Press play before reading. Salute.
(A lone voice whispers)
Lost in these unlit creepy dark woods
Past the moonlit Shimmering Lake
Standing here as I speak
This despair I always feel which makes me weak
Tells me love is a thing that is so real
It's all I now know as I stand awake
In this new state
For the dead don't sleep or weep
And when the mysterious singers in this darkness
Call out to me with sweet mesmerizing voices
Each filled with such inescapable power
My pain slowly rises in my soul
Hour by hour
As I'm watched by the Nixs
Standing in crooked lines
On the crumbling translucent walls of The Great Watchtower
Strange creatures dressed in blue
Who just love to send me Raven notes that simply say
Come to us to renew
The Diamond Door is always open
Be one of the Nixs
Follow our ways
To find the new you
Come climb The Great Watchtower walls
To drink deep from our wish-fed fountain and see past all the Black Mountains
No longer filled with urges to fight for love and light
But to become a lone Watchman of the Endless Night
They are so relentless
Always looking for new apprentices
Raven after Raven bringing notes every second
They send
Now as I stand here at the end
Sending this out
Surrounded by the mountains of parchments they have sent
Hoping I'll relent
I reckon I'll play my part
To be the titled hero in this cosmic show
This work of art
While this crushing dusk and silver snow
Lovingly shatters my broken heart
For what the Nixs don't realize
That crisp wide smile that I always wear
The one I flash
The one they all see through their obsidian scrying glass
By candlelight
As their hungry eyes follow me everywhere
That ripe smile is barren
The real one is still somewhere
Out there
Still, I hope
Being carried around in beautiful blue eyes as her time flies
Why should I carry a real smile?
For in here
The living
Beyond the Silver Barrier
Can't hear your soul screaming
Or when through razor loaded invisible tears
You suddenly start laughing
For the pain you feel is so loaded with bottomless fear
Oh, how I wish I could still be there
With you
Away from the Nixs and Dark Angels
For it's so painful
I used to think I was strong
But these endless dark nights are so long
Is today the day I will wonder
If I'm wrong to fight the Nixs many invitations
And go along to the Diamond Door
Beneath The Great Watchtower
And knock
Asking to join their mix
For nobody in The Great In-Between
Knows I still miss you
For this swirling grey air and spooky fog makes you overlook your past life
And in time
Causes parts of your mind to speak only in rhymes and once it starts
The forgetting begins
The Dissolution of the Flesh they call it
Its why they think I need setting free
By sending midnight Ravens every hour to me
To be like one of them
The Nixs
Guardians of The Great In-Between
Bounded to a sacred oath to stand as Watchmen on The Great Watchtower
For all eternity
Emotionally empty husks
Who surrendered to a form of self-accepting bondage
To watching the ever-shifting skies at dusk
For the dark ones called The Flominous
But I feel like I'm bound by a great chain
Connected only to you
Never to make a sacred oath to another but to kneel every night and pray for a resurrection of us
I may be trapped in this ever-evolving mystery
Of my own love life's history
Where nobody knows I'll always need you
But me
The Nix have just sent a new Raven note over
So I must be quick before their Baltise Drums start beating
Sending them all into a crazy chanting frenzy
It says I can't survive in here
On my own
I'll just cast it on the great pile as they watch
For what they do not know
My soul may be crying inside now I'm alone
In this
The Spiritually Demilitarized Halfway Zone
Mislaid in the Realms of The Great Unknown
But my love for you will continue to grow
Day by day
Minute by minute until you too come home
To embrace me once more
Like the last time, I saw you in San Francisco
So we can go walk past the red lampost on the edge of the Shimmering Lake
To then walk hand in hand
Through Heavens Silver Gates to everlasting happiness
It's a dream I just try to cling onto in this darkness
Attempting not to forget but the rhyming has started
But I'm still here
Still resisting the hunger to knock on that Diamond Door
To be tempted to stand on the Great Watchtowers parapets
Forever in the void
I know I'm now one of the misplaced but thinking of you
Gives me hope
My beloved Lucy to cope
Lost in here
Somewhere uncharted in the Grey Grounds beyond yours
In The Great In-Between
Where I now exist amongst the Nix and so many others
Unseen
Copyright John Duffy