Chanelling Henry Box Brown Poem by John Duffy

(A lone voice whispers and sings)


I swore I'd find freedom you know


On the fourteenth of June


In 1848


When I laid helpless in the metaphysical snow


After a being of living flesh appeared


Selling my family


While singing heart-lifting songs of sweet salvation


Sonnets to help heal old wrongs but the darkness that stalks man


Oversea and land


Stepped in with its damned overcoat of black sins


Looking back


I had the tabernacle of sweet worship


Held tightly in-between clenched fists


Fists clasping the only Holy Grail


The soft waist and small hands I would ever need to help me win


And never to fail


But the Shadow People it brought


Stopped our glorious rise with a swing of their insidious ceremonial hammer


With the final knocking in of their conjured version of Jesus's crucifixions last nail


On my Dia Marta


My handmade white cross they had invoked


The Death Knell which commenced since that unnatural spell


Still lingers and leaves me surrounded


By its smiling armies of willing sinners


Beginners in the Greatest of Games


Between two supernatural powers


Still blindly wearing jealously's green blinkers


I once stood alone in the falling rain


Trying to wash away my pain


When it took my heart


But now
Nothing remains


Spring
Summer
Autumn and
Winter is now for winners


People who now carefully and so slowly


Pull out the sharp painful splinters


Like one of life's big hitters


Not just the churchgoers or pastors or vicar's


But lifes true warriors


The tainted and emotionally hungry


Trying to swim or wade through all its deep rivers


And as I now look back in all my lifes old mirrors


Seeing my old silver chains which once held me as a blind prisoner


I raise my middle finger to the world


To the political system rigged to make me fail


Laws and policies
Demons
Armies of Darkness


Beginners


Old feelings and even some friends and lovers in the hard times


Today I stand for me


A newly reborn God
Surveying all I see


For I'm unstoppable today


No matter what the universe screams


Or dares to find the courage to say


(A lone voice sings)


I waited patiently for the Lord


And he, in kindness to me, heard my calling


And he hath put a new song into my mouth


Even thanksgiving — even thanksgiving
Unto our God!

Blessed-blessed is the man


That has set his hope, his hope in the Lord!


O Lord! my God! great, great is the wondrous work


Which thou hast done!


If I should declare them — and speak of them


They would be more than I am able to express.


I have not kept back thy love, and kindness, and truth,


From the great congregation!


Withdraw not thou thy mercies from me,


Let thy love and kindness, and thy truth, always preserve me


Let all those that seek thee be joyful and glad!


Be joyful and glad!


And let such as love thy salvation

Say always — say always

The Lord be praised!
The Lord be praised!


Copyright John Duffy