The Monologue of Jack

 

Foundation.

Do you try to stop what you are doing when inspiration whispers?

The Monologue of Jack

(A lone voice whispers in Caerphilly, looking at the rain. Reading aloud with Henry watching)

My love

I wrote this for you last night as the Shadow People gathered in our old bedroom and watched.

In the End.

  

When the wind screams like a banshee and the lightning strikes, 

 

My love for you will grow stronger and will never stop.  

When the rain comes, filled with our still-wet memories of our mistakes, 

 

I'll walk through it all to wash away the pain, no matter how long it takes.  

When the Darkness, which in these familiar shadows 

Now creeps and whispers, like a voice similar to the one in Isildur's Bane

"Take this, do that." 

I'll remember your aura emanating bliss and your deep love for our Henry,  

Our ginger cat.  

When the photographs cause my tears to fall,  

I'll remember how often you picked me up after every fall.  

When the day dies and the night says, "the world is no longer watching.  

You can now cry," 

I'll whisper back.  

"In the end, we'll grow closer still;  

Ironclad without flaws or loopholes.

For no boundaries or limits can stop what we once had.

Two of life's most vibrant travellers.

The Princess and her sidekick 

Me

Jack the Lad. 

(C) Copyright John Duffy

The Sacred Hollow

 

(A lone voice whispers)

Have you been subtly conditioned to overlook your true potential? 

Does a voice sometimes whisper?

Whether in sleep or in daylight? 

Open your tired eyes wide and reach for the stars. 

See how far you can go. 

Cast off the chains of conditioning 

That appeared as you grew older. 

Be courageous and break free from what you’ve been told. 

Mould a new mindset before you become set in your ways or too old 

Setting an example for future generations to follow, 

Before your spirit returns to The Sacred Hollow. 

(C) Copyright John Duffy

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Fluorescent Memories

 Foundation.

As the sudden rise in cancer grows, a piece relating to the emotional trauma it leaves. 

Grief is such a painful journey we all must make, someday.

Title:

Fluorescent Memories 

(A lone man looks at a shrine in his bedroom and quietly thinks aloud, as the family cat watches)

I still miss my love and her bright brown eyes.

Her incredible wit, her beautiful smile, and her outrageous ability to light up any given room with just one look.

Those painful, fluctuating memories follow me like the ghosts of the Goryō.

They return, biting like a shiver of tiger sharks.

Akin to my own Gospel according to Mark.

Everywhere I go, now that she's gone, when I'm suddenly reminded of her.

And how she was martyred on the grey cross of life, paying the sacrifices it takes to make love work.

Before cancer arrived, and double-parked. 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Goryō refer to Japanese spirits, often the ghosts of those who have sacrificed for a cause.

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Has this ethereal visitor called by yet?

 

Foundation.

Has this ethereal visitor called by yet?

Like an unseen ghost

True Love materialised

Owned until the end

 (575)

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy 

Soul Searching

 

Foundation.

Do you have a twin flame you are bound to look for and love, searching over many lifetimes?

Title: 

Soul Searching 

(A lone voice whispers)

I used to search everywhere, but now I just travel North 

To somewhere in the US

In the middle of a small city

Stand on a windowsill I finally found and watch

Watch my twin flame

Called Mary Jane 

Dancing and listening to her favourite vintage Motown music

Sometimes, I appear as a House sparrow or a yellow butterfly 

Just watching and waiting until we are reunited again

But I know our memories will be wiped before we take human form, to make our search more interesting 

So my last line is:

If you see a bird or butterfly watching you 

It could be your soulmate hunting

Who's been searching for you through time 

After its bell

This time around, has finally been chimed.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

**The Monologue of Charlie Boy**

 

**The Monologue of Charlie Boy**

(A friendly voice whispers)

Am I charismatic?  

Engaging, or just completely enigmatic?  

Or am I simply an old traveller from beyond The green hills of Old Avalon  

Stepping into this new age reborn?  

Did my guardian angels weep with joy when I found my new calling?  

Do they quietly hold my soft hands and comfort me

  

Whenever I feel depressed, in pain, or like I'm falling?  

I don’t have all the answers, for they will be revealed  

When my time comes and I am recalled.  

I'm not just a man of flesh, but an old soul slipping slowly, discovering new kin  

scattered throughout Old Mother Gaia's mesh.  

Am I just like you?  

Another tiny beacon of divine light, trying to hold back the legions and hordes  

who endlessly weaves

Reading from their leather-bound grimoires  

filled with dark spells meant to deceive?  

I'm so glad to meet you.

  

Can you feel that subtle electricity I'm sending through these words? 

 

For it doesn’t matter what your gender, creed, colour, or ethnicity is; 

 

Just try to write or sing with authenticity 

 

And use whatever means to express your soul's lucidity.  

For we are all different,  

different in a good way.

  

When our true selves are revealed to come out to play.  

So here’s to you, wherever you are, in whatever towns or cities.  

As Big Frank once sang in 1969

  

Keep doing it your way 

For not everyone can live a benedictine life

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

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Whispers

 

Foundation.

Do you use images as a canvas to stimulate your creativity?

Title:

Whispers

(A lone voice whispers)

To the one I know with a secret, sacred name 

And uses poetry as a means of expressing the beauty of appealing to people, with a common touch

Lying on her bed each night alone

Surrounded by glittering glass and silver 

Looking at her computer or Apple iPhone 

Every day we're together, in spirit, and one day God will save and forgive us

No matter how deep life's cruel knife cuts

The boy and the girl with the golden guitar, who loved each other too much 

(C)

John Duffy 

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Poe Ravenscroft Marmosett. The Dark Goddess.

  Poe Ravenscroft Marmosett. The Dark Goddess.

(A lone voice whispers)

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 and white 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 and white leather

A white candle and a two-sided blade

After hearing and experiencing the traumas linked to the explosion 

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 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 and white 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 R

avenscroft Marmosett

Into the sunset to reach a new land

Hidden just beyond The Green Hills 

In the West

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Do you believe in angels?

 

 Foundation.

Do you believe in angels?

And do they patiently wait for prayers to be called to help?

Title:

The Eternal Water Oaks

A lone voice whispers

The invisible Angel smiled at the rows of sorrowful patients

Which lay before it on ward twenty-one of Saint Peter's 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 it was summoned by heartfelt prayers 

Whispered by his family and wife 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

Whether they recover or leave others to grieve 

For they all do 

It's a silent degree

A line spoken by the Almighty 

What all things follow if they truly believe whatever it says

All they or others have to do is call for them and pray

To summon angels from The Great In-Between

The bringers of such priceless white crisp envelopes to soothe the soul

The invisible folk

Who'll follow like betrothed guardian philanthropists

Just huddled together

Sleeping

In the half-shade of the Great In-Between trees

The Eternal Water Oaks

Waiting for psychic calls to spring into action

To fly to those caused by an exothermic reaction

A chemical interaction followed by the evolution of heat

With incredible satisfaction 

To find those whom they are called to greet 

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 

By The Great Grey Oaks 

Angels

Hidden

By its holy smoke, which it uses to dutifully cloak

Eternal friends 

Who know

Living or dying isn't the end

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared via fair usage policy via Pinterest. 

A lone voice whispers in 2025

 

I can see

All the way from in here

That the fate of the world is on a precarious knife-edge

The black-robed vultures

Are gathering 

In secret covens and lodges

For their Great Cull

Carefully planned and patiently waiting

On their gilded governmental ledges

For The Last Harvest

The Great Play

Paradise

For the nuclear family

Has been torn asunder

Alongside Religion 

Family values

Gender

By the throw 

Of a black and white dice

Announcing new agendas

As in boats

Missed placed nations

Sail and wonder 

Will I find freedom 

From my old kingdom

Just to drown and freeze

To death

In cold waters

As politicians 

Ponder

Argue

Reflect

And hatred 

Interjects

Faith in a 

Higher Power

In retrospect

Seems

Demeaned and hated

By those with no nerves

As churches are

Closed

By Elites

Leaving people with

Nowhere to go

Musing

In silence

In defeat

But they

The Elites

They'll get what they deserve

When Hell opens

Up its doors

And they are duly

Served 

You may feel

Alone

Scared

Insecure

Or in pain

Moving slowly 

In between jagged lines

But your God knows

Who's lost their faith

And needs a boost

A touch of The Almighty's grace

Through a sickness

Delivered by followers of darkness

So all I can say

Is pray

Pray

Pray everyday 

And God will try to remedy

All that comes 

Whatever may 

For as Jeremiah 29:11 says

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, 

plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

As Deuteronomy 31:6 says

Be strong and courageous. 

Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. 

He will not leave you or forsake you.”

So in Proverbs 3:5-6 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Quoting Lamentations 3:22-23

 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

His mercies never come to an end; 

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

So to Isaiah 41:10 

Fear not, for I am with you; 

Be not dismayed, 

for I am your God; 

I will strengthen you, 

I will help you, 

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

And ending with Corinthians 4:16-18 

So we do not lose heart.

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. 

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Be strong. 

The light must keep shining

For kindness and compassion

To keep winning

Against those swimming

In The Devil's Dark

Unforgiving 

Waters

By constantly

Sinning

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy.