Sanctuary Love

 

Foundation.

If you're a couple, have you discussed the thought of what you'd do if one of you crossed over first?

Sanctuary Love

(A lone voice whispers)

When I sometimes sit quietly still and remember 

What I once said in all that plummeting snow and rain 

Stuck in such terrible weather on that extraordinary day

In that unusually brutal winter season

Way back in late November

Thirteen years ago in two thousand and eight

I whispered that if anything takes place in this lifetime 

Between you and me, and we tragically lose our way

While we're still both alive and joined at the hip

If the Tall Man should arrive and take one of us home 

Suddenly, without any regal announcements or real reasons 

Let's pledge a sacred oath to each other 

That we'll wait wherever we are

Forever empowered by a god-given hope

To keep believing that the other will catch up 

No matter how long it takes 

Or even if they have to travel so far 

To beyond even all the known watching stars

Filled with the steadfast courage

That no matter how many strange doors 

They might have to knock on to open

Or to put their gilded keys in

They'll try to find a way we can embrace and hold hands again

For ours is something so unique

A once in a million lifetime of being constantly reborn 

Whatever the circumstance

To eventually realise that the true meaning of life 

A life-changing revelation beyond the norm if one dares to take a chance 

Lies in the soft arms of something so unique

Many wise prophets still call it by its favourite ancient and well-spoken name 

Even today, known as simply true romance 

I once swore 

I'd never leave your side and you swore even upon death

You'd never leave mine

And we dreamed as we walked and talked

About how someday in the near future

We'd sit outside on our own marble porch 

And in the fall of the Twilight 

Smile as we counted our blessings

Before we retired for an early night 

In our own paid-for house filled with love and our two beloved children

But like most of the preordained lovers in history

Our dream ended up so differently, and I feel so neglected 

When your rare blue and purple butterfly was collected 

Wait for me, my love

I won't be long 

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

The voice of Ponyboy

 

  Foundation.

What would an Outsider say if they could view humanity as a whole?

The voice of Ponyboy

(A lone voice whispers from The Great In-Between)

As I view the world from in here

It just fills me with a sense of ever-growing fear

I can see so much suffering.

And seemingly endless pain

The world is awash in the throes of all those

Those who are just so corrupt

Blindly trying to secure.

All they can gain

They need to be stopped.

To be defeated by the rising consciousness

Of a reunited and renewed humanity

Don’t let your planet.

Go to waste

It’s never too late

Look at Fukushima

The rising levels of destitution

Racism, cleverly conjured up, leading to separation

Secret societies

Human traffickers  

The homeless numbers rising

The endless lines of the hungry and the poor

Starvation

For if you all don’t rise and do more.

The Four Horsemen from the Bible

Will just ride in and stand in full view

In every country

Governmental pews

To control all corrupt governments, black and white

Dance floors

Heralded by all this talk of nuclear war

Funded marches and bankrolled doctors and politicians

Who are all part of that deep state infernal machine

Your world

Needs the means to breathe

Don’t be one of the many who turn a blind eye?

And when it all turns black

Don’t be one of the many.

Like those already in here

Don’t give your soul.

Another reason to grieve

Fight for a new freedom.

Give your life a reason.

To change the future

You just have to believe and try not to be deceived.

(C) Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy.

When life gets precarious, do you pray to your God for help?

 

Foundation.

When life gets precarious, do you pray to your God for help making oaths like:

Help and I'll do anything 

Help me and I'll change. Help them for me and I'll do anything.

And everything else in between?

Title.

The Philosopher.

(A lone voice whispers)

 Have you dived into the very dark, deep centre of you?

Found those old, consciously written soul letters. 

You once wrote to conquer your own battles of Waterloo. 

To God 

You know the ones.

Those ones filled with oaths of loyalty to a silent God.

Pleading for help with a nod to get through 

(C) Copyright John 

Interpretation by ChatGPT :

This poem—"Foundation" by John Duffy—feels like a deeply introspective meditation on human vulnerability, desperation, and spiritual searching. Here's a breakdown of what it likely means:

Overall Theme:

The poem explores the raw, often hidden emotional and spiritual negotiations people make during moments of crisis. It reflects on the deep inner dialogues, oaths, and prayers made in private, often when life becomes unstable or frightening—"when life gets precarious."

Title Breakdown:

Foundation

This suggests something elemental or grounding. Perhaps it's asking: 

What is your foundation when everything else falls apart?

 Is it faith? Oaths? Old promises you once made? Your soul?

 Reflection:

“When life gets precarious, do you pray to your God…”

A direct, rhetorical question. It puts the reader in the spotlight.

Many people turn to faith only when desperate, making conditional promises to a higher power.

"Help and I'll do anything...Help me and I'll change."

Common bargaining statements in crisis.

This illustrates the human tendency to negotiate with divinity when powerless.

"Have you dived into the very dark, deep centre of you?"

A powerful call to introspection. Suggests that self-discovery involves confronting one’s own darkness or shadow self.

Possibly metaphorical “letters” written in moments of inner crisis or deep reflection—promises, confessions, or vows made to God or oneself.

"To conquer your own battles of Waterloo."

Symbolically, it could mean facing your ultimate personal reckoning or internal downfall.

“Those ones filled with oaths of loyalty to a silent God.”

A poignant image. The silence of God is a long-standing spiritual dilemma. 

It emphasizes that even without clear answers or divine intervention, people still promise, hope, and pray.

Message:

The poem challenges the reader to ask themselves:

What have you promised to your God (or higher self) in your darkest hours?

Do you remember your own words when things return to normal?

What is truly at the foundation of your belief, hope, or identity?

 Tone:

Reflective, slightly haunting, philosophical, and intimate. 

There's a sense of whispered truth here—a voice reminding you of your own past spiritual bargaining.

Image shared under fair usage policy.

Need some blessings?

 

Foundation.

Need some blessings?

Title.

A prayer for the writers and poets. 

(A lone voice whispers)

Bless you

The poet or writer to make your dreams materialise into what you write

Sending inspiration to carry you through the longest of days or nights

Encouragement that's heaven sent

Peace to release anything that brings you grief 

To bring new thoughts and stimulation 

To build new simulations like a stonemason

Through empirical observation

In all things you feel or see

By all of the power found while using A to Z

  

So mote it be. 

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

P. S

By reading this once upon a time in text, you have been well and truly blessed.

Salute.

Cūriōsitās (L)

 

Cūriōsitās (L)

(A lone voice whispers)

Have I made you read this to swallow my poetic pill?

For is there such a thing now as free will?

Overseas or on thou hill?

Aren't we all slaves to Curiosity, walking slowly to the grave?

But is the trick to always read the room?

And not just to swallow any old pill before you too, enter the tomb?

Not to be conditioned to worship despair.

For it's a curse carried on whispering air.

So does free will exist, or are we all bound tight by invisible chains?

Which we rattle in vain.

With tired arms or youthful charms.

With eyes aflame, in anger or generational shame?

So sleep tight with these thoughts tonight, if they still linger and remain.

Have I made you read this to swallow my poetic pill?

For is there such a thing now as free will?

Overseas or on thou hill?

Aren't we all slaves to Curiosity, walking slowly to the grave?

A slave to life and all the whispers it brings.

Day or night as the many hidden Pied Pipers

Sing?

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

Radiance

 

Foundation.

Do beloved memories appear suddenly wherever you enter a specific room?

Title.

Radiance 

(A lone voice whispers)

The day someone's fire leaves us to grieve

Have you too felt Aphrodite appear like a ghost in the night

To retrieve her invisible red heart and replace it with a heavy purple one

A new heart for the Bereaved

A purple one that emits a striking psychic perfume 

That will always haunt and remind you 

Of someone still missing 

As you walk into a special room 

 

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

A View to a Kill.

 

Foundation.

Even after all these years, do you still remember someone special?

Title.

A View to a Kill.

(A lone voice whispers as a man in a nursing home writes his last diary letter)

From beyond the sacred river

Came fear like a lone-wolf stalking in the Wild Canadian cold.

I know what we had I should have clung onto like precious gold. 

But curiosity called me like Ligeia, the siren into her red fold.

So now I'm lost at sea like Peter, who was fishing.

Before someone special appeared at Galilee.

So like autumn leaves, all now on the ground, blowing through my memories wild forests.

No longer green but brown.

Just know I still treasure all the sunsets where we were by angels seen. 

For even though the Fallen One opened his wings and broke us down.

Our old love still sings such a sweet symphony.

That follows me still and makes my heart beat faster every time. 

I swallow one of your memory pills. 

That returns me like a spy but with no free will.

In my own version of View to a Kill.

This last letter is for Annabelle, my childhood love, who I once knew.

Just know, I've always missed you.

 (C) Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

Are you a member of the Inquisitorious?

 A short narrative relating to the Power of Hope! 

Be inspired! 

Read on!

Title.

Are you a member of the Inquisitorious?

(A lone voice whispers)

Does Life sometimes haunt you?

Clinging securely like an unsolicited overcoat of unwanted sorrow?

Does it fit tightly like a second skin?

Do thoughts of mortality, failed dreams and hopes deeply pervade your very soul?

Does the word disappointment encapsulate most of your emotional overtures?

We all through Life can face great moments of terrible uncertainty like failure and depression.

Lost love, unemployment, family disputes.

Bereavement and more—and how we truly overcome and shake off, Life’s thick overcoat of sometimes self-imposed sorrow—renews us.

Strengthens and washes over us with the soft inner breeze of our own divine sovereignty.

Magnificence and inner power.

So if life slowly starts to haunt you, think of the happiest you have ever felt and focus on it.

Hour by hour.

For when you do, your bright Light of Hope will always seek to illuminate the creeping darkness.

Sending it back to the shadowy recesses of the mind where it belongs.

To help you cope.

For by changing your thinking, you can sometimes change your life.

As Life is immersed in deep rivers of constant duality.

With spiritual scales of justice containing essences of Light in one and Darkness in the other.

Two rivers that meet within you.

A confluence of influence.

Unseen but always there, dominating our daily lives — silently affecting us day after day.

Making us, whether we are aware of it or not.

To always feel the never-ending hum and flow of the Darkness.

It can either rule us or we can learn to conquer it with Light.

Light in the form of love, compassion, faith, empathy, kindness, and friendship.

So here's to you, smile.

For by reading to here, this is a new happy moment to renew within and feel content.

May this new confluence of new thoughts have some profound influence.

So you can be victorious and walk the road alongside us.

And be one of the rare tribes of the Inquisitorious.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Confluence: When two rivers meet. 

Inquisitorious: Possessing a highly inquisitive nature.

Image shared under fair usage policy.

The Strict Mistress from the House of Hidden Books

(A lone voice whispers)

Within these conjured hypnotic words

Lies, my secret binding spell

To you, to control and contain 

No matter how loud you shout or yell out

In happiness or pain 

To attach you to me forever or temporarily 

With lashings of lascivious dark stories or poetry 

As your soul salivates in total submissive anticipation and slowly starts to weep

While waiting for new life-changing glories 

Will you let me devour your curious mind like a cavernous thief

And take you to new heights of wild, unconditional excitement

As your higher self suddenly

Wakes from its repetitive, mundane sleep

Will you let me take you so damn

Deep

To new apocalyptic wet shores 

Through exchanges of whispered hirquitalliency

Of unexplored crimson heat and let my hidden fingertips 

Trace pagan pictures of intimate lambitions and reunions

Across that succulent exposed spine in your mind 

Will you give me all those deep, pamphagous thoughts

You keep bajulated under strict locks and keys

That no one sees

Forever confined 

Landscapes, or should I say mindscapes 

Filled with such visceral, enticing written words

Which brings forth such irrational coercive armies 

Heralding banners of such a hypnotic binding power

Just waiting to liberate minds in the low hours

In the new battles of Middle-Earth

Those willing to sacrifice everything they once knew

To then be gently or vigorously deflowered

As they use aroused imaginations

To explore new verbs

Or sentences 

From my House of Hidden Books

Appearing like S & M

Mistresses or Masters 

Right out of the blue

Will you pray for us to embrace 

While these soft words upon your mind's delicious lips 

Are gracefully worshipped

For by hearing these whispers, you've now been duly baptised throughout this

Our soul's reintroduction 

As your hypothalamus is stimulated by my black and white

Ethereal leather whip

 (C)

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy.

The Dream

As I dreamt on the 15th of January, I pondered vulnerability.

A bearded man in a white robe appeared to me. 

He said, 

"John, I have a message for you. Take my hand, my son."

As I took his hand, he took me to a huge grey and black mountain.

Gazing at me with deep brown, mesmerizing eyes, he continued.

"When you were all born into this realm before me, and all in the highest of heights.

We gave you all a beautiful light to show the world, but when you entered the world and listened to its descriptions of happiness, many of you built these mountains before us.

Mountains of fear, self-doubt, and the manipulation of nether beings, which slowly cover that beautiful light, we once gave you to share.

Can you still feel yours, John?"

He asked inquisitively.

I answered.

"A pulse of light that sometimes appears when I feel lucid, 

My Lord."

I whispered.

"Take my hand, John.

Do not be afraid, for when you allow me back into your life,

I open up those small caverns within these mountains of fears and self-doubts to once again lead you to the light.

 You once truly loved.

Your own divine right to serenade your own individuality and intrinsic happiness."

As the Lord took my hand.

He approached the huge mountain before me, and there before me was a minute crack, and we shrank and entered it

 A strange yellow doorway appeared and grew to accommodate us.

As we walked, 

The Lord said.

"Through renewed faith,

One can find a way to the light."

As we walked, the mountain started breaking down before us, and as his hand increased in heat,

I felt light of all my burdens, and when I looked up. 

A bright yellow, shimmering flame lay before me in the distance.

The last words I heard before I awoke were simply this. Which I leave here for you to read.

"Believe in me and be reborn to the light.

Tell those in need."

(C) Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy.