Now a collection on Reddit

 Now a community on Reddit.

Click here

Transcendence

Title.

Transcendence.

A poem that insists love “stands tall forever,” positioning it as a force stronger than death or fate.

It reads like a romantic elegy—a farewell letter framed in mythic terms, interwoven with both anguish and deep affection. 

Portraying love as the last and strongest force in a world otherwise governed by pain, separation, and mortality.

Although the tone is dramatically melancholic, blending sorrow, awe, and romantic devotion. 

And while the narrator speaks as though on the brink of death, creating a sense of finality and tragic intimacy.

The mood evokes emotional conflict—pain intertwined with affection and transcendence.

To shape the narrative:

If you only had a few moments left, what would you leave for your beloved to find?

(A lone voice whispers)

Shocking as it may seem, now we've been cruelly split in two by the ethereal huntsman's axe. 

As raw and sore as you may feel with all the new unexpected setbacks.

Whenever emotional pain appears, like a reborn rebellious Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream and starts slowly swinging its sharp battle-ax.

As it attacks.

Just think of our glorious last day together in Halifax, and let your spirit climax inside as you read this.

 My last ever letter before Death appears to claim his tax.

I've loved you then and even more so as I read this letter in your mind to you.

For you'll always be my brightest star on my Christmas tree, somewhere soon where you can't see.

For love transcends all and stands tall forever.

No matter even if Death or his Huntsman call.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Transcendence is the ability to go beyond normal limits, whether physically, intellectually, or spiritually.

Reverence

 

A piece that reflects a mythic, romantic invocation addressed to a woman who holds profound emotional, almost supernatural significance for the speaker. 

Blending myth, ancient royalty, and cosmic imagery to elevate the relationship to something archetypal rather than merely personal.

To shape the narrative:

When you first fall in love, your beloved other half can seem to be the greatest person in the whole wide world.

Have you met your own greatest person in the entire wide world yet?

Title.

Reverence

(A lone voice whispers)

There was something so extraordinary about you.

Cleopatra's inner circle would have wept.

Your inescapable power and grace rolled in like November's sea fog while sleeping kings and queens slept.

Like Midhir or Mab, from the Wild Woods.

You just understood where all my deepest secrets were kept.

In the great void where time and deep space intersect.

So this poetic artifact is for you.

The only woman who once opened me up like a can of worms and offered to heal me as her white ritual candle burned.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Reverence:

A deep respect for someone or something.

Image shared under fair usage policy.

Would you follow the Pied Piper of Agartha?

The Pied Piper of Agartha is a mythic, symbolic, and evocative piece that invites readers into an alternate space—a spiritual refuge for sensitive, creative souls oppressed by the modern world's chaos. 

It blends fantasy, philosophy, and lyrical imagery to create a haunting invitation: a call to rebellion through kindness, creativity, and escape into a deeper, greener, hidden realm.

 Foundation of the piece.

Do you sometimes wish to escape the hectic noise and low vibrational energy in the world today?

Title.

Would you follow the Pied Piper of Agartha?

(A lone voice sings within a whisper.)

Would you willingly follow me - Into the Green Hollow?

If I pulled back the veil - And showed you a way in.

To get swallowed.

To escape to wild worlds of verbs and contradictions.

With love and laughter, singing and whispering—like loose chord progressions.

As the old world recedes into the distance.

To escape from your weary grotto of - 

Penitentiary Existence.

To unite in the Green Hollow.

With others.

Poets.

Singers.

Writers and all good folks—who are the last line of resistance - Against a world subjugated by darkness.

As kindness.

Compassion and love are no longer viewed - As a pièce de résistance.

So So

Would you willingly follow me - Into the Green Hollow

If I pulled back the veil and showed you a way in.

To get swallowed.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Can you remember your Transformation?

 

A poem exploring that your Desire awakening is not simply a moment in youth—it is a psychic transformation, a personal myth. 

It asks the reader not just to recall an event but to confront the moment they became capable of deep passion and self-discovery.

In essence, it's a poem about the birth of desire, expressed as a spiritual, emotional, and artistic metamorphosis.

Where the text reads like a lyrical meditation on visceral awakenings, framed in almost mythic, spiritual language. 

Blending romantic nostalgia, mythological allusion, and literary reference to elevate a personal experience into something archetypal.

So the question is, can you remember your Transformation?

(A lone voice whispers)

Do you still remember your first encounter with your libido? 

That wild exhilaration, a deep dive into the unknown.

Your own emotional Armageddon, climbing the Hill of Megiddo.

That first exquisite kiss leading to home base.

As ecstasy consumed your whole psyche and invaded places William Butler Yeats would have loved to write about.

Using such romantic, lyrical phrases.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

 

Have you been resurrected yet?

 

A deeply metaphysical meditation on love—its arrival, its violence, its healing power, and its spiritual significance. 

Blending imagery of weather, kingdoms, resurrection, and emotional upheaval to portray love as both mysterious and transformative. 

One where the tone is contemplative, almost prayer-like, inviting the reader to consider love as a force that shapes identity and memory.

Title.

Have you been resurrected yet?

Is love like ethereal raindrops tumbling from a hot, unseen spiritual sky?

When you least expect it?

Does it reveal itself when two kingdoms suddenly clash and collide?

Mundane worlds.

Imploding and unraveling.

Given birth beneath infinite clouds of clandestine assignations.

Can our happiness.

Smiles and lamentations.

Sometimes drown.

Swept up within its dark seas of astounding revelations?

But do we crave LOVE to still get wet?

To bathe within its stimulating waters of repudiation or salvation.

All the while embracing its rough spiritual fingers.

Of life-changing rehabilitation to heal our old ways.

And to help us find a way to forget painful memories.

As our soft cheeks get wet through our second resurrection.

Our first being birthed.

Here on Earth.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

    

Image shared under fair usage policy.

Are you undergoing reincarnated love?

 

Foundation.

Some old mythology says we are bound to find our twin flame or soulmate before we are born.

Our true other half.

This journey is simply repeated until we do.

No matter who we end up with.

To become whole.

Could old myths be true?

(A lone old voice whispers)

I write this for you to see in this lifetime because I couldn't find you, and my earthly time is nearly up. 

My beloved Mary Lee.

I know you were born to meet me. On the twenty-sixth of November.

A date I'll know forevermore.

As I look back.

Like now and remember.

For we shall be together. In The Great Nevermore.

Sharing conversations and sweet kisses:

Even after Death visits,

And offers you a drink of his sacrilegious dark wine. To end all your beautiful days and glorious time.

I just know we shall be together, like twinned pilgrims. In an eternal quest of hide-and-seek.

Set forth in the silence, by a long-remembered God.

Lost somewhere in some surreal time stream.

But together in insane spaces.

In-Between.

And as the soft, capricious winds of Heaven.

Change and dance like a wild Anna Pavlova. Between us.

Creating a moving sea of love between our two pulsating souls.

We shall know. In that very instance.

Holding hands.

Together, like first-date lovers.

In the universe's golden dust.

That we can sing and dance together,

Forever.

And be joyous in each and every form. For ours is a love story. Beyond the norm.

A love story that will forever survive.

Composed in golden italics and kept safely on gilded shelves, with so many others.

Written in Enochian Archives.

Stored beyond the Great Pillars.

In a sacred tabernacle.

By the pale blue Holy Sea.

Our Eternal Sea.

This I know because before I was born into physical form.

You were written. Into my history.

By my spirit guides, God and me.

The woman I'm bound to always love and try to find.

Whenever I'm reincarnated into mankind.

The one soul betrothed to me.

By an angel called ADOEOET,

He who sings like a bird, who once whispered 

Meet your true love. My beloved Mary Lee.

So see you in another lifetime. Your forever twin flame with no name.

Whose loved is buried so deep no matter how many times this incredible thing called life:

Tries to bury me. 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair

Cogitation

 

Depending on your age or having a busy schedule, have you forgotten your younger years?

A poem about contemplation, nostalgia, personal history, and the human tendency to forget the beauty of earlier life unless we consciously revisit it. 

Encouraging the reader to slow down and cherish their memories—both joyful and painful—because they form the foundation of who we are.

Title.

Cogitation.

(A deep thought whispers)

Have you ever sat under the sun and paused for a minute, to looked back over your life's many old pages?

Remembering how you once ran, with whom, and at what age?

Or have those old memories turned to dust?

Treasured moments shared with beloved family and friends. 

Even young and old love?

Moments of misery compounded by giant moments of victory.

People you once trusted, now resigned to your own pages of history?

So, I'll ask again and use this as a prompt within this prose.

Have you ever paused under the hot sun?

Sat in the shade and looked back at old memories, as they replayed?

Remembering happier times when you were having such fun?

The best ones, with maybe even those you miss, who are no longer around, as those incredible memories are eventually found? 

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Cogitation: The action of thinking deeply about something; contemplation.

Image shared under fair usage policy.

Babylon

 

“Babylon” is a mythic, dark, and symbolic poem about a man who believes he has been spiritually claimed or doomed by an otherworldly femme-fatale figure named Babylon.

She is not just a woman — she represents temptation, obsession, spiritual corruption, and transformation.

The poem blends reality, memory, myth, and hallucination to show how desire and despair can consume a person until they lose themselves entirely.

This is a poem about:

A haