The Gate

With reflection 

In this

The midnight hour 

I light a white candle

For the one 

Who once had me 

Under her power

Driven by loves

Powerful desires

For us

The Almas Perdidas

(Lost Souls)

Maybe like you 

The 

Left BeHinders

Who wallow and wade through griefs tiring waters

With a brokenheart

After love says  

Farewell

To then become new drinkers

From Depressions deep well

Praying love returns

With a ring of a lone bell

To see true love

Once more and say

Stay 

Please

Don't go away

And melt my heart

Stay 

So we are now 

No longer 

Torn apart

But like all pilgrims seeking God 

In their own particular way

We know the bell will never ring

We know our hearts will never heal or sing 

So we live 

In a living version of Purgatory 

Dying with each breath of decay

We take

As we watch and wait for our call

To join others

Now living beyond

Purgatory Great Gates

(C) 

Copyright John Duffy 

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Broken Dreams

 

(A lone voice whispers)

You are the woman 

Of light and dark dreams

I once tried to conjure 

To conquer

All principalities

From The Great In-Between

The lone star 

In faraway skies

The prettiest rose

Ever seen

The Red Robin

The Black Crow

The Lion

And Black Bear

For your spiritual energy

Radiates so powerfully

It reaches out and calls to me 

Everywhere

Your smile whispers of untold adventures

Your eyes carry a glint

Of mischievous Summer intentions 

And that's I why 

I just linger 

A ghost of futures past

Whose memories of you

My Mon Cheri 

Will always

Last

For they ring out 

Sueños rotos

(Broken Dreams)

Like a talented 

Opera singer 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Are you a type A B or C?

 

Are you: A.

A rhymer

A gatekeeper to old or new emotional sensations

Demanding a freedom

To live in a new format

For real eyes to read 

From the human nation 

Or are you: B.

A young or old timer

Like a goldminer 

From 1827

At Coker Creek

In the high country of Monroe County 

Tennessee

Searching for the right lines 

Like pure gold

To express and extinguish a cold uncontrollable fire 

To turn your soul into one of Poetry's 

Many soldiers who love all nighters 

Going to war everyday

Against tones and metaphors

Juxtapositions or cold terror 

Or are you: C.

Just another lone driver 

Stuck on the highways of dreams 

With a blown tire

Searching for someone new 

To become real fighters Together 

To also love Poetry's all nighters 

With a mirror image to hold tighter and to help make the load 

Lighter

Or are are you just a mixture of the three?

A represents the need to just write poetry for pleasure.

B represents the need to just write poetry for catharsis

C represents the need to just write poetry while seeking solace in someone special

Who shares the same bliss 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Country Dreaming

(A lone voice whispers)

In this never-ending storm 

Where powerful introspective winds

Swallow you whole 

As the norm

A thought always strikes like a Promethium lightning bolt

Was there ever a place in your soul 

Where my picture hung and your soul

Extolled 

When it woke up 

As you dreamed

Before going on Astral patrol

For all I can do in humble worship

Is remember

The sweet taste of your favourite red lipstick 

The tantalising feel of your fingers 

Laced in CHANEL N°5 

Lingering around my shoulders

As we both wept 

Watching Beaches

Which always 

Left us speechless 

Mon Cheri

Do I still linger

In your echo chambers

Like Garth Brooks 

Your favourite Country singer

So in this moment

As my memories gather

Like friends 

In Low Places

As the thunder rolls

Just remember

If tomorrow never comes

And my prayers lay unanswered

I'll always remember how we danced 

As 

Loves ship 

Sailed in

And anchored

But now

Cancelled and abandoned 

As you look in another's eyes

I can only hope

Your memories get baptized 

Like mine

In brutal storms 

Of introspection 

For in my eyes

There are never any real

Goodbyes 

Just sweet country songs

Of reintroduction 

So we can walk 

Together again

Even though 

We were both cursed

By wet appetites

Of self destruction 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

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The Cry Of The Pagan Sorceress Queen

  

(A lone voice whispers) 

With wide crystalline eyes

Fluctuating between ever-shifting layers of happiness and fear

Ever watchful

With piercing orbs of either tranquil brown green or blue 

So deeply captivating whispering in their echo chambers

I really see you

So I compose this small golden trinket 

To some a tiny poem

But to those in the know

A spell

Whilst lost in these yellow sands of time

As I swirl through this fluctuating vortex 

Will you read my offerings

As your minds listen to my gift of meter and rhyme

Can you feel that quickly rising crescendo of desire

Willing you to burn forever in my molten flames and yell

"Libertas"

Inside internally

A new means to help extinguish those painful fires 

Of such misery still found upon

Those tired old redundant roads of humanities dark traits

You may still walk upon

But wait

Will you pray to me and implore for more

To push open the once-locked doors between us

Shall I welcome you through my red gates

My new neophyte 

To sit by the Babylonian River to talk

And be reborn

Into a new light 

Do you seek a pathway through the dark woods

Of Neverland

To walk to a sacred place where you are sensuously

Bathed and embraced

As we

The Maenad

Read you and see all those distant places

In your minds eye

Where you once courageously visited and stood

Do you still dream of taking off that shield you wear to protect your soul

Your version of an Eyes Wide Shut mask

And entering such a safe and non judgemental sanctuary 

Hidden within divine branches and creeks

Where you are perpetually energized 

And no longer feel weary 

Unloved or weak 

Do these sudden paroxysms turn your emotions

Once cold as ice to a new fire

I merely still ask

Will you take my hand forever

To walk past these dying lights of midnight

To a enter a new realm 

Filled with such hushed and unexplored mortal and spiritual delights

What says you

Shall I come about two 

To collect you

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

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Soledad (S)

(A lone voice whispers)

In silence

On Kings Street 

I once found my second heartbeat

Wrapped in paper blue

Selling roses

Stacked in red and pink lines

Of two by two

My love climbed out of my skin like a supernatural ghost

Knocked on her hearts door

And pleaded to be let in

Her soul said yes

And we lived blessed

We shared speeches on sunlit beaches 

Reached heights of such magnanimity 

Its beautiful frequency must now hurtle like a ray of light

Throughout eternity 

We sat on front porches 

Watched the world stroll by

Smiled as the honeysuckle sun

Rose to scorch us

Two burning candles 

Emanating such light

Until the air force of mosquitoes

Came out to rule the night

We raised our hands 

In unison

Entwined fingers

Adorned with two matching golden rings

And retired 

As the choirs of garden

Crickets began to sing

Slept with peace

In the same bed

Now we were wed

But then came

The Narley Man

Came in silence

To Kings Street  

Looking for a second heartbeat

One wrapped in paper blue

Selling roses

Stacked in red and pink lines

Of two by two

Sent his love like a supernatural ghost

And

Knocked on her hearts door

And pleaded to be let in

And so I'm left to carry on in silence

Filled with thoughts of emotional violence 

Such is the power to destroy

Wrapped up in paper blue

Selling red and pink roses

Stacked in lines of two by two 

On Kings Street

Who shattered all that once mattered 

By the three red letters

Which spell sin

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

 

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Soledad (S)

A Spanish word meaning lonely.

Are you anointed by concupiscence to write?

(A lone voice whispers)

Are you anointed by concupiscence to write

Until your death

With time found

To exhale and express your soul's sacred breath

To be surrounded by Creativity's exquisite perfume

As your soul

Now blessed

Stands joyously naked

In any given room

I hope your answer is

Yes

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

What is the simple meaning of concupiscence?

Strong desire.

Dreams of Lily

I can only pray

My Lily of the Nile

You'll sleep For a short while

To wander through Morpheus's Incredible Keeps

As I'll kneel to pray to appear in one of its many unknown rooms

 To defeat Death with a game of hide-and-seek

 As I reach out my spirit Beyond my tomb

For I can only call for Heaven’s blessing

 To let me Live and breathe

Into one Of those dwellings

So sleep For a short while

To wander through Morpheus's Emerald Isles

And Incredible keeps

And I'll kneel To pray to appear

In one of its many rooms

To defeat Death

With a little game of hide-and-seek

As I reach out my spirit 

From beyond my tomb

To hold you once more

Like Anthony Held Cleopatra

Or Frank Sinatra held Marilyn Monroe

So I can only call For Heaven’s blessing 

To let me Live on

In one Of those dwellings

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

The Conversation

 

(A lone voice whispers)

Teacher

There's still a magical circle I wish to find

Said the lonely old Preacher to his mentor 

Father Time 

As they both stood looking at history's many intersecting blue lines

It's a place where true love resides 

In a loop called Once in a Lifetime 

I read about it a thousand years ago 

Before I was recalled when my Golden Bell chimed

And to find it through all of lifes puzzles and paradigms 

I now know after opening so many old books

You have to truly encourage your heart and soul 

To embrace its magnetic flow 

And some say

You have to be willing to sacrifice everything and give up all self control

Sometimes O Father Time

When I look back over the thousands of years 

At my chance of 

Once in a Lifetime 

I can still remember I came so close and that in itself is a crime

For I too once knew a wonderful soul 

My own Red Rose of Jericho

She was so beautiful and as gentle as falling snow

But like all things that came to pass

I lost my way in the grip of the shadowy abyss

And never got to feel her sweet gentle touch or soft velvety kiss

But now I'm a part of you, O Father Time

And as I look back taking up your so very long reach

Using your supernatural telescopes 

To look at old hopes and dearly once loved folks 

I can still see her waiting, sitting there patiently reading

Fluctuating heartbroken throughout the many distinct time frequencies 

Streams

Thinking and dreaming about the one 

She so wanted to love and teach 

But who was suddenly snatched by death 

Beyond her reach

The book she's always holding and reading

When I zoom in 

Is a collection of her own poetic sad words linked together tragically 

In broken stories of her life of waiting  

Lost 

On the outer edges of a grey world

Regaling her only thought 

That I would arrive like a hero from the ether of time

And fill her life with magical moments of such soul-changing happiness and glory 

That so many people would be so surprised and beguiled 

But as I still see her from in here 

Hiding and crying at midnight 

Using your Scrying Mirrors

In this Dark Tower which connects all things and places

Lost in one of history's many bands of low resistance 

Awashed with new and old sinners

I still know that is the only place one day I pray I might reach 

When I have paid my dues to you 

And after going back through time 

As I appear out of the fluctuating ether and blue

To wipe away all her soft wet tears

Maybe then 

We can both be happy to clasp our 

Once in a Lifetime

To then walk upon the soft yellow sands

And smell the life-changing winds

Blowing across that circle's secret beaches 

And then in the realisation of that long lost dream

We may both just smile 

As we finally fade 

Into just being another part of your secret anthologies of love stories

For to find inner peace and divine glory  

To know what that real devotion can bring

You have to fight to reach it

For that's one of the many secrets to what true love is

(C)

Copyright  

John Duffy

No claim to image.

 

Existentialism Dreams

(A lone voice whispers)

Grief maybe like falling Autumn leaves

Praying for some snow

Hoping with its life giving waters 

They will grow

But just before 

They land and

Their only hope disappears

They see the rising sun

And in that instant 

Know

Life

Love and them

Above all the silent deaths 

By a thousand cuts 

Will live on

Even if they turn 

To dust 

Tomorrow

For their love for someone special

Will flourish 

In beloved memories

Of someone special

Who they were born

To trust

For sorrow can be conquered

By love

If only one person

Remembers

You tomorrow 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy