severe deadly silence

The Mistress of the Voices of the Dead

Poe Ravenscroft Marmosett

A rare blatherskite whose white emblem appears on the backs of

The Great In-Between black gull's wings

Who just love to gather in huge invisible circles above lost souls 

Like earthly Starling flocks

To crow and sing

Poe Ravenscroft Marmosett

The seasonal bringer of red torches to burn at midnight

By kings

Princesses

Prince's

Peers and Lords

Red torches that would never go out 

No matter even if they got soaking wet 

When she stirs up her twin Sister Anxiety 

To fight in all gathered 

As she's summoned and ceremonially swept up

By her swollen army of mindless hordes

By their pleas

Calling to be re-masked and rebranded

With her new Emotions suit of self-resurrecting armour

Which her faithful armies seek

Full black leather and a two-sided blade and a white candle

Always lit to dispel the darkness 

As old or new emotions cascade 

To help guide them 

A new follower home to atone

After they've been beautifully betrayed

And all their inner larders have been raided and waylaid

By a conjured blind colporteur

Will you grasp Poe Ravenscroft Marmosetts

Shadowy hand to then suddenly hear the summoning anthem

Proudly played loudly by her ethereal band

Like I once did

The forbidden one known only to the few by her real unspoken name 

Poe Ravenscroft Marmosett 

She of the steely green eyes

Who always appears from the West 

With horse and carriages following her in straight lines

Stacked high with new black and white suits of leather 

And carrying white lit candles and sharpened blades

For those lost

Thinking about all the ones who broke the sanctity of their sacred trust

When they were betrayed 

Who now need a new armour made out of black leather

A white candle and a two-sided blade

After hearing and experiencing the traumas linked to the explosion 

Of one of her emotional hand grenades

Will you too hear these hissed words

Accompanied by the shrill sound of her ancient bejewelled Shofar

If you to her call

Surrender

Surrender

Will you summon me with your cries and pleas

The true queen 

All the real honey bees seek

Will you stand and listen as my priestess

Amongst my unvoiced bannerman 

The harsh voiced Sangoma of the Netherworlds

Gathers and commands you to pull on my black leathers

Hold up your new white candle and a two-sided blade

And return with her to go to war forever

Near my unseen home in all weathers 

A new soldier in an invisible army of the betrayed

A place where emotions no longer causes the Amygdala to get wet

For no known velleity can save you now

So will you follow I 

Poe Ravenscroft Marmosett

Into the sunset to reach a new land

Hidden just beyond The Green Hills in the West

Copyright John Duffy

A lady called Jane Fonda

 

(A lone voice whispers)

Press play before reading. Salute.

Did you know I once lived in a vivid lucid dream 

When I finally surrendered to Morpheus the Greek

And embraced his many magical empires 

Which appear when you finally fall asleep

It all started last November 

Where I met a stunning lady called Jenny Cirellow

Who I'm sure that Morpheus the Greek sent her

All dressed in lovely yellow 

Who loved prose like a treasured poet who nobody knows

She appeared from The Blue Ether 

If I pause to remember

So stunning and dressed from head to toe in bright gold

Walking on a river of silver that ran beneath her 

A memory I'll always carry until I grow old

She said her real spiritual name was a mixture of Jenny Cirellow and Jane Fonda 

And she was known all over in The Blue Ether

Worldwide

From The Great In-Between to Tijuana

And so she became my new and only holy Madonna 

That beautiful poet I came to call 

Jenny Cirellow or Jane Fonda

We talked and smiled for many a night

Lost in the fluctuating portals in The Great In-Between

But like all psychodrama's and unsaid karma

Green-eyed folk kept squeezing us hard like an anaconda

And so she left me singing a version of Black Magic Women

Like the one sung by someone in a rock band

A guitar player called Carlos Santana

As I stood standing alone by the river of silver

By the Blue Portal

That once ran beneath her 

Before she just smiled and disappeared 

Right back into the now Bright Blue Ether

(A soft voice sings)

Once had me a beautiful strong woman

A real strong superwoman

Once had me a real supernatural strong superwoman

Got me so fired up I could hardly breathe 

We walked talked and lived together

Lost in a yellow filled lucid dream

One I prayed I would never leave

For I once had me a beautiful strong woman

A real strong woman with so much in common

Tryin' to kick the bad human out of me

So wherever you are

Jane Fonda or Jenny Cirellow

The stunning woman who I once met in The Blue Ether

Dressed from head to toe in lovely yellow 

 

Just return from The Great In-Between 

To stand

Once again beside me

On this river of silver 

That now runs underneath me

And let's be friends 

Just you and me

Let's be friends 

Just you and me

Friends for all to see until the very end

For I once had me a real strong woman

A real strong superwoman

Once had me a real supernatural woman

Called Jane Fonda or Jenny Cirellow

Who I dreamed was pure and thought would never run

But that was premature 

And now I just hope she returns

Before everything burns 

Copyright John Duffy

(All images shared under fair usage policy)

The Story of Texas Pete

 

Press play and let the music wash over you as you read.

Salute.

(A lone voice whispers)

I was once addicted to a beautiful stranger 

Unknowingly using them like cheap cocaine

 

But as I look back on my life after my last confession 

After speaking to Father Poe

I now know

 

That when I got down on my tired old knees

Before the rusty cross 

My beloved grandfather made in our back garden

On Christmas Day in 2008 

During the last Great Recession

To pray in the falling rain

For salvation 

 

I know now I fought the devil for freedom that fateful night 

At midnight 

 

After wearing his X proudly for year's

Like the Mark of Cain

I've sacrificed all my precious time

Crucified my family and friends

For my only lover 

Who I thought would last until the very end 

A stranger who suddenly appeared when I was weak 

With sweet answers to everything and anything

You could seek or name

And even though now I’m free

I still wear loneliness golden chains

 

Like just another of the cursed

From the Brotherhood of the Profane

For that's how the Tall Man

Designed me

 

So my therapist told me

 

Broken 

Fractured and to be endlessly consumed

With vivid surging memories of bloodstained mental campaigns

Baptised to ride the inhumane storms of life

On a wooden ship called Hardship

And to grow and sink nightly in its many hurricanes

But now

I'm no longer a stranger to pain

And as I age

I still just use it like cheap cocaine

 

Walking bravely alone

In the falling rain

 

Knowing the Devil knows my name

And that’s why he leaves me alone

 

For he remembers our battles

At midnight 

In my grandpa's backyard 

 

When I once played his games

 

I’m glad God won though

For it’s him

I now travel to see

As I ride this life

Seated content with strangers

On one of his many slow-moving trains

 

High on all my pain

My old memories

 

Which I’m still addicted too

Like when I held hands with my old friend

 

Mother Cocaine

 

I can safely say this good old reborn Christian boys coming home

I just hope my Mary Jane is waiting for me

And when I get off that last stop

And finally arrive

She lets me explain 

By singing her a holy love song 

About my fight at midnight 

With the God of Cocaine

In my grandpa's backyard

When I was alive

 

 

 

Copyright John Duffy

 

The Song of Solomon

(A lone regal voice sings)

Press play before reading. Salute.

By the deep glow of your inner light

Which is always lit

Strengthened tenfold by the silver rays of Mother Moon

I pray your second sight shows you  

Hidden agendas and real intentions 

So soon

For you to see beyond their enchanting songs and sweetly sung hymns

Which they use to lead you

Knee deep into sin

So you can know what's right

For you're the genuine courage 

You've always looked for in the destructive dark 

The sovereign being 

You crave to be

Walking down Freedoms Pathways

For all to see

To a new form of happiness and self-liberation

And the one love 

You crave for in your hearts of heart

That maybe life has torn apart

Acquiesce

Acquiesce

And awaken

My friend 

Acquiesce 

Acquiesce

And awaken 

My friend

And say yes to the gift of second sight

To rise

To rise high

To avoid those dark souls.

That through the darkness cry

Trying to influence your life with their seductive 

Trojan Horses 

Sweet songs and hybrid hymns

Trying to lead you 

Knee-deep into sin

Acquiesce

Acquiesce

And awaken

My friend 

Acquiesce 

Acquiesce

And awaken 

My friend

And say yes 

To the gift of second sight

To rise

Rise high

To avoid those dark souls

Trying to influence your life 

With their seductive 

Trojan Horses 

Sweet songs and hybrid hymns

Trying to lead you 

Knee-deep into sin

To your end

Acquiesce

Acquiesce

And awaken

My friend 

Acquiesce 

Acquiesce

My friend and rise

No longer to cry

While time flies

Acquiesce

Copy and John Duffy 

The Angels Tale

  A lone voice whispers

The invisible Angel smiled at the rows of sorrowful patients

Which lay before it on ward twenty-one of Saint Peters hospital 

In New Brunswick

New Jersey 

As it then looked at just one particular sorry soul whose body was now broken and bent

For it was why he was summoned by heartfelt prayers 

Whispered to be heard for it to be dutifully sent

The smile it carried wasn't a smile of ill judgement 

Or dismay but of immense hope 

To change the sad vibrations at play

For it knew the recently diagnosed patient would find the tenacity and strength to eventually cope

For they all do 

It's a silent degree

A line spoken by the Almighty 

Which all things follow if they believe whatever it says

All they have to do is call for them and pray

To summon angels from The Great  In-Between

The bringers of such priceless envelopes to soothe the soul

The invisible folk

Who'll follow like betrothed guardian philanthropists

Just huddled together

Sleeping in the shade of the Great In-Between trees

The Eternal Water Oaks

Waiting for psychic calls to spring into action

Flying into the lonely caressing arms of the swirling grey mists

Which moved and flowed all around 

Like it had a phenomenal supernatural intelligence 

Hiding those sleeping in the grey smoke 

By The Great Grey Oaks by its smoke which it uses to cloak

Copyright John Duffy

Chanelling Plato

(A lone voice whispers)

Are you feeling low and haunted by a sense of something malevolent 

Following you like a second shadow 

Everywhere you go 

You could be so beautiful

You know

Inside and out 

If only you could be courageous enough to accept who you really are 

And shake off those so familiar feelings of despair

That seems to follow you everywhere

But are you brave enough to change

Family 

Friends

Lovers

Or even work

For to grow into the real you

To shine your inner light

To all within sight beyond fear

Judgment or condemnation 

Has always been one of the Universal Unspoken Laws

And that statute my friend with the curious eyes

Can help to dispel all those inflicted flaws

Reading these words in 2022 

In the early morning sunlight

Afternoon

Dusk or just past midnight

That old universal law is still totally irrefutable

But are you ready to understand and grasp it

For God gave you an inner light and it wasn't made to be irreducible

But simply to help guide you through all those long lonely nights

To help discover the real you

Copyright John Duffy 

The Poetic Tale of Mr Ebony

A lone voice whispers

 Mr Ebony approaches my secret libraries shadows 

Of lost memories

Which follow me around 

In the form of Charlie Chaplin

Carrying a battered old brown suitcase 

Covered in Do Not Open stickers

Stuck on its worn-out aged face 

Always behind me

Treading into the soft sands of my histories far-stretching shores

I leave invisible to the human eyes

Everywhere I go

Pale are the grieving trails

I leave

Filled with tree branches 

Where once beautiful memories

Now filled with grieving and hung like dazzling decorations

On Christmas Eve 

That reminds me

Painfully of years 

Mesmerised in the Misplaced City of Love and Trust 

A wondrous place

Where tender blue waves caressed the ocean before turning into ethereal dust

Where Mother Sea French kissed each citizen 

Like long lost lovers

  

How pure that time and sound was loved by me

Laid watching the diverse tapestries filled with moving clouds

By the sea

Visions of her hand holding mine

With her head on my shoulder

Telling me 

She'll love me forever

As Father Time got slowly older

But those once happy days are now so long gone

For Ebony approaches my shadows 

My priceless library 

Armed with his memory stealing Amnesia Gun

Hunting for long lost memories

Which dress like Charlie Chaplin

Always seeking battered old suitcases

To add to his endless collection 

He's pulled from so many silent screen faces

To then rip them open 

To then tread into the soft sands of their histories far-stretching shores

Once left invisible to human eyes

To wander through the path of the Pale Grieving Trails

And take broken hearts most expensive treasures

Once hung beautiful memories on delicate branches

Like dazzling decorations

On Christmas Eve 

That reminds him

Painfully of years 

He too spent

Mesmerised in the Misplaced City of Love and Trust

But now doomed to forever stalk and grieve 

Before he too dissolves

And is absorbed by the Universe

Just to be another form of brown rust

Swirling in its ever-shifting dust

Copyright John Duffy

(Image shared with fair use policy)