The Monologue of William Shakespeare the 4th

It's 5.15 am, on the 6th of December, 2020. 

Listening to some glorious, evocative French music. 

Press plays as he speaks to you. 

If your technology allows you to read as it plays.

Salute. 

This whispered into life as I visualised a new scene. 

A dark stage swimming in total darkness.

A bright white spotlight suddenly appears, and a man, wearing a white shirt.

Tired looking and unshaven. 

Steps into view. 

His eyes are wet with tears and filled with anguish.

Will you listen as his voice speaks? 

Am I attracted to the darkness as you eloquently so

Quickly state 

Do I need God’s salvation

To truly find ways to try to set me free

Well 

Shall I begin before you tar and feather me

With hate

Amongst such carefully crafted tales of embracing the soft contaminating hands 

Of your perceived ideas 

Relating to primordial sin

Just because I like to explore all themes

Known to mankind

As I peel back their many sometimes invisible layers 

The Darkness

Love and the glorious Lights

And everything just

Hanging in-between

That I sometimes see

An old biosphere saturated with every known plight

I willingly visit to explore 

At the stroke of midnight 

Each and every night 

The Metaphysical

Wild stories of the Spiritual

Entwined with the raw emotions of humanity at their very core

The rights and wrongs

Ups and downs

Does that make me more at risk spiritually 

Of being attacked by low spirits and corrupted

As all my emotional energies

In doing so

Gets occasionally

Deeply interrupted 

Perhaps more likely than most

But doesn't it also identify and qualify me

Amongst God’s always-watching Angels 

As being someone worth saving

As I'm more willing to delve into all those unspoken realms 

To create and share new posts

Whilst enduring a bout of the 90s

Whilst cohesively word raving

I know I push the metaphorical white envelope

Spiritually wise 

More than most

But I'm afraid I cannot be that mundane man

You wish to own

For to do so 

To my own higher self

Would be telling

Such a deep and eternally soul-destroying lie

One from which I could never ever bare to carry 

Deep inside 

For it would condemn me and this brave white and black fearless horse 

I ride

Gattuso

So if you still want a man

Who blindly follows your religious vows and unbending rules 

And perceived ideas

Relating to your illuminating visions of heaven and hell

You'll just have to seduce another 

And put them under your mysterious seductive spells

Don’t we all have an inherent right to explore all we see 

Like when we were once young

Just like a curious innocent child

I am not attracted to the darkness 

Or the ancient words or phrases

That drive secretive occult tribes irrevocable wild

I just use them as a theme 

When creating more evocative mazes

For curious minds to wonder and stumble through

As they add a more mysterious feel

When they choose to transmigrate 

Right out of the blue

In my opinion 

To a mind unaccustomed to hearing or reading 

Such strange themes

Or visually simulating memes

Is that wrong of me 

As I peel back the Realms of Humanities 

Many layers

Or shall I simply write more safe stuff

Blessed by your ideals of the Holy Ghost

Some say the Devil appears unexpectedly like a silent player

When you call him the most

But doesn't also God

I call to the Almighty more than you'll ever know

You are more religious than me 

My dearest Amélie

Due to your deep biblical knowledge and church affiliations

I am only a poor soul whose mother was once a priestess

Of a new age of such uniqueness 

  

We are such a world brimming with profound fluctuating contradictions

A wild juxtaposition of raw values at the very core

Like the magical stories of paganism versus the righteous beliefs

Held rigidly by the indomitable Vatican

God speaks to us in so many different ways.

Maybe it’s in my fast-flowing bloodstreams 

Is that why I was saved so many times in my early life 

Because I was foretold to write about The Eternal Dream 

To finally find myself standing beside you

One dark and mysterious night

Who knows

When we first started exchanging love letters

So long ago

Did I break something so sacrosanct between us 

By making our exchanges more visceral in nature 

Which my inner voice always said was so wrong

And

Fate would turn our beloved relationship to eventual dust

The vigorous sides of our exchanges broke that innocence 

We once found between ourselves

In the early morning

Serenaded and heralded by a beautiful silence 

And was that the devious corruption 

I unconsciously invited into my life 

As I now reflect 

By reading and writing about so many deep and dark controversial 

Hidden subjects

A long while ago

As our corresponding conversations got slowly deeper and deeper

I was warned this would happen 

By Guardian Angels

Sent to watch over and teach us 

That you would need something so much more 

Which I couldn’t give you 

Even when you demanded it 

To earn your trust

I was only 

Trying in the beginning 

To be a friend

To someone who through words

I could see was so lonely

Should I be ashamed of anything 

Now this house of beautiful cards 

We once built 

Falls and descends and we can no longer 

Enter that White Room of no End

We created to hide within 

So now as we part ways 

When you eventually hear this 

Since we are no longer 

Friends

Will I miss tasting the soft tones of your name 

And all those dulcet sounds 

Which once helped to transcend 

Those painful strands of emotions 

Which still linger and dutifully 

remains

Only I will know the true answers 

And will never reveal them 

As they may show the outskirts and deep centre of my inner realm

My red statues of my true vulnerabilities and everlasting pain

Well as I speak 

As this beautiful French singer 

Devours my very emotions with such earth-shattering poise

This is my final goodbye

My only muse

My old broken world

 

A new realm beckons 

And I will carry you gloriously into it 

Like a mystical red rose

To illuminate 

The encroaching darkness

Wherever my new boat sails

Over the dark oceans of life

That continuously

Flows 

Even though my soul train now travels so fast on blacken rails

That now glows 

For all its once strong brakes have blown

I'll hold on to those pocketful of memoirs

Once written and composed 

Wherever I go

To help transcend so many dark nights

And when those beautiful memories of you

Suddenly re-appear

at random

I will always feel blessed

To have once had you as mine

A soft hand to hold

Which once helped 

To lead me out of the darkness of loneliness 

With love as your white burning candle

Un jour, les brumes se sépareront

Et nous ne ferons plus de mal

One day the mists will part and we will no longer hurt

*End of monologue 

With a long look at an invisible audience with painful eyes overflowing with tears 

He retreats slowly back into the darkness 

The spotlight then fades into the blackness 

A monologue for a new piece.

I hope you enjoyed the emotional journey. 

Salute. 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

The Queen of the Deep Forest

I hope she still waits

That rebellious wild woman of such irreducible taste 

Glimmer and sublime guile

Whose bright eyes still shine with the illustrious glow of that illuminated flame

Which was once stolen by brave Prometheus 

From heavens dark skies

Enhancing her beautiful face

Making her look like Morgana the Cunning sorceress in the Arthurian legends

From where all her pagan blood flows

For she holds me like a pawn enthralled in a grip of steel as I try to break down

Her carefully constructed walls

When she always stands tall in these dark woods at the stroke of midnight

Where we still meet as I stroll

Standing singing eloquently in her candlelit circle

To the moon and watching skies as its white clouds roll

Uttering strange ancient spells

Unknown to most

As she conquers all who dare come into view before they can yell

It's why I still visit

For I'm just hypnotised and conjured by the delicious sounds 

Of her golden ringing summoning bells

Copyright John Duffy

The Ballad of The Recalled. A passage from the hidden books of the Goddess Diana.

(A lone voice whispers)

Within a silent dream-like whisper just after midnight

I once heard your faint calls

You whispered so softly preaching in the half-light

That silvery gulf of divinity between us

With such quite majestic thunderous proclamations of sacred truths

Be a vivid illumination  

You confessed

For the world is still so beautiful if you really look below the dark frontiers of bleeding despair

A divine kingdom awaits

Just hiding beneath the many disgraceful layers of political spin

Crushed dreams and depressing days where once rapturous hearts will unfortunately tear

But you are all still a child of a universe unseen

You all have a god-given right to still dare to cling onto dreams

So learn to nurture all your strength in cold days of misfortune and strengthen through faith and profound conviction

Your protective shield to always try to redeem

Dispell all those unspoken lies with a wide smile which may hang like a hangman's noose in friendless jealous green eyes

For your merciful and miraculous heart has always been yours to willingly surrender

