Do the dearly departed recite poetry in the dark?
Do I sometimes channel them as I hear their words?
This came through.
A deep American male voice of about....well who knows!
He speaks.
Can you hear him?
Press play before reading.
Salute.
(A lone voice whispers)
Have you ever lived in a wounded ritual
It’s a lonely world in here and I still miss my best friend and lover
Justine
My old lifes wounded ritual
For I once lived in the late Sixties in the Deep South
As I travelled between Georgia
All the way up to New York and southern Vermont
This is my short story and heartbreak
Just spoken and channelled through another’s beloveds mouth
My memories of the Sixties
I always wondered why we were summoned
And petitioned so cruelly by so many blasphemous names
Were we really that cursed by nearly all we met
All over those great plains
Why couldn’t we just live and sit together peacefully but bravely
Just like any other pair of the world’s greatest reunited long lost lovers
Instead of just racing blindly from judgemental villages
Towns or cities
And sometimes having to hide in old badly beaten caravans
Parked on overgrown green fields
Aren’t we all born free to walk under a warm summer's sun
To embrace the winds of emancipation
As it blows gracefully under our feet
To be firmly told by good mothers and strong fathers
Never to surrender with your dying last breath
That's why we always ran
Never to be caught for we were brought up to be arduous
To never feel defeated enough to yield
Although we were doomed to a fast-moving life of constant running
Like a wild mystical stag
Followed blindly by his beloved deer
In the unexplored depths of society's chaotic forests
We always trespassed carefully though
Throughout humanities deepest of woods
Always trying to keep one step in front of the hate-filled hunters
The commoners
Self-professed royalty
Politicians
Or police
Ice queens and kings
As we ran throughout all the ever-changing seasons
And all the many hot conflicting excuses used as their justifiable reasons
We had our good times though since we always used to slow dance
Sometimes mentally to a lone Motown tune like
You really got a hold on me
By Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
While hidden within secretive motel rooms
You know the ones
Those with soft music playing only two could possibly hear
The cheap wallpaper
Filthy fans to cool the hot air and the badly worn beds and cheap wooden chairs
I still sometimes sing unconsciously to my beloved dear
Who still runs around my glorious inner sun
And in this great silence
Just wonder where does she now constantly run
In the end I guess
We are all the sums of our wounded ceremonies
But you sometimes have to be true to who you are
For your life can’t be lived
If it’s just verbally or physically torn apart
To live in freedom is something you must never forsake
For true love is sometimes so deep
It's just too instinctual
Always whisper this to each other
It’s my only advice
We'll face this world
The cruel names and the fire and ice together
Whatever our fate
For God so loves us so we will never break
It’s what we used to pray and say back in the day
Whenever we cried or felt degraded
When I used to kiss and softly whisper in her ear
When that Sixties summer sun used to bow down to bless and baptise us
With its life-giving rays
But just like invaluable memories
Appearing like a midnight hallucination
Walking slowly back into the encroaching dark shadows
I always think of my beautiful red rose just forever lost to me
In this new life of ever-growing hostile and dangerous contentious green meadows
That the living can never see
I still will wait by St Peter's gates
For my beloved
My lifes only true love called Justine
Before we were separated and I was tragically destroyed
By those filled with evil self-opinionated hatred
Copyright John Duffy