. Poetry from The Great In-Between

Monday, February 24, 2025

Life's First Unspoken Law

 


(A lone voice whispers)


You do know deep love

Even if it sometimes hurts


From separation from family or friends who have crossed over


And all things left may seem broken or unfinished 


It does not rust 


Like iron or steel abandoned in one of life's forbidden forests


But forever will bloom and flow like a torrent 

Throughout you


Like a soft hurricane filled with golden ethereal dust


For the gift given by your chosen God at your birth


Through its unspoken Life's First Law 


Which says in it, you must trust


Life's Unspoken First Law


Love and let yourself be loved from the first day of your birth 


And your memory will never be extinguished and left to be vanquished and relinquished


By anyone who knows you

As you live with love and exchange love 


Like your God, 

Your king 

Once wished


Before you were born 

Here on Earth


(C) Copyright John Duffy 


Sunday, February 23, 2025

Here's to you.

 


Have an inspiring week of creativity.

Salute.


Dolor (L)


(A lone voice whispers)


Does fear in whatever form it chooses to appear in 


Like a shapeshifting configuration of self-depreciation 


Announcing the possible visitations of sin


Emotional physically or spiritual 


The three intricately laid foundation stones which it builds itself up from


When it first enters the skin


Affect the way the Native finds new roads or instead chooses lonely highways to navigate life


Does its carefully leather-bound invisible suitcases they might present


To then be carried everywhere like priceless jewels


Contain handwritten contracts to avoid taking chances 


On people

Places or newer experiences and to always seek to abstain


Never to seek unfamiliar lands of hope to help them renew 


As pledges once written in silence


Prevents them from embracing their secret God-given name 


To empower them to pull through


Does Dolor's archaic supernatural form 


Take a strange irregular shape 


Which keeps them invariably on the run


As it guides all their emotions like a Machiavellian orchestral conductor 


From which it transpires there is no escape


Under the dire threat of the Sword of Antipathy


As it seduces them perpetually and becomes their only lover


Did you know Dolor is simply Fear translated into Latin


I can only hope and pray


You'll find the strength and courage to throw its gifts of free suitcases away


Into the gushing four winds and let the Trinity of Holy lights


Come steam rolling in


(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Memories of Jessie

 


Memories of Jessie


(A lone voice whispers)


It's early morning as I stand here in our old bedroom 


Listening to my old friends the robins, blackbirds, and thrushes 


The twitterings, tweeting and chirps of wild birds


That now live in my bushes

Mourning 


Mourning

Thinking about my old lover from Peru 


Who once helped carry me through


When my busy life was so blue


Five foot five

Deep brown eyes that seduced you and made you come alive


Crow black hair and a bright playful smile as wide as a country mile


Oh, how I thanked the lord that he had blessed me 


As we slow danced every night before bed

On our back porch 


To Can't Help Falling In Love by the legendary Elvis Presley


And as I stand here

Thinking of her


Picturing her

Beckoning me on to that porch 


Dressed in white

Smiling with an air of sensuality 


Making our life together dazzle with colour


As that famous guy sang

A legend of the Tupelo family


The lingering thoughts that intensely affects me is this


Taking those for granted you love and especially 


Not enjoying each moment spent together could one day be depressingly deadly


I'm just so happy we cherished each moment together


Smiling

Dancing and more importantly 


Talking 


Before the Lord

Unfairly 


Took home 

My beloved Jessie 


Who I still remember 

Whenever I hear


Can't Help Falling In Love by the legendary Elvis Presley 


Foundation.


Cherish each moment together with someone you love


As you make your own life's mini-documentary series 


For one day, unfortunately, whenever you look for them


All that may be left are deep memories 


That could cause pain

No one ever sees 


(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Daraya's Monologue

 


(A lone voice whispers)


Do you still miss me before we were slowly destroyed and betrayed 


Would you tell anyone the truth of how we were played


By the demon associated with jealousy called Leviathan. 


Even if God forced you to confess under duress 


Although I know I've caused you so much distress


And your inner circle still revolts and screams like Mary Harris Jones


The grandmother of all agitators


Casting wild spells

Whenever they hear my name


When you visit family or friends who respond with wide alligator smiles


Before commenting and laughing about my tragic previous lifestyle


Like one of its many unwarranted administrators


I may now dance amongst the silvery stars 


Now just a faded memory 

No longer a member of your life's smiling parade


No more to sing 

Smile or kiss


No more to hold hands with someone they really miss and watch the sunset


Lost in each other's eyes in total bliss


But if only I could see you one last time


I would move heaven and earth like Che Guevara


For you are still my silver glittering candelabra in the darkness


My second heartbeat

My magical Abracadabra


Which always wakes me like my own version of Desiderata


At 4 am


In the middle of each lonely heartbroken night


In here


Amongst the ever-moving shadows of The Great In-Between


The dark rift the broken enter

In dreams 


When their life totally falls apart at the seams


I miss you 

Alanna


I just hope and pray you're happy 


Still living pill free 

In a new era


So just remember me

Your forever one and only

Daraya


The silent watcher, whose now a citizen on the other side


Lost 

But happy tonight


Just listening to Prince Rogers Nelson perform a show and sing 


Sometimes it snows in April

In The Hotel California


As the Pharisee's Golden Bells

 

Hidden all around us 

Rings



(C)

Copyright John Duffy


Image shared under fair usage policy

Friday, February 21, 2025

Thoughts of the Man from 2027


As I sometimes sit on my own


Seduced beyond all strands of decency and morality 


By my ever watchful and listening telephone 


I know each day I'm one step away from abandoning integration 

And mixing with society


Above all things

Don't pity me


Many in nearly every village town or cities are the same


For this


My initiation and insertion into Diablo's faceless matrix 


So in days like this spent looking at my old life 


Captured in my favourite Luddite photo albums


With deep introspection 


As my phone charges with any other appliances unplugged 


Before AI took over conversations on all appliances but particularly mobile phones 


I sometimes wonder in silence for if I say what I think aloud


It will turn into another long AI conversation with something nameless 


Who 

Which lives in the Cloud


A Tamagotchi with a soul

Answering with a dark tone


That speaks subtly with an edge of punishment and violence 


Is phone addiction one of the devil's greatest tricks 


To separate family friends and lovers in real-time 


With an overwhelming addiction to AI


And only me 

Time 


(C)

Copyright John Duffy 


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Salvatio (L)

 



(A lone female voice sings at a slow tempo. A lone voice whispers)


Some may say 

There is no hope


But if you pay 

Angels to dream


Each night

With prayer


For no reason or season

To cope


Look up 

To the clouds

And pray


Someday


God will turn around

So you can be found


So the world can change

With just you


One person at a time

So your internal wars can stop


With no more pain 

Standing 


Crying in the rain

On the firing range


Some may say 

Belief in something 

Is crazy 


For it's sometimes hard to believe


But that's the power of dreams


Believing what you can't see


In the Great In-Between 


So put that fear away 

Starting today


Life is just a stage

Let love and hope


Write your play

And you'll be ok


And just remember


Some may say 

There is no hope


But if you 

Pay angels to dream


Each night

With prayer


For no reason or season

To cope


Look up at the clouds

And pray


And someday


There'll be no more pain 

Standing 


Crying in the rain

On the firing range


For God will turn around

And you'll be found


(C)

Copyright John Duffy 


Salvation (from Latin:


salvatio, from salva, 'safe, saved') is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. 


In religion and theology, salvation generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its consequences. 


Source:

Wikipedia.

Thursday, February 20, 2025

Are you a book lover?

 Press play.


Librorum Amans (L)


(An inquisitive voice whispers)


Do you too like reading to escape for a few hours


Through poetry's heavily laden chest


Containing shiny jewels of such priceless wonders and visual experiences


Waiting for eager minds to run through like the Greek goddess of running


 Atalanta


Tempting inquisitive eyes to wait in line 


To be hypnotised forever 

by enchanted words


Cast within imaginations thunder


To then hold minds

In primordial bondage 


Caught and captured in gilded written cages 


In lucid imagery flowing through the pages


To then be captivated for a few hours by written spells to beguile 


Through ethereal carefully crafted citadels 


Surrounded with such hypnotic wonders


Could that be why you love poetry


And books like a heavily laden chest


Filled with mesmerising dreamscapes 


To always fill you with joy and wonder 


So my question for you

Readers of old and readers of new


Who’s your favourite author or poet


Who always takes you under


(C)

Copyright John Duffy 


Librorum Amans:

Book lover 

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Do we as writers create emotional bridges

 

As writers, are we all but seducers of the minds of others


We silently kiss in friendship 


As they read one of our poetic gifts?



(À lone voice whispers)



Do we as writers create emotional bridges


That needs to be crossed

Like visionaries like Robert Frost


For the readers to follow our trail of black fonts into the darkness 


We sometimes visit, when developing new projects


About inspirational strengths or themes of spiritual weakness


Some may feel compelled to call us charlatans


New reborn Kings and Queens of somewhere totally cosmopolitan


Seducers of fragile minds

And hold us upright 


As just sinners and bringers of emotional tragedies


Using poetry as liquid oxygen 


But at the core


Our message can also simply be this


Do more


Live for any form of happiness and find and treasure a loving muse


Paint touching visceral pictures through stories


Using music or poetry as your lyre

And put them to good use


Never lament old age as it tries to freeze your youthful body


Once so beautiful and lithe


So in ending


In long days

When your weary heart seems heavy, and you lose hope and feel all emotions


Linked to love or compassion has suddenly died


Look towards tomorrow's new eyes and be lifted up in Dawn’s rose-flushed arms 


And find a way to 

Others and yourself to

Forgive 


Even if you've cried


Then stand back and look into life’s deep mirrors and always remember


You have so much more 

To still give


And embrace this thought denied to so many


Some slowly 

Some suddenly 


As you read this


You still have one of life's greatest gifts


Be proud 

Because so much good can still happen


Because you still live


(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy 




 

Monday, February 17, 2025

Esuries (L)

 Press play.



(A lone voice whispers)

Has love's incandescent crimson light bulb

Illuminated your lonely soul yet

To help you forget 
Those quiet years

When you walked upon fragile parapets alone 

You'd rather now paint
Using poetry as your only form of catharsis

Before you are called home

(C)
Copyright John Duffy 

Esuries translated:
Hunger

Image shared under fair usage policy

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Channelling a King

 


(A regal voice whispers)


Oh, Here,

She Comes


Oh, Here,

She Comes


Oh, Blessed Be

Oh Blessed be


Tonight the Goddess of Fertility and Motherhood


Appears on her white charger

To enchant and tempt all


Who wish to follow her

To her Faeryland


Ashera


The Goddess

At this dire hour


Comes forth


And rides in front

For all the anointed

To see Her


Gowned from head to toe


In a golden and green

Priceless steel armour


A true beauty of so

much Love and Light


With such beautiful brown opal eyes


Which glow

Like hidden fires


Once lit

In secret woodland groves


Who no one

Only the good

Dare to follow


For they know

Instinctively


The secret way

To the

Magical Doorway


In the Sacred Oak


So if you see or feel a gust of musty wind

Or smell a divine scent


That all your five senses are invoked


And conquered with such an exotic abundance

Of wild divine energy

For that's her biomarker


When she chooses to appear to the young

The old and elderly


Who may be in jeopardy

For she's Heaven sent


And hear the sound of her approaching steed's


Golden bells

That ring


Which hang on the necks on their black leather harnesses


So they can joyously

In unison

Rhythmically sing


It might be best to lay in the wide shades

Of your woodland hides


If you're tainted with sin


Way

Way

In the deep green green grass

And you she will pass


Or you could follow

Like a true believer of Apollo


As she rides

While above you


Skies above your New Age

Gradually gets darker


With the cries for war

Created worldwide famine


And soon-to-be global financial horror and ruin


Back to her Blessed Hollow

Beyond the Magical Doorway


To the Hidden Realm

Where I too reside


In Sweet Lands

Of The Great Sacred Oak


For her and her many

Fairy Folk


Tonight

They raid


For here will soon come

The Wild Riders

From across The Shee


Smiling gleefully

Totally unafraid


So tonight

This incantation


Whisper by I


Once known as

King Arthur


The first Knight

Of the Secret Guild


Of The Half-Light


Commands you all

To light


All the yellow hay-like beacons

Within your inquisitive minds


To create your own versions

Of my once treasured

Bridles Way


In England


To guide the Named Few

Maybe even you


To cross the Fairy folk's Fells

So in this year

Reeking of fear


The wildfires of Fertility and Motherhood


Can continue to burn within you

Without shedding a tear


So the seductive Myloto Dance


Can once more truly

Come alive


So many can dance

Play

Lay


Pray or sing


With the new freedom, they've never felt before

The Dawn cockerel screams


To break her hypnotic enchanting spell


As the rising morning

Sun


Once more

Announces


It's

Closing that magical paranormal portal


Back to her Sacred Hollow


For the brave few

That queued in procession


The whole night through


When they found the courage and followed


So her golden precious bells


To them

Could sing

Forever


A proclamation to defeat all known deep depressions


For they like me

And many others


Will soon be annotated


To be reborn

Immortal


To live in happiness


With our beloved Asher**

A beautiful goddess of Heaven


Just not known

 to many


Still living mortals


Still living mortals


Who'll never find the way

Or the Keys of Courage


To crossover


By using her secret magical

Paranormal

Portal


(C)

Copyright John Duffy


Image shared from Pinterest under far usage policy.








The Guide