Happy Valentine's Day

(A lone voice whispers)

I still stand accused of missing your cheeky smile.

Your sweet husky voice. 

That unique funny sense of humour and all its indelible noises.

The way you string words together like the world's greatest tailor.

To create poetry so good it would leave a green apple bruised.

That sometimes I think about what some say, especially on Valentine's Day:

 Telling someone you love them is so overused, but honey, I still stand accused.

Whenever I pause to think about you.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Depression Day

 

(A lone voice whispers)

And soon it will come to pass without the sounds of love and laughter.

A few hours I'd rather forget, now our true love lives in the Great Hereafter.

The day my soul walked alone on one of life's many grey, soulless parapets.

Cold and wishing Valentine's Day wouldn't come.

For it always reminds me deep inside why I became so numb.

 When it finally comes around, with memories of chocolates and red roses, without their usual sounds.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

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Grief

 

Title.

Grief

(A sad voice whispers)

And so beyond all what God or gods can even say or do.

 We, too, will all someday mysteriously die deep inside.

 Every day, when we're forever apart.

From those whose sweet memories we still in good faith confide.

From those, we truly love, living or dead, without any known religious or spiritual relief.

Those invisible ghosts to all known mortal watchers.

Depending upon your spiritual beliefs.

To become lone soldiers like so many others.

In a vast never-ending army.

At one and serving the non-judgemental grey lady.

The true queen of all broken hearts.

Called and known to the selected few.

The true goddess we are born to worship from the start.

Dolor.

For everything dies.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

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The Voice in the Shadows

 

The Voice in the Shadows 

(A lone voice whispers)

Did you know that curiosity can be the soul's only guilty heartfelt desire?

 An irrepressible longing from emotions, many hidden fires.

That awakens convulsions in the newly possessed.

Of secretive things once never felt or expressed.

To the heavy loads, signalling the quiet redesigning of a pure soul.

As it explores new goals?

Like the falling of a tear, the feeling of fear or the bright sunshine of a rare smile?

Which shines like real gold in illuminated green eyes.

Trying desperately to devour all things before they die.

 Only to then hear one day in God's low whispers:

"Did you seek curiosities only goals, the soul's only guilty heartfelt desire, my child?

When they were all presented by the Devil, and its insidiously lit warm fires.

Before you died?

To tempt you like Eve, right out of the blue?

Or did you try to stay pure with all the divine gifts I once gave you?

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

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Animus (L)

 

(A lone voice whispers)

I'm called a beguiler of all inner and outer worlds and secretive red sanctums.

An owner of all rhythm and rhymes, entertaining young and old minds.

I can make time stop in its tracks in a heartbeat as old reveries of delicious emotions.

Move up and attack.

I can appear suddenly from the invisible to stand tall and visible inside.

From the burning grey ashes blowing in from just beyond The Great Occult Wall.

I can visit anywhere or place in deep space or time.

Paint supernatural tapestries like Rembrandt or Tiziano Vecelli.

Within the deepest inner recesses of your mind.

I can summon the long departed like Criss Angel.

Call to all your treasured dead to appear on that magical day, you had that first dance.

On the very day, you got wed.

I can perceive events in other worlds.

From all the many things and secretive books you've once read.

I've tasted deep love.

French kissed.

Been eaten out and shot many loads until I'm totally spent.

I've hung out all day entwined in your tear-stained bed as you once cried.

I always reached once for the faraway stars until we got wed.

On the day you were born.

I'm simply all the visceral symphonies and emotional sonnets.

Surrounding all of you.

All the echoes of all those memories your soul needs to stay out of the Red Dragons, soft silk sheet covered bed.

Look back and you'll always see me.

Just watching behind your shoulders.

For I simply follow and continuously collate as you slowly grow older.

Indulging and weaving new patterns.

I am simply known as Animus in Latin.

The mind, spirit, soul, courage, anger, or intention.

The bridge between the bringers of salvation or redemption.

Have you heard me call to you yet?

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

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Consequentia

 

Consequentia

(A lone voice whispers)

Like the Sagittarius *. A Black Hole, at the centre of our own known galaxy.

Does getting older make you slowly swallow more and more former memories? 

To wallow in bygone years spent with family, friends, lovers, and enemies?

Like this, Senryu below, which looks at the weaknesses of human nature.

Found in all human semidocumentaries?

Breathlessness Desire 

Adolescent Memories

Old age consumes all

(575)

(C) 

Copyright John Duffy

A poem exploring a quiet, philosophical meditation on time, ageing, and the inescapable gravity of memory—told in a hushed, reflective voice.

The black hole metaphor opening with Sagittarius A*—the black hole at the centre of our galaxy—sets the emotional physics of the poem. 

A black hole doesn’t just sit there; it pulls everything inward.

 Suggesting that ageing works the same way: as we grow older, memories aren’t released or left behind—they’re drawn back in, accumulating with immense weight.

So the question:

Does getting older make you slowly swallow more and more former memories?

Isn’t rhetorical—it’s existential. 

Ageing becomes less about moving forward and more about being pulled backward, repeatedly revisiting what once was.

Memory as gravity.

The poem moves through categories of human connection—family, friends, lovers, enemies—covering the full emotional spectrum. 

This matters as it suggests that nothing is exempt from this pull: love, pain, joy, regret all collapse into the same inner mass over time.

“Wallow” is used as a loaded word here. It hints at both comfort and stagnation—memory as something warm, but also something that can trap us.

Human weakness & documentation.

By referencing “semidocumentaries”, the poem subtly critiques how humans narrate their own lives. 

We edit, frame, revisit—never purely objective, never fully fictional. Memory becomes a flawed archive, shaped by desire, loss, and hindsight.

The senryu (575) as a life cycle.

The senryu distils the whole poem into a single arc:

Breathlessness / Desire – youth, urgency, longing.

Adolescent Memories – identity forming, experiences imprinting.

Old age consumes all – the black hole completes its work.

“Consumes” is key. Old age doesn’t just remember—it absorbs, compresses, and transforms everything that came before.

At its core, Consequentia is about the consequence of being human:

to live is to accumulate, and to age is to carry the full gravitational weight of that accumulation.

It’s not nihilistic—but it is sober. The whispering voice suggests acceptance rather than panic: a recognition that memory, like gravity, cannot be escaped—only understood.

The Invitation

 

(A lone voice whispers)

Can you feel my breath whispering through these lines?

Laissez-moi entrer là où dort votre âme

Can you feel the sharp edge of my sword as each word shines as they're expressed?

Can you feel my ethereal fingertips caressing your spine?

As your soul pines and pleads to be undressed.

If so, in the higher language of all that have come before:

Meus eris.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

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Transference

 

(A lone voice whispers)

In the deepest depths of me, I sometimes still hear your funny, sweet laughter.

Shining like a mighty blazing beacon all the way from the grave hereafter.

A new sun filled with old dreams once begun—as a spider's new web is spun.

In the deep depths of me, I can sometimes hear you say.

Stay; don't leave me alone for another day. But then you always fade away.

Like all my beautiful memories of yesterday.

Back into the shade where you'll forever hide within its glade.

Somewhere deep inside.

Just to wait with the stars at night.

To serenely whisper from the deep depths of me.

Begging me to dream and to open my soul's real eyes to once again see you.

And hear you laugh about all the beautiful things we once used to do.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

A poem exploring learning to live with loss—not by forgetting, but by allowing the beloved to exist as a gentle inner presence. 

The loved one no longer walks beside the speaker, but they shape how the speaker sees the world. 

Grief becomes a quiet teacher.

Where it's tender, restrained, and intimate—a poem about how love doesn’t end; it just changes location.

Salute.

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The Angel called Friendship

 

The Angel Called Friendship 

(A lone voice whispers)

They all appear to me like shooting stars.

Sometimes like a fallen, sad angel who has walked alone so far.

Filled with guilt, pain, and regrets, but who seeks to be reborn again.

And so I always call my light bearers to follow them wherever they appear with letters of intent.

Through all their black sludge and descents linked to life's many dramatic events.

For in doing so, I know one day I'll bless them with these heartfelt sentiments.

Rise, my child, for you're no longer fallen but starting to ascend.

(C) Copyright John Duffy

A poem that frames friendship itself as a quiet, angelic force—one that doesn’t rescue people from their suffering but walks beside them through it.