Its virtues of kindness and heroism are your own mighty defenders

Just don't be deceived by the many false pretenders

In these long days of ever-growing darkness and receding lights

In the middle of this

Your own version of one of the universes long nights

Don't mirror the tilt of low souls

Into deep icy pools filled with many visitors to Dante's heartlands

But be a hypnotic beacon in what you choose to sing or write

Ignite like an exploding thunderous New Years Eve firework

All the visitor's inquisitive minds as they quietly venture and gather

Sitting hidden or standing  

Unspoken into sight

Inspire hope and give them an unconscious smile

For them to carry away freely into these dark morose nights

I can always remember listening to that soft voice patiently

And now a thousand years later

I'm trapped and held like a Stockholm conditioned prisoner in your all-consuming singularity

For I'll always be yours beyond society or notoriety

Passionate for new bells that now chime

From here into infinity

Bells now which rule our twinned endorphin-filled minds

For we now survive enshrined beyond judgemental scopes of any mortal kind

Eternally blowing in new winds which always provides

Now we are young and free

You once said the universe was always ours to conquer

And within each silent whisper when I still feel and hear your nightly calls from your shrine

Up high in Mother Moon

Once worshipped by so many pagan followers before the fall of man

Regardless of fears of ownership or irreducible complex complications

I'll always climb over these metaphorical grey undulating walls regardless of the fall

Just cursed to try to reply

To you my predetermined soul-flame

Just hidden in the meandering shadows

Whispering through your channelled rhymes

As I feel the exquisite familiar torment that signals and announces with a huge emotional and spiritual pull why my spirit was restored

As my soul is dutifully reminded it's being subtlety recalled  

  

(C)  

Copyright John Duffy

What if Earth is Purgatory?

 (A lone voice whispers)

What if you're living in your own version of purgatory on Earth

For eternal souls never like us never grow old

Just tasked with living and breathing

To be tempted by demons and angels

While searching for love or redemption

For we never grow old

Baptised to choosing between good and evil as we walk

Its well-trodden roads

As new introductions are subtlety introduced as they unfold

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

The God of Sleep Speaks

Press play before reading. Salute.

(A soft voice whispers)  

Are you carefully scrutinized by undiscovered forces from another realm?  

**Do we in the mist, live forever**  

Many of your types I pass daily but especially at midnight  

When I sit on the edge of their bed  

Have always asked

Even though we're all invisible  

We still hear you  

As you struggle to confide in the forbidden silence  

Especially in the last dregs of sunlight before dusk  

**Are we, immortal souls**  

You continuously question  

**What would you do with all that time**  

**Would it drive you right out of your mind**  

Well, here's my answers

Just for you to read before you turn to dust  

**In here**  

This dark place known to the enlightened few as The Shadow Lands  

Where I now exist and drink almond ambrosia to worship and pray alone

Commissioned until eternity to strive to excite lost souls  

To confess as a penance  

I've been anointed with as my chance to find a means to atone  

**Sacrificed deserted lonely souls who stumble and end up my way**  

**Through random long or short legions of linear sleep poetry**  

And like a drunken James Brown  

I gather them around to listen to what my words and conjured dream states

Really mean and say  

While high on whiskey and singing  

Papa's Got A New Bag globally  

Dressed like my prototype  

Good old Bob Dylan in black

When he once faced his own faithful hurricane  

I sometimes entertain them by dancing wildly and singing

Lyrically adept in a smoke-filled circle with the all-time king of pop  

Michael Jackson  

Whilst moon-walking in grey skies  

Watched by others and the occasional falling star  

**My** **agastopia** **of** **delicious lines grace their minds**  

**Like a new friend I was recently introduced to**  

**Hugh Hefner**  

The one famous for all those damned but hot  

Playboy’s pictures  

**That still send adolescent and immature mind's cerebral cortex's** 

**And** **l****ibidos totally insane**  

**I sometimes stand in the half-light** 

Smiling wryly  

**Telling them** **I'm so strong and powerful like that heroic Thandie Newton**  

**The one who once found strength** 

**Self-worth and power** **in a new Westworld**   

Whilst being reborn again and again  

**My words are softly whispered enchantments you see**

**Spells sent just to serenade your tired bored five senses**   

**Filled with a crescendo of rising fire like when Marlon Brando**  

**Embraced emancipation while causing total carnage**  

**Death and eventual apocalypse**  

**In Cambodia**   

**As he boarded that fateful flight 707 from The Seventies**   

**Dreaming of his girl next door he left home**  

**Called Sophia**   

**Am I a sceptic like some say or just a wide-boy spectator**  

A majestic soother like an out-worldly philosopher  

Or just a beguiling collaborator  

Can you feel me  

**You ought to**  

**I am simply giving you a mixture of my powerful prescribed words**  

Which are imbued with the power to grace **your insatiable eyes**  

**Through those cheap or expensive plastic movie screens**  

**As I hide in the dangerous deep depths**   

**Of the twenty-first century's fast-flowing mobile streams**  

**For I'm just a beautiful old beast**  

**A heaven-sent narrator**  

**Steamrolling through with lustrous glossy keys**   

**To all the so many wet lesser brothels of your mind**  

**As you sit watching and casually sipping these sweet-tasting letters as you read**  

**And just like so many**  

 **I already know**   

**You'll soon become gloriously addicted to my cheap bottles of poetic mead**   

**You see**  

**I'm just a non-living fossil**  

A mesmerising essence from bygone days  

Mentioned only once  in The Great Golden Books of The Byzantine  

**I celebrate on Tuesdays and Sundays**   

**By going knee-deep into humanities new future**  

**MK Ultraing new intellects forever**  

**To live just to love me**  

**As I program them**  

**Like an expensive computer geek**  

**I'm a mixture of all of life's sweet-tasting**   

**aromas and scarred sacred baggage's**  

Can you feel me yet  

**Am I just behind you**  

**Watching and walking**  

**As you stride out bravely in front**  

**Or am I standing hiding**   

**Just beyond sight and keeping firmly closed**  

All the smokey doorways to all your dreams  

**Can you feel me like Old Nick**  

**One of my dearest buddies whose everlasting**  

God that guy loves stalking you all like an ageless Marquis  

Me  

**I'm just a once unvisited world of beguiling words**  

**Just conceived into being by the** 

**Elemental unspoken old Gods from mystical** **Talen**  

**Tasked to slowly just consume your earthly time** 

**Of three scores and if you're lucky, ten**  

**Can you feel my bony fingers stroking those secretive rooms**   

**The one's barely visited when you're awake and drunk**   

**With this plane of existence many addictive potions**  

But the secret ones you always use your golden keys to open and visit  

**When you dream**   

**and it's then and only then**

That you'll see me  

As I appear before you

Dressed in black and  blue  

To stimulate your mind to carefully unwind  

All those old sometimes painful threads  

And through finding your own for of catharsis  

**The freedom to write** 

**Sing or just to express yourself to be free**

It's why I was birthed

To help you find your inner soul while you live here

On Earth

(C)  

Copyright John Duffy

I wrote this a few years ago.

Watching, The Sandman, made me revisit it.

It's a strange old world.

Have a great weekend you talented readers.  

Salute.

A tragic poem of Lost Love. Codex Consecratio

Press play before reading. Salute.

Santiago's Love Letter to Sofia

(A lone voice whispers into the night. Lonely and cold)

The last time I saw you

Was like cataclysm’s of 

An unquieted mind

I tried to decipher my own 

Codex Consecratio

To overcome 

And conquer 

My own self-deprecating 

Code Red

For

You are my dangerous solo

Mission 

My one-way ticket 

To Loves

Dark side of its crimson prisms

And Moons

I dream to manifest 

And wait until the 

End of Days 

At your much-sought side

For I have been metaphorically 

Blindfolded and willingly

Cohersed and

Dragooned

For I’m but a naive hostage

To you 

My penance 

To serve my own red devil

My majick

My 

Scarlet Lady 

Without notions of fears

Or that human weakness 

Betrayed through wet tears

Am I but a pitiful man

Tied and lashed to your 

Never-ending 

Crosses Of Gaslighting

 

And infernal 

Damnation's 

Overflowing 

And drowning in tribulations 

Forever embroiled within 

Lost lunacies of 

Dark Confessions

Of love

Do I speak in unfathomable tongues

Is that why you

Leave me lonely 

Always

Drowning in this red symphony

Awaiting the much sought-after days

When 

I appear as your own

Red churches

Self-imposed 

Crimson 

Altarpiece

Only 

Epiphany 

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy.

The Seducer

Press play before reading. Salute.

Running your soft hands up  

And down my

Warrior’s hard dark  

Chocolate skin  

  

You gently pulled me in  

  

To  

Bathe forever in deep pools  

Of visceral emotions

In the forbidden darkness  

  

Of irresistible pleasure beyond measure  

  

  

The circle of Shadow People

Surrounding us  

  

Watched in  

Green envy

By red candlelight  

  

As I claimed you

With a secretive anointing of a  

Rekindling of two lost souls  

  

As mine forever  

  

Lightning  

Struck on the timeless stroke of midnight

And I followed willingly and  

Wantonly in unison  

  

As the wet rain poured down

On that old hotel's box  

White painted windows  

  

I saw it in your fevered opulent eyes

As exquisite sensuous deep pleasure

Entered your inner realms  

And kingdoms  

  

And as you smiled  

I saw  

  

That unconscious greed

For an unadulterated unexplored passion  

  

That old yearning for newfound  

World's

Golden kaleidoscopes  

  

Of intense pleasure  

And the overwhelming urges to just......escape  

  

That I  

Alone can truly express

That I alone  

To you can really give  

  

Now as you lay  

Once more before me

Totally vulnerable on that  

Sweet bed of red Roses  

  

And you begin to take off that red dress  

And high heels  

  

**Are you really ready**  

  

  

To step willingly

Naked and waist-deep  

Into deep emotions of otherworldly sins  

  

To  

Look me deep in the eyes

And all your dark fantasies confess  

  

For I am One of the Unspoken Mages

One of The Masters of all In-between  

  

I can see you now  

As you read this  

  

And listen to your whispered lines

As you revel in this newfound bliss  

  

Just hidden beyond all that blue ocean

And those snow-covered mountains  

  

Where I type to you  

Just hidden and unseen  

  

  

For you know

I can take you wherever you want to go

And you know deep inside  

What is to come  

  

You have been caught spiritually  

  

To never again run

But to sink slowly in new rivers of  

Molten gold  

  

A new unexplored world  

To review  

  

In treasures of just you and me

Priceless memories  

  

To ignite your soul  

Whenever you feel cold...

(C)  

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared from Pinterest under fair usage policy.

Theda Bara. Speaks from Purgatio.

 

Press play before reading. Salute.

(A lone voice whispers)

Alone in here 

In the Great In-Between

Standing unseen

In the shadow-filled darkness

I love caressing the soft fingertips of Mother Twilight

As she passes her unrequited lover

Father Daylight as he retreats

Looking up like a two-dollar voyeur at her glorious open night sky

I always wonder why

Nobody now calls my name even though I've died

Am I forgotten like all the lonely dead

With only a blessed few 

Now only alive by those just blindly clinging onto their legacy and fame

Is that why I no longer see the bright lights from the shimmering door

For I'm now just another vampire stalking the living at night

Walking silently upon many well-worn floors

No longer loved or remembered 

But simply abandoned on Love's ruthless highways

Will you take me in

Say my name so I'm reborn

Free of sin

Help me stand straight and proud in this grey neverending storm

So I know deep down I'm not alone

I know you're reading this on your computer

Tablet or phone

Why can't somebody like you just love me

Be brave enough to set me free

My name is Theda Bara  

The First

 A true queen of the silent screen

Will you dream of me tonight

And in doing so

Invite me in to visit to sate my unquenchable thirst

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

 

The Servant's last words

Press play before reading. Salute.

(A lone voice whispers)  

I once met my true love in Down Town LA

In 1987

By the Palace Theatre

A place she loved because she said she was there when it opened in 1911

To watch the third home of the Orpheum Vaudeville

Come alive with all sorts of wild entertainers  

When my soul called out for it needed her

While at some rich place in Bunkers Hills  

After watching the Lakers  

And now every 15 years

She still all appears even though she still goes to meet new takers

And every night when she chooses to suddenly appear  

  

To the chosen few like me  

  

Stories abound in darkened rooms online and secret circles

Called The Hidden See  

That causes all her restless slaves  

  

To try to raise their weary heads from their feathered pillowed pews  

  

Enchanted beyond all belief  

  

Pleading telepathically to climax and find some sort of mental release as her new or old muse  

  

Praying she'll she stand over their ramshackled lonely beds  

  

For she's deceptively beautiful as every single spoken or written human rhyme  

  

Some paint tapestries of her beauty through any worthy words they could find  

Secret ones uttered down through the Ages  

  

Clever Poets  

Mystics and so many unknown Mages  

  

Some speak of long leather-clad legs  

  

All men cry to touch and pray inwardly to caress  

  

Ravish me red lips  

  

Women say they forever daydream to just taste  

  

Emerald eyes they all speak of  

  

Orbs to invade and conquer your eternal soul  

  

Until the very end  

  

Whenever it's time for your human life to be laid to waste  

  

Has she entered your room and watched you sleep  

  

As your soul wandered its many inner spaces

And unspoken keeps  

  

Her name  

You may ask  

  

Well, her occult name is simply **Rèn nan vle**

**The Queen of Want**  

For we all deep down crave something  

  

Be it fame

Power  

Money

Friendship or even Love  

  

Amongst many others  

  

And only our occult Mother called Want can guide us to provide  

Or so she said  

Over the years  

  

Regardless of the price of wet tears

It will cost us in the long run  

  

As we struggle to survive while she still lives

Lingers and thrives  

  

Feeding off our inner suffering  

  

As we sustain and strengthen her

With our foolish needs and self-defeating lies  

That in the middle of any given night can always make us cry

As our mortal time flies  

I send this out as I await her return

Sitting and drinking in the rain

For I don't think I'll make our fifth anniversary at The Palace Theatre

For the doctors say I'm too ill to leave my home in Beverly Hills  

Years of need and greed have given me a disease  

Now my time is short and my message to you

Be careful what you wish for

For Rèn nan vle could appear to open new doors

To old lands of want and greed  

And if she comes tonight to see me in my room

My only want  

My only need will be

To sink slowly to sleep and wake up new by the Silver City

Somewhere by its blue seas

Where the mythical pink and green flowers bloom  

Free of this life-changing disease

(C)  

Copyright John Duffy

Are you one of The Ficta Crew

 

Press play before reading. Salute.

(A lone voice whispers)

In the graveyard shift

Do you

The old or new hands

Young or even older poets or writers 

Songwriters 

Singers

Lyricists or filmmakers

Seek and use profound delicate words like a mage or sorcerer 

A blessed mystical physician

Who carefully merges consonants and vowels 

With an invincible wand

With soul bringing satisfaction 

Like the proud leader of a Sunday morning marching band 

Or one that forms intense bridges to happiness that must be metaphysically crossed

To escape from fatal feelings filled with juxtapositions 

To help the lonely souls reading or listening 

But all watching 

To find a plateau to distract themselves from the sounds of the ever-ravenous world 

While the rising Wolf Moon and Suen 

The Sun 

Smile in hunger and watches 

Transfixed

As Father Times 

Runes and magical symbols

Trapped with its minutes and seconds 

Burns

Like Raidho

The rune of travel

Rhythm and ritual action

An integration of all aspects of the soul

A literal journey to another place that can help other spirits grow

Slowing down the ceremonious absorption by hidden vampire entities

As they seek spiritual essences to be endlessly consumed

Are all like you 

Just the true kings and queens of the ancient art of the Latin world called

Ficta

When they choose to use it 

Which swirls in the Universes fast flowing flux

Translated for the Uninitiated

As

Make Believe 

Because they're so skilled at making things up without a fuss

That can sometimes bring solace and comfort to those 

Who needs something emotional to help carry them through the low hours

And change their mood by its connective emotional power

Especially at dawn

Midnight or dusk

When old painful sensations can suddenly bloom like an irremovable wound

Beginning in any unwanted morning or afternoon

From heartbreak

Grief 

Lost love

And silent yearnings

So are you one of The Universal Ficta crew

Those extraordinary souls who bring a burning glossy torch

Lit with incredible connective words

To create a raging maelstrom

A holy conjunction

To help those who need solace

To guide them through a depressing or desolate night

Wherever they are

As the four winds blow

Filled with golden and silver visceral invisible kingdoms conjured

And summoned

Through the magical transforming spell called Ficta

To help them heal and face this realm of many challenges and characters as they try to renew

I can only pray and hope you carry that torch

Everywhere you go before you turn to grey dust

Until next time

Your friend on the blue bridge of hope and creativity

Hiding in the Great In-Between

Waiting to see what you produce

Your eternal friend who you may call Benedictus

(C)

Copyright John Duffy