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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The Monologue of the Searcher

 

The Monologue of the Searcher.

(A tired voice whispers)

In the lost scrolls of the Dead Sea. I found ancient clues.

Past the Holy Inquisitions and in the deep vaults of the Nag Hammadi Library, written by a King.

I found something hidden in the lost pages Of The Lesser Key of Solomon in Damascus.

My new Clavicula Salomonis Regis and an old means to question us.

Amongst ancient manuscripts and treaties, I searched.

Looking behind the lies of beasts. Men or previous pagan gods.

Through the old doors of Perception I once walked.

Clutching tightly my Books of Thoth and the Prophet Ezekiel. Whenever I fell and stumbled nightly.

But blessed be. By the Donations and blessings of Constantine The Great.

I knew I would have time. As I reopened old gates.

For like Frabato the Magician, I, too, looked for the hidden Fourth Way.

Amongst the hidden secrets and staircases of the human race.

I looked deeply into God's every written word. For a secretive place.

Where every day can be a Midsummer Night's Play.

I travelled far and afield with my Five Books of Mysteries.

Always alone as I channeled Lobsang Rampa.

Who spoke of the Second Coming and why the brain is like a radio transmitter.

And this Earth is but a World steeped and overflowing with deep Illusions.

Which merges together as this life whispers how the physical is but forced to obey Will.

By the spiritual energies of the soul.

That a soul. Wherever its surroundings in the Great In-Between.

Is as solid as you or I upon this world.

For The Akashic Records say so if they could be seen.

Men or women judge themselves. When they go over to the other side.

As certain as the reborn soul entering a newborn baby as soon as they die.

Suiciders are simply returned. To begin again.

For taking your own life is as painful as a sin. And only a new rebirth can help eradicate that pain upon this Earth again.

It whispers of why we do not normally remember our past lives. For if we did, how would we ever learn?

This Hidden Knowledge. This deep perception, I found within this ancient, once lost, conjuring spell.

It speaks of how true life is on the Other Side of those who wait.

Watch and collate within secret Halls Of Memories.

Watching in silence as our short lives flow past like strange, ethereal documentaries.

And in secret Temples of Initiations.

To contact the other side, I sent the incantations to strangers I never met to see if all that was once said.

Could come true?

And these following words are the opening to the ritual I share with you about the others.

Of what happened next when the spirits of the Dead appeared at 3 am.

When the dead used their bodies as their shells when they uttered this secret summoning spell.

I once found hidden between layers of Heaven and Hell

Lord Of The... words omitted for your safety).

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

What does the poem ultimately say?

It says:

The human mind is desperate to understand itself.

We inherit fragments of wisdom, not answers.

Knowledge can become obsession.

Seeking meaning can isolate you.

And even after all the searching… certainty may still whisper, not speak.

The “Searcher” is not a master magician.

He could be you, standing at the edge of belief, wondering if the silence will ever answer back.

Salute.

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The Ancient Ones

 

The Ancient Ones

(A lone voice whispers) 

Our name is Eldritch. The true Gatekeepers of The Rich. 

Sent through time to invade your minds with dark dreams of the eerie kind.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

A whispered incantation rather than a full narrative.

“The Ancient Ones” frames the speakers as primordial, pre-human entities—beings that existed before ordinary history or consciousness. 

Calling themselves “Eldritch” immediately signals something unknowable and unsettling: knowledge that doesn’t belong to the human world.

 It echoes cosmic-horror traditions, where the most frightening thing isn’t violence, but contact with truths the mind can’t fully process.

When they claim to be “the true Gatekeepers of The Rich,” that “rich” isn’t about money—it’s richness of hidden knowledge, power, and forbidden inner worlds. 

Gatekeepers decide who gets access and who doesn’t. 

These beings stand between everyday awareness and deeper, darker layers of reality.

“Sent through time to invade your minds” suggests they don’t attack bodies or civilizations, but consciousness itself. 

Time becomes irrelevant; these forces recur across eras, entering through dreams, myths, inspiration, madness, or creativity. 

The phrase “invade” implies a lack of consent—humans don’t choose these visions.

Finally, “dark dreams of the eerie kind” positions dreams as the doorway. 

Dreams are where reason loosens, where ancient symbols and archetypes surface. 

The poem implies that what we experience as nightmares, intrusive thoughts, or uncanny inspiration may not be random—they are messages, visitations, or pressures from something older and watching.

Taken as a whole, the poem reads like a mythic explanation for disturbing dreams or ideas,

a personification of the subconscious, or

a cosmic voice claiming authorship over human fear and imagination.

Because it’s whispered and brief, it feels intentionally incomplete—like the reader has overheard something they weren’t meant to hear. 

That unease is the meaning as much as the words themselves.

Have you had dreams sent of the eerie kind?

Salute.

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The Midnight Visitor's

 

(A lone voice whispers)

Sometimes before the visitations come at night.

The shapeless shrouds walking in from misty clouds.

I smell a scent of sulfur as they appear in my sight.

Broken things, each wearing a red ring. Standing one by one until their bell I ring.

To then kneel and tell me their something.

Some speak of forgotten old queens or kings, as they wonder.

Some speak of standing still in memory's thunder.

To taste old, decayed moments that choke their inner sun.

Some dream to run to heaven to see the sights.

It's like this for me every night.

While the new world sleeps, and those from the old knock on the door to my keep.

Asking me to shine a light on their own mysteries, so their call can taste the old thrill of past victories.

That they still have a place somewhere in history.

Somewhere between the Dragon and the Holy King

It's why they say they come to me to sing.

For who wants to be a forgotten old broken thing? 

(C) Copyright John Duffy

 “The Midnight Visitors” is about being a witness and a keeper of what the world has discarded.

The visitors.

The “shapeless shrouds,” sulfur scent, mist, and red rings aren’t literal demons so much as forgotten souls, memories, ideas, and identities. 

They’re broken things—people, histories, emotions, even past selves—that were never resolved or honored.

They arrive at night because night is when the mind is unguarded.

 This is the liminal hour: between waking and dreaming, past and present, and life and death.

Where the red ring suggests wounds, guilt, shame, blood, or unfinished business—a mark that identifies them as damaged but still alive in memory.

The speaker ringing the bell reverses power. They don’t haunt him; he summons them. That frames the speaker not as a victim, but as a ritual holder, judge, priest, or poet.

Someone who gives the forgotten permission to speak.

What they confess:

Each visitor carries a fragment of their history.

Lost royalty → fallen greatness. Frozen moments → trauma and regret.

Decayed memories → time eroding meaning. Dreams of heaven → longing for redemption.

These aren’t just their stories. They’re human stories—the universal fear of being erased, of having mattered once but soon to be no longer.

The speaker’s role.

This is the emotional center of the poem.

While the “new world sleeps,” the speaker stays awake to receive the old. That makes him an archivist of the unseen.

A translator between eras.

Someone who shines a light so forgotten things can feel real again.

Where poetry itself becomes the lantern.

Dragon and Holy King.

A line that places the visitors between myth and sanctity—not villains, not saints. Just human. 

History usually remembers extremes; this poem speaks for everything in between.

The final question.

“For who wants to be a forgotten old broken thing?”

This is the quiet heartbreak of the poem. It’s not really about ghosts.

It’s about all of us and the fear that one day our story won’t be told—unless someone like the speaker listens.

Would you want to be remembered?

Salute.

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The Call of the Golden Temple

 

This poem is about being gently, beautifully summoned—by love, art, destiny, or mortality itself—and choosing not to resist. It’s a whisper rather than a scream. A quiet readiness to follow the fire before it goes out.

(A lone voice whispers)

Sometimes under the bright gaze of cosmic starlight.

I feel you creeping like a lone shadow slowly into my sight.

Bright and gloriously burning like early November fires.

That old remembered desire never retires or expires.

Your aura appears, singing and skipping along.

Singing a strange new song. Saying I should hurry and come along. 

So here I am. Waiting to follow, like a lone oracle, into a new golden temple of Apollo.

So, oh shadow slowly creeping into sight.

Burning bright like early November fires.

Does thou know when my earthly time expires?

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

The Resurrection Leaf

 

A poem about how grief sometimes listens, finds faith in hope, and love that refuses to accept final silence. 

Where it doesn’t just deny pain but leans toward resurrection rather than ending.

Title.

The Resurrection Leaf.

(A lone voice whispers)

Every time I hear your sweet voice recorded on old videotapes. I die inside quietly as I hear that familiar sound.

That all my spirit guides hold me upright to stop me from falling on Heaven's wet ground. As watching angels gather all around.

And just like the falling of a single autumn leaf. I always hear your calling, even though it's faint and brief.

Calling me in sacred rhymes to look out for divinely sent signs.

So like priests worshipping at their holy shrines with all their faithful power down through time.

I always, too pray, one day to climb to reach the heavenly meadows beyond God's angelic towers.

To once more walk with you through all its beautiful blooming pink and blue flowers.

To reach a place where no autumn leaves fall, and I no longer faintly, briefly hear your sweetly whispered celestial call.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

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The Midnight Voice

 

(A lone voice whispers)

I can see all the way from in here. The fate of the world is on a precarious knife-edge.

The black-robed vultures are gathering in secret covens and lodges. For their Great Cull, carefully planned and patiently waiting on their gilded governmental ledges.

For The Last Harvest. The Great Play.

Paradise for the nuclear family, has been torn asunder. Religion.

Family values and gender by the throw of a black and white dice. Announcing new agendas.

As in boats. Missplaced nations sail and wonder.

Will I find freedom from my old kingdom? 

Just to drown and freeze to death in cold waters.

As politicians ponder. Argue. Reflect and hatred interject.

Faith in a Higher Power, in retrospect, seems demeaned and hated by those with no nerves.

Churches closed by Elites leaving Christians with nowhere to go. Musing in silence in defeat.

But they, The Elites. They'll get what they deserve when Hell opens up its doors, and they are duly served.

You may feel alone. Scared, insecure or in pain. Moving slowly in between jagged lines.

But God knows who's lost their faith and needs a boost.

A touch of The Almighty's grace.

To get through a sickness delivered by followers of darkness.

So all I can say is pray.

Pray.

Pray everyday and God will try to remedy all that comes, whatever may.

For as Jeremiah 29:11 says:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

As Deuteronomy 31:6 says:

Be strong and courageous.

Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you.

He will not leave you or forsake you.

So in Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Quoting Lamentations 3:22-23:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

So to Isaiah 41:10:

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

And ending with Corinthians 4:16-18:

So we do not lose heart.

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Be strong.

The light must keep shining for kindness and compassion to keep winning against those swimming.

In the Devil's dark, unforgiving waters, by constantly sinning.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

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Are you one of the Blessed or a Watcher?

 

Are you one of the Blessed or a Watcher?

(A lone voice whispers)

Precious are those blessed to write—to help carry the blind into the light.

To feel and see new visceral sights—as their inner television starts burning bright.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

A poem exploring whether writers are like conduits. Where they see first, feel first, and suffer or ignite first, so others can follow. 

Suggesting that writing becomes an act of illumination—turning inner images into shared light—helping readers understand themselves and the world more clearly.

Implying writing is not just art; it’s a calling.

And vision—once ignited—is meant to be shared.

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