The “shooting stars” and “fallen, sad angels” aren’t literal angels; they’re people. 

Friends who’ve been bruised by life, who’ve carried guilt, regret, loneliness, or shame, and who may feel like they’ve fallen from who they once were. 

The repetition of walking alone so far emphasizes how isolated that pain has been.

The speaker’s role is important here. They don’t judge or try to fix. Instead, they notice, recognize, and care.

 Calling the “light bearers” feels symbolic of patience, loyalty, empathy, and hope—those quiet virtues that real friendship is made of.

 It’s not dramatic heroics; it’s steady presence.

The phrase “black sludge and descents” captures how ugly and exhausting emotional lows can be. 

Friendship, in this poem, means staying present even when someone is at their messiest, when life’s “dramatic events” pull them under again and again.

What makes the ending powerful is that the blessing isn’t rushed.

“For in doing so, I know one day…”

The speaker understands that healing is slow. Ascension only comes after the descent has been honored and endured. 

When the final line arrives—“Rise, my child”—it’s not superiority or control. It’s recognition. 

A friend saying, I see your growth. You’re not who you were at your lowest.

So the poem means friendship can see people as wounded, not broken. Sometimes. It stays when things are dark and uncomfortable.

It believes in rebirth even when the person can’t yet.

And it gently reminds them, one day, that they are rising. 

It's a soft, compassionate poem about faith in people—the kind of faith that doesn’t demand proof, only time. 

And so in ending, I can only hope you are surrounded by these angels. 

Salute.

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Channelling someone called Natalie.

Channelling someone called Natalie.

(A soft female voice whispers)

There are times when I look above, like a young stranger, still lost on a Miracle on 34th Street.

 And there are sad times when I look below everywhere I go. That I can still feel you like a rebel without a cause in everything I do.

Those small moments running wild within my lifes many visits. Into my old histories, trying to find a West Side Story.

 Hiding somewhere within the splendours of its tall green grass, where beautiful strangers sometimes seek sex with the single girls. Even those with no class.

Where you could fall deeply in love and be totally lost in those tranquil bouts of emotional insurrections.

At first, a silent revolution, and then a forced rebellion. But above on the surface, from here to eternity.

We hide ourselves from the watchers. Lying to ourselves. Parading such false love.

I loved you once, but below that surface where the darkness multiplies and grows, like in Chateau Marmont.

Where feelings of doubt, deep inner fears, and invisible tears always return.

I always pray they wouldn’t stay, but they always go on.

All questions heralding from the smiling, snarling, Paris Pitman Jr.

The Spartacus people loved.

The popular Mister Who Knows. Dressed in his white coat and with his foolish stare that I can still see him smiling everywhere.

I may seem calm and collected, but beneath the surface, I once feared being totally rejected by RJ and the watching world.

But for now, I still smile and play with Elvis. Empowered with the hope that those painful memories will fade, and these mysterious four winds will blow all those fears away.

It's how I now cope.

I will no longer visit my deep depths, where I was once drowned by maybe two accomplices off the coast of Santa Catalina.

In those dark blue waters. A place my soul still visits and where light

 lies in the distance.

For now, though, I’ll stay kneeling between these four candlelights, steadfast in the hope that justice will prevail.

Have you been afraid, as you age, of changing your statements and their misleading intent?

To extinguish your dark secrets, for it’s so tragic.

Have you built your life around yourself?

 Listened, hypnotized to believe your lies, now the public no longer cries?

Have some of your memories been happy, and some been magic?

But in a moment of heart-to-heart, does time and guilt give you the blues even as all our children get older?

The Great In-Between in waiting to judge you. Both.

 But you two have a good life while we all wait. Seek love like an untamed gypsy, embrace its golden rays as we now judge Major Garrett.

Now he’s entered a town without pity, somewhere in here. Up high in the Holy City.

Remember, in here. Tomorrow Is Forever.

This old movie never stops.

 It just goes on, catching all the Jekylls and Mr. Hydes.

Where we, all the victims of some sort of mortal crime, just wait in silence.

 In here.

Amongst the long shadows.

 Waiting to hand out justice to the corrupt.

 

Confess now before you stand before us.

 

It’s your only way to find salvation before your mortal or spiritual incarceration. 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

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