The River

As Goddess Aphrodite

With her dark eyes

Emitting a hypnotic aroma

Of almonds

In her flowing white gown

Stood on the ominous

Invisible broken banks of שְׁאוֹל

Unspoken grounds of an

Unseen Sheol

Just perched on the edge of humanities

Peripheral vision

Far from the silvery fields of Elysian

As torn carcasses

In its red waters flowed and

Floated by

Ruined misshaped

Corpses

Of outright Racism

Subtle hidden whispered outtakes of Hatred

Enticing strands of coveted Jealousy

Green envy

Or homophobia

Embedded by

Apollyon

In the many silent

Watchers deep souls

Dire Despair and Hopelessness

Being one of its many followed

Old pagan Leaders

She cries to you

Instead

Reader

As she holds up

In shaking alabaster hands

Her divine golden

Jewel encrusted goblet

In the swirling white smoke

And speaks to your

Higher self

Will you

Fill up my cup and bring

Love back into the world

To help the many

The deemed

Unfortunate

The homeless

The broken

Who I can hear so viscerally

Who still to me cry

Wherever they be

Or would you too

Just follow the multitude

And see me

Standing here on the broken

Banks of Sheol

As you too

Perish and die

Without hope and

Float by

To forever dwell within

The Fifth Dimension

Where you will forever

Wander blind

Never again to ever see

Ruled over and into the deep gates of

Eternity

By the

Lord of the Flies

Mephistopheles

Copyright John Duffy 

Country Dreaming

(A lone voice whispers)

 I can still subliminally feel 

All those sad fears

Rhythmically swirling like sharpened kitchen knives

Within all your world crazy choices

Which cuts me so deep

Like cold Tamahagane steel

Above all this new

Life's 

Now old noises

I can still just see you 

Sitting there

In your darkened bedroom

Somewhere

Oversea

Dressed in that familiar soft white lace

With translucent tears

Running like the Nile 

Down 

Your beautiful face

Thinking of me

As a lone crone

In a faraway forest

In triumph 

Sings 

Dances a wild jig 

And rejoices

Overjoyed by her spells

Creating such paid for turmoil 

Of fake excuses and tragic surprises

In you

For

I know

It's not fair

What you're going through

But trust me

I'm 

Going through the fire 

Too

For 

This thing we started with a match 

This inexplicable magical thing

This molten fire that still burns so deep

Like it's taboo

Since we parted

Reaches so deep

Inside

I can't sleep

Can't work

Can't recall

How many times

I've cried out 

Brokenhearted

For I remember

Those sweet salad days

In 2021

Before our love

Painfully crawled away and died 

Like a silhouette in the setting Autumnal sun

When we parted ways

Walking on the beach

With the girl next door

Who came to me

Unexpectedly

Like a serene gift 

From The Holy Sea

Gently fluttering by

To say hello

Like a rare beautiful Glasswing Butterfly

But now

We're but  two 

Lost souls

With nowhere to go

Just wondering round

In familiar sad round circles

And looking into 

This purple haze

The very mouth of this black abyss

Before me

Looking at the mistakes

We once made

In my scrying mirror

As our tarot cards 

Were first laid

When we unexpectedly first kissed

While we walked

Its tired pavements

Lost in its maze

I pray and hope you still

Think of me

The ghost

Who still loves his beautiful rare Glasswing butterfly

And all the games we once played 

From the Realms

Of The Great In-Between

Sent to love you

To remind you

You're so special

An astral envoy

Sent like a 

Spiritual Kestrel

To inspire others 

Especially those

That suffer in silence

So turn that Southern Country music up high

To drown out your world's violence 

For a light like yours

Must shine

Smile and remember me

And it's why

This old ghost

Can never say goodbye

For our old love

Lives beyond

The seas of this black abyss

Forever 

Spinning

In my memories

Of our

First poetic unexpected kiss

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy via Pinterest. 

Need some poetic motivation?

 Need some poetic motivation?

Do you sometimes make promises to yourself to keep going

Regardless of what everyone else is doing

A promise to take all things as they come 

For in the long run

Worrying about what could be

What could happen 

Will simply stifle dreams 

So as they say in Latin

Carpe Diem 

Seize the day

Be that vision of success

For all to see

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Questions for the inquisitive mind

 Questions for the inquisitive mind

Press play 

(A lone voice whispers)

Above all, have you ever wondered if poetry is but, a tree full of rebellious fruits of insubordination

For the few to shine their light

Away from the mundane landscapes many choose willingly to live within and sustain

Worshipping the dark Gods of consumerism kneeling in their carefully guarded pews

To be used and perused as an instrument of grassroots resistance 

To help maintain happiness and subdue pain

And to find a form of balance in a crazy world of finding your souls role 

In the great halls of existence?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Have you experienced poetic Jouissance?

 Press Play.

(A lone voice whispers)

Have you emptied your soul late at night

All alone

Wrote words to lay on top of the white marble altar of poetry's grey tombstone

If you have

You're not one of the crowd who follows fashion and directions from secret social conditioners

For in that hour of self awareness 

You embrace something so magical 

 While in that quiet solitude

Alone in that room

Solitude 

Not to be confused with loneliness

For you are surrounded by The Spirits of the Twenty-Six Letters 

Who waits for the call to start swirling 

Seeking rebirth on paper

Or other forms of scrying mirrors

A new life for eager eyes to see

To maybe treasure

From land or sea

Wherever they be

And to you 

Death will never conquer, for your words will echo like ringing Christmas bells 

Into eternity 

In the Vast Halls of Apollo 

For in time 

All poetry is constant and collected

In a great never-ending room in the Akashic Records 

The Past 

Future and the Now

Hum to drums playing pagan tunes of happiness and sorrow

For the hordes to read poems at their leisure for pleasure

To find just something they need in whatever they read

So fear not

Rejection or criticism 

Fear not

Judgement or lament

For the gift you share

Is heaven sent

Passed down like a golden trophy from The Spirits of Twenty-Six Letters 

From the gilded Halls of Apollo 

In a gentle breeze 

For they can feel your intense need

Sweeping down their misty plains and green wild hills

Like the last charge of Genghis Khan

For them to answer

With hidden scrolls

Filled with clues to write poetry

To satisfy the thrilling call of illuminated souls

Seeking

Jouissance

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Noun: 

Jouissance

Physical or intellectual pleasure, delight, or ecstasy.

Source:

Google.

The Vow

Press play.

(A lone voice whispers)

I'll buy a white silk ribbon
Tonight

From O'Mallys
My love

On our golden wedding anniversary

Lay it on your favourite glass dresser

The one we bought in the snow

A few months ago

Light one of your white perfumed candles near it from Reardon and Sons

Visualise all our cherished memories

Together
Within it

Then tie it
Into a sacred white bow

And gently kiss it and put it under

One of your favourite blue pillows

That way

We'll sleep together
Every night

Especially tonight
Real close

Even though you're gone
Like we once used to do

For our love is still stronger than death

And lasts beyond the grave
And it's how I

Now a lone survivor
With Charlie

That beautiful dog
You once bought as a birthday surprise

Wait
Praying for you

In one of God's
Repentance, grief filled Caves

Continue

Continue in absolute hope
With our beloved happy memories of you

Lighting our way
Through this firefly-lit blackness

Like one of those white perfumed candles in our bedroom

With all the crazy things
We once used to do

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy)

The Oracle of Necromanteion

 The Oracle of Necromanteion

(A lone voice whispers)

He who walks without the most holy of ways

Will never return

Until they have learned not by sin be swayed

As true as new trees are made

By lay played

In so many wet insidious ways

By those hidden in the chasms

In the faraway stars

For people like you gathered here should be careful 

For without faith

In any form 

The nearby Darkness can always open a small gateway to sin

And if that abyss is opened

Revealing 

Desolation's

Fatal sandstorms

It gets so much harder 

To let hope crawl in

So O ye

O Ye 

On the yellow beaches

Beseeching

O ye 

Gathered round me

To the worthy few

I summon by the power of the Purple Flame

Virtue 

By the Divine Will of your choice of God

To guide you

Amen

Through Acheron

To the blue Stargate 

So you can 

Once more

Run

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Art by

Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl in 1898. 

Will you join my Children of Poetry

 Will you join my Children of Poetry?

(A lone seductive soft female voice whispers)

Will you follow me blindly 

Into the very darkness dear one

Of the labyrinths of The Eternal Mind

Where all precious things merge in rhymes 

For there is no time

To sneak past the Old Fallen Watchers from a dark Past

Into my gardens of the unseen

Or unspoken 

Mankind 

And all things that seem in your world that will never last

For in time

They'll all shatter to be broken 

My lonesome child

My divine one

Will you call to me

And whisper

If you're lonely 

Seeking fun to reveal yourself in poetry

For you've always 

Known me

Deep inside

If you're one of the anointed few

If you once called for my gift

To express yourself and maybe others to lift

For I live deep inside and follow like a rare nightingale in flight

And all I ask of you is write

To let out your light

To be courageous 

In front 

For all to see

So 

Come and accept me

And on that very day 

In every way 

Early morning or night

I'll appear and be the first and last thing you'll see

In whispers of words

As you walk

Neck deep 

Into sleeps many domains 

Then into my ancient

radiant still deep waters

While Mother Moon smiles as you are consumed

And as those translucent soul rousing waters covers your head

You will join my Children of Poetry

In one of my many side stanzas filled rooms 

To dance round my pagan pyres 

As my rhythmic music and a symphony of voices

Singing in poetry

Surround and regale you

With a never-ending fire

With wild stories of

Sadness or glory

For time will die and expire like a hunters' doe on my arrows

In my endless lyrical forest 

As your soul 

So hungry 

I try will nourish 

So will you summon me and whisper

Come to me

Calliope

Open my eyes

Share your precious light

Tonight

And then enter my eternal Midsummer's Night's Garden of Surreal Dreams

Where everything dances to a new tune

Dressed in red 

Gold and blue

To my poetic tunes

In my mythical realms

Of The Great In-Between

What says you 

Reader

Will you acquiesce 

And say 

Yes?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy 

Saturday Musings

 Somewhere 

Someone 

Needs these words to lift them when they feel the world has drifted and left them

You're not alone 

Pray and God will always try to answer your call on your ethereal telephone

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Broken Relationships

(A tired voice whispers)

And so it ends

We are now silent strangers sat watching each other

Alone

On the midnight train 

To our spiritual home 

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Foundation of the piece.

Do you still see or are compelled to see, how an old flame is bearing?