The Great Halls of Eden
(A lone voice whispers)
Walking in like the Grand Inquisitor
Tomás de Torquemada
Dressed in a dark robe
With Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata” playing loudly in her wake
I can remember when Love brought me through a gate
To a doorway leading to her Three Castles of Rejection
Cruelty
Intolerance, and Fanaticism
And when she nearly broke me within each of those walls, she introduced me to her other Three Castles of Seduction
Through another darkly lit doorway
Ecstasy
Blissfulness and Tranquility
Such is the juxtaposition of entering her Great Halls of Eden
For those Red coloured doors within that painted room, could lead you to your sweet salvation or doom
So just be careful when you smell her sweet perfume, when she smiles, as she approaches
For once, she takes you into her Great Halls of Eden
Once you enter that oak panelled waiting room
Always remember
One day, you could be in her master bedroom
And then one day, feel the harsh bristles of her witches broom
As you soul pleads and yells
Such is the power of being under her mesmerising spell
(C) Copyright John Duffy
Light and Darkness,
two opposing forces.
A bold indifference
to the vast array of color
being their sole commonality.
And yet,
there is Gray.
The marriage of these
polar opposites amidst
the spectrum of Light
births a new cavalcade of shades.
These Gray colors reflect
the best of both worlds.
This, as all things do, speaks of life.
From the light Gray joys of laughter
to the dark times of displeasure,
life too is on a boundless spectrum.
Happiness is thought of as a place,
the end of strife and birth of peace.
But the Light of your life
is truly the days forgotten.
The sun was never brighter,
wide smiles made the world a treat,
and it was always
the first bite of chocolate.
The Darkest times of our lives
are often thought to be in grief.
But what time will truly be darker
than our last?
Such is the human condition,
left to play with the pieces remaining.
Dreading all the way that final day,
ever longing for years passed.
It is better to approach the shades
as inquisitor of their teachings.
For all men have feared the Darkness—
and curiosity is the death of fear.
I crave the creativity of imagination
Conceiving an idea that excites the idle soul
To toil it for value and purpose
As Aristotle intended it to be.
But waiting for the time to do
Limits the glory of accomplishment
As the idea rots in an imagined grime.
But to strike beyond this negligence of my apparent talent
Could my purpose come to fruition
And creativeness oozes its milk and honey.
Let me seek the sage in my troubled soul
To defeat the self-inflicting inquisitor
Plaguing the catalyst of my destiny to prosper.
The rustle of bushes means what
a squirrel in search of a nut --
something more sinister
awaits the inquisitor
How do you breathe?
With my nose I guess
I mean, do you use your diaphragm?
Maybe
Yes or no?
I stare at my inquisitor.
I am totally unsure.
Have you had breathing lessons? He asks me.
I am amazed.
I did not know that I needed them, I tell him.
There’s a charge against you
Though we can’t say what it is
In time, your list of crimes will be released
Pardon our procedures –
We consider grievances
We’ll clear your good name after you’re deceased
A labyrinth of halls and secret tunnels
In a bureaucratic lair
The ambiguity of nightmares
Is the only business there
This deviant behavior
Must be addressed at once
Our agents will turn up who you really are
The whole investigation
Could take a couple months
Please be on-call, and don’t wander too far
A labyrinth of halls and secret tunnels
In a bureaucratic lair
The ambiguity of nightmares
Is the only business there
Nothing makes sense
When it’s Kafkaesque
In a language spewing jargon,
Behind coercing eyes,
Our Grand Inquisitor will take his turn
One half-expects a pardon
When one’s past is scrutinized
Lest one is subjected to public shame and then burned
Nothing makes sense
When it’s Kafkaesque
What kind of fish are you? The curious girl asked the mechanical bass.
We are steampunk fish, the bass replied, thinking the question crass.
When I think steampunk I think metallic, silver, gold and copper said the girl.
Aren’t you the inquisitor, said the steampunk fish, with his lip in a curl.
I can assure you he is a steampunk fish said another fish swimming by.
I know because we were designed by the same maniacal weird guy.
He did not understand that steampunk has specific colors I guess.
These pastels are irritating and grating to me also, I must confess.
I live in rooms
housed in the interior,
some just small
cells cut into bone,
spaces barely big enough
to fit a soul.
Others offer more
with sweeping views
of oceans, mountains, waterfalls
spilling endlessly over
sun drenched escarpments
and long corridors leading
to nowhere and everywhere
with mirrors splitting the mind
into light.
There are rooms groaning
under the weight of books,
learnings spun like sticky webs
that hold me trussed up
like prey. Heavens caught
in words and given wings
to float across time,
monuments brushed
by immortality and symphonies
so moving as to be
a breath away from pain.
Then there are
dark places with no windows
or doors, musty chambers
for the fallen and racks
stretched across nights where
a Grand Inquisitor exacts
confessions and sentences
the condemned to hell.
A lifetime has been spent inside
these rooms of my own making,
looking out onto a world set
by seasons which have
slowly seeped through
and worn away the walls
of my home.
Who would praise a god of pestilence and death
make of the “grand inquisitor” their guest
while pounding “Mea culpa” on their breast
a fool’s concocted heaven as their quest.
While we add life to melancholy’s need
To scatter its unpollinated seed
Fearful of too long unquestioned creeds
That prey upon the weak to fill their needs.
For is it not the price the privileged pay
To serve a greater master every day
To chant in droning tone of donkey bray
Exalt the sun when skies are dark and gray.
Thus, do they stand in line still begging bread
Convinced all will be well when they are dead.
John G. Lawless
©12/7/2022
Beyond six feet of distance
and seven heavens of this pull of woods,
I draw intensities of sounds and words to placements,
Calling me beyond the territories of these leaves.
My soul sought profiles of its songs
While its proud emission and enthusiastic incision jingle,
In fields of consciousness, beyond access to semantics,
Submerging me
in the author’s trance of phrasal phenomena;
Telling me, “focus!”
amidst mortal icebergs and immortal tides,
Saturating undiluted pinnacles,
on paths leading home
from the author’s elements of creativity and
Symbolism’s narration,
by a series of innovative intonations, I have employed it.
Yet, I am on volume one.
The outside the world,
it moves without our effort.
Life goes on normally, without our interference...
Without asking our permission...
on TV THEY CRY ANOTHER DEATH...!
A television death...!
A movie production...
our little death
of cultural agitator. it does not have
importance...
The more our runt poet,
inquisitor of mighty misdeeds...
We poets, we are just
crazy dreamers, fossil remains,
of the belligerent society...
Who would come visit us, read us?
Who would give us any value...?
Nobody, really... but only you
to this, please,
don't throw banana peels at us,
do not throw peanuts in us...!
Yet we are not monkeys!
we are just human beings
asking for humanity...!
*************
I never read a poem and be an anonymous ghost visitor.
That's like walking on graves, by an arrogant Grand Inquisitor!
If I don't read you, it's because of an eye issue, thats all.
Nor do I leave comments that say almost nothing at all!
I had hoped after all my poems I had made some mark.
I will write despite you, and sing as a grateful lark!
For those who support me, you are the stars in my sky.
God sends you to me, I just thank Him and never ask why!
Love and hugs,
Panagiote xoxo
*Inner peace and power, 2021*
12/28/2020
6:39am PST
It springs like rain on mown grass
Winds murmur over quiet pines
No hoofbeats of horseman lost
No limpid water from deep springs
oasis lift from arid sand.
Barbarian rides past towers without watchman
Deep thunder in mountain thrown up
Footprints of the darkness
stone like starkness
Harrowing & unhalting.
Grand inquisitor, earth's jailhouser
coverned deep and iron ringed
submerged in auto-cage of steal
Far from end and near to nowhere
lifting our heads to the light of God:
Spare my family and friends, thou great
keeper of souls
In its direness and darkness
footprints of light, our bodies taken,
our self retaken,
wastelands of ruins heaped with ash
mea culpa, mea culpa
There is no place to hide from heat and light
No shelter from the open desert lands of day
From the exposed inquisitor, an esoteric sun
The Son of man saw to that when rising up
Each person starves in isolation at lands end
Oceans stop by islands, little dots, accumulated there
On sand, on dunes, a scorching place for bones
A private ascetically ecclesiastical thing called Lent
Where all things come from ashes to go back again
Leaving remnants of the souls intent
All good things come to and from the desert dry
A curriculum celebrated to that end remembered
My words are under fire
by the PC police for hire
the outcome appears dire
as the stakes keep gettin’ higher
so I write with tongue in cheek
daring them to take a peek
and in reading loudly shriek
we must stop him – he’s a freak.
So the game of words progresses
in a quagmire of word messes
before magistrates in dresses
an inquisitor confesses
that the words are but a token
it’s the idea that they’re spoken
and our PC rules are broken
from the doldrums they have woken.
As their fire licks the pages
listen to the flaming sages
burning in their PC cages
cursing censorships dark phases
first its promise to empower
those held hostage in the tower
so that now they can devour
the soul of each wildflower.
So beware their flaming curse
as they plunder rhyme and verse
and the muse slowly coerce
with virtue’s piety perverse.
©9/12/2018
for – Playing With Words Under Fire Poetry Contest
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