A Lone Voice Whispers Poem by John Duffy

Richardo speaks

I'll always remember when I first caught a glimpse of you

It was in nineteen eighty-two as it rained like a crazy scene right out of Platoon

I saw you standing by the roadside on fifty-fourth street

Looking lost in a jostling crowd

Waiting for the traffic lights to change

Appearing all alone with a tattooed on heartbroken smile as the storm and drizzle

Merged with the roaring thunder which seemed so loud

I can remember watching the rain beat a crescendo of four to the floor in a strange tempo

Like on Quinto drums across your face as you all waited impatiently for the green light to go

I can faintly see if I push

All your makeup run and still taste that sweet aroma of your Chanel number five perfume

Even in this half-light

I can still see brief flashes of your soft smile and beguiling wild eyes in this very room

But like all the world's well-written love letters left behind

To be found by broken-hearted foolish lovers when it gets dark and the bedroom is now just regarded as a tomb

I've come to learn that written within every one

In each carefully structured line is a shiny red and black bejewelled dagger

A soft knife to the heart

Just hidden within solicitous thought out lines

Announcing unceremoniously with guile that all things are falling apart

Cunningly dressed up with sentimental metaphors in rugged sentences and personal paragraphs

Paraded in dramatic straight black and white pragmatic lines to be read by hungry eyes

Soon doomed to be wearing bright crimson uniforms

When pain can no longer be disguised

Lines overgrown with
Wait and I'll come back when you're ready

I just need more time
It's not you it's me

I understand why I uncontrollably used to cry

Now that I can truly see since you've been gone for a while

You see deep down when I pause and reflect

I guess I knew you were always filled with such despicable lies

Especially after talking to my mother

The cheapest therapist I ever met

She did warn me

Sometimes the truth will come out no matter how much they lie or try to fake it

It's just because some women just see men as another cheap franchise

To be acquired and rinsed

Used like prudent merchandise

Only then to be sacrificed by heartfelt love letters

They've probably copied like the ones they've already left to so many others

Who they left clinging on to the false hope that one day they'll return

On the gleaming tall shadowy altars of the
Unfortunate

Who are forever traumatised because unlike me

They'll never learn

For true loved can't be bartered or ordered

It must always be worshipped and endlessly earned

Copyright John Duffy