Like old school music?

An old soul, whispers 

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Considering doing new music!

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Developing new musical themes using AI. The end goal will always be a human singing the track. It just saves time when developing new concepts. Salute.

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The White Feather and the Flame as a song.

 For the curious.

Just playing with AI. 

Salute.

Click the link

Will you follow the Water-Bearer lifting the Veil?

(A lone voice whispers)

Will you lift up your veil and pray for the innocent faces of those starving and feeling unclean? The people displaced by those hidden, unseen?

Or the dark souls in plain sight who covet total power over every scene?

If so, follow me.

For as a wise man once said.

A man will meet you carrying an earthen pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he goes in."

Or will you, exhausted and tired?

Just go about your business in abject silence, as they carry on their wickedness with total impunity and such violence?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

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The Age of Aquarius is symbolised by the "water-bearer," often associated with pouring out knowledge, truth, and spiritual wisdom to humanity.

The veil lifting reflects that old paradigms are crumbling and a new earth is slowly emerging—not through force, but through frequency.

The quote is biblical refering to a transition point, guiding disciples from the old covenant to the new, often seen as a precursor to a new era of spiritual awareness.

Just look at the release of recent files. What was once done in secret behind a curtain of secrecy is coming into the light of judgment.

Have you lifted yours yet?

I hope so.

Salute.

Baal

 

(A lone voice whispers)

In the twenty-first century, is this a frightening thing to read or see?

The abuse of all forms of humanity by such cruel people.

Bound by such evil pagan rituals. Linked to dark, insidious acts of depravity.

And being left with the silent question?

Will any God put us out of our misery, and punish those responsible with swift justice for so many unknown casualties?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

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The White Feather and the Flame.

 

(A lone voice whispers)

In the deepest of my wildest lucid dreams, she always comes my way. And as the waking world dims, her shadow appears like a familiar shade. Slowly walking in.

Like a haunting love song, my soul's only angel over my guarded bed. I can't erase.

Opening a secret portal above where I lie to another realm where we can play. Telling me to take her hand, so we can slip away through its black gates.

No more worn or tired but too brave to consiouness retire.

We always fly as two, entwined into the grey smoke and translucent blue. And as always, while we fly, she always whispers, "Do you love me as much as I love you?"

And I always answer like the wild chancer I am.

"As much as Adam loved Eve, for in me do believe as we fly. The king and You, his queen, into the dark rift of The Great In-Between.

As watching angels sing as we are seen.

Oh rejoice! They have returned. The two once more reunited until dawn's new light.

The white feather and the flame. Praise be their names.

Oh, rejoice. Praise be they return tomorrow night.

Praise be. Oh, rejoice."

And so we fly into the smoky halls of the Greatest of Games. Spiritual lovers forever entwined until the day we die.

The White Feather and the Flame.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

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A whisper in the dark, wrote on Sunday, January 16, 2022. Seems so true today.

Foundation.

I was recently reading about the crusades and the fevour and passion of the many involved.

Their incredible beliefs, rightly or wrongly, shone through.

Could that passion and fevour which existed between 1096-1271,

still exist within today's culture?

When one looks globally at the worlds political and cultural arenas, that fevour and passion from between 1096-1271, probably still exists, today.

(Fervour is a noun that means intense feeling or belief, or a state of being emotionally aroused. Source. Google)

This piece is from the perspective of an unknown priest, before battle.
 

(A holy man speaks in Latin)

Cito est illud tempus quo nemo non potest amplius currere et abscondere

Nullae altae cuniculis aut altis muris te servabunt

Deus enim venit in lucem, quam semel dedit

Nocentius verum pudoris ambulationem cognoscet

Cum concentu detestabili clamores intentionum

Ubi quisque bene servatum nomen suum clamat

Nunc sanguine et dolore ablue

Iustitia et poena soli erunt clamoribus qui implent aerem

Animae vulneratae in ignominiam plangunt

Hoc multoties ante factum est

Et iterum hanc gloriosam ianuam tenebo

Omnes nocentes grave pretium solvet

Iis qui nummum aureum accipiunt in quacunque forma nova

Munus vel quidlibet aliud, quod alios mittunt ad immolandum

Corrupti acolythi aliquid tam vetus

Quod non potest esse nisi unum judicium, quod semper praedictum est

Omnes tristes animae, quae libenter AnitiChristo servire voluerunt

Sub gladio Christi merentur poni

Copyright John Duffy

Translation

That time is soon coming when no one can no longer run and hide

No deep tunnels or high walls will save you

For God is coming for a light he once gave you

The guilty shall know the true walk of shame

With a symphony of hateful cries of intent

Where everyone shouts out their once well-kept name 

Now awash with blood and pain

Justice and punishment will be the only screams that fill the air 

As their wounded souls lament in shame 

This has happened many times before

And once more I'll hold open this glorious door

All the guilty will pay a heavy price 

For those who take a golden coin in whatever new form

A bribe or anything else as they send others out to be sacrificed

Corrupted acolytes of something so old

That there can only be one judgement as it's always been foretold 

That all those sad souls who willingly chose to serve The AnitiChrist

Deserve to be put under the sharp sword of Christ

Copyright John Duffy

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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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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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Sorrow

 

A vivid, honest meditation on why grief hurts so much—because it proves something meaningful once existed.

Because sorrow comes in many forms.

Sometimes like a devious thief in the night.

A kleptomaniac who'll impulsively steal joy for pain.

From parents

Lovers.

To children.

Friends and family.

Have you heard him casually whisper your name?

Title.

Sorrow.

(Mr. Grief whispers)

Do you want to experience real devastating pain?

Then fall in love with someone incredible and let me break you down.

Again and again.

From birth until death.

When you wake up one day and only you and sweet memories suddenly remain.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Images shared under fair usage policy. 

Creativity

 Someone asked how do I create these monologues? 

For that's all they are.

Whispers in the silence.

And so I always answer.

"Can they be what the mind hears or sees / When it leaves the spectrum of light.

To enter into deep dreams.

No one can believe / Unless it's written in seas of fonts / Blowing in a gentle poetic breeze?"

A piece exploring where creativity sometimes comes from - A place beyond conscious control.

A place where the mind hears when it stops looking - to translate dreams into language: 

So others on their own patrol can believe in what it experiences beyond the laws of averages.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Consecrated Dreams. The First Time.

 

Consecrated Dreams

(A lone voice whispers)

I can always remember the first moment of total bewitchery.

When Love climbed, like an invisible ghost, into the very deep depths of me.

From dark shadows hidden behind Aphrodite's crimson tree.

Because my life changed forever that night with its first delivery.

To be haunted into old age with my first taste of its dark mysteries.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

A poem about first love as a powerful, sacred initiation—a consecration. 

A union entwined with depth and feeling but also cursed with memory and haunting.

A haunting where Love is not portrayed as gentle salvation but as an incredible force that reshapes identity forever.

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Oracle of Necromanteion.

 

A poem about spiritual survival exploring whether losing faith (in anything) opens you to inner darkness.

Where temptation and despair work quietly in isolation, hardening the heart.

But it also promises that virtue is a choice, not a rule, and belief can be personal.

Suffering can be crossed.

Transformation is possible, and if you choose rightly, you don’t just survive.

You get to run again.

Title.

 The Oracle of Necromanteion.

(A lone voice whispers)

He who walks without the most holy of ways will never return.

Until they have learned not by sin be swayed.

As true as new trees are made.

By lay played.

In so many wet, insidious ways.

By those hidden in the chasms.

In the faraway stars.

For people like you gathered here today. Should be careful.

For without faith.

In any form.

The nearby Darkness can always open a small gateway to sin.

And if that abyss is opened.

Revealing Desolation's fatal sandstorms.

It gets so much harder to let hope crawl in.

So, O'Ye. O'Ye.

On the yellow beaches.

Beseeching.

O 'Ye Gathered round me.

To the worthy few.

I summon by the power of the Purple Flame.

Virtue.

By the Divine Will of your choice of God.

To guide you.

Amen.

Through Acheron.

To the blue Stargate.

So you can once more run. 

(C) Copyright John Duffy

Art by:

Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl in 1898. 

Revelations. N.o. 1.

 

A poem exploring whether every thought, action, and feeling becomes part of your story, whether seen or unseen.

Centered around the theme.

Can you change before it's too late?

Revelations. No.1.

(A regal voice whispers)

You do know what you do and feel in public or secret.

My child.

Writes all your life's many hidden manuscripts and follow's you like a Charles Dickens-Jacob Marley character.

Into and after the crypt.

So do more good.

Purge yourself.

Pull yourself away from the Great Tempter's black hole.

Don't just sit and judge.

Urge your soul or the goal could be:

You.

Stripped and whipped as you become just another of the Devils legion's of unloved conscripts.

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(C) Copyright John Duffy 

The Seer

 A poem exploring if you've suffered deeply, can your pain become wisdom—but only if you choose forgiveness over bitterness, letting go of self-torment, and to stop projecting pain onto yourself and others; for happiness, slow and earned, to eventually return.

(A lone voice whispers)

To you who have swum, filled with misplaced faith, in the deepest of obsidian rivers and streams.

Of the mind.

Brimming with crimson and purple screams of heartbroken dreams.

Of the unspoken kind.

Just know you might, in turn, know the true value of eventual happiness.

From what you've learned and earned.

For you, whose once soft hearts have felt hatred but decide instead to embrace forgiveness.

To extinguish sadness.

Will always someday dance hand in hand with old Mother Gladness.

But those who hang their cherished coattails on internalized judgmental emotional madness.

Will seldom find peace.

For to abandon oneself to wallow in self-torment and grief and project it onto others.

There can never be any soul-saving relief.

Just let it all go.

These are the words of I, Aluna the First.

The blind seer, whose bright, hungry eyes always thirst.

For those still on the lonely journey in a place I once visited called Earth.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

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Survival

 

A poem about losing innocence.

Being wounded by love, society, and broken ideals, Being saved (but not cured) by art. Living with awareness that sadness never fully leaves—it only changes shape.

It doesn’t ask, “Are you healed?”

It asks something more honestly: “How are you surviving—and what keeps you from disappearing?”

Survival 

(A lone voice whispers)

Do you blindly in the old silence of your mind? Subsist with violence?

Like a once playful spirit who's been shattered into a million pieces?

Are you wandering lost but just constantly looking for guidance?

Like when you first met poetry or its mesmerizing lyrics in music?

And in those throes of new beginnings, did it encourage you to strive to come alive?

To try to bloom, to truly exist.

Did you abuse it when someone or something cruel made you say goodbye to all those once holy days?

When you were possibly in love or tainted by all those sad portraits sketched so beautifully, by what unkind, strange people say?  

Which some in society like to see painted in so many devious ways.

Ideals and principles uttered by people you deliciously cherished.

Loved or once worshipped.

As you wandered throughout that old life sheltered in unconditional bliss.

But when those spectacular times came to an abrupt end, you found the courage to depression resist.

When you looked for something truly meaningful.

To infuse your heart and soul into, like Saint John the Baptist.

Did you find a serene taste of tranquility in the written, spoken, or sung-out word?

To help heal and give you back a sense of being in total control? 

Did the years of being a true or part-time disciple to music.

Poetry or any form of catharsis. 

Help you find the freedom that continuously encouraged you to read, listen, or practice? To discover a more profound understanding of self-prosperity. 

That for you was invariably your implicit goal and a means to pay some of your soul's taxes.

But do you now live on a knife-edge with the Sword of Damocles? Hanging over you?

As you relate to new and old tales overflowing with happiness or pronunciations.

Centered and surrounding like an invading army.

A lonely word called Sadness?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

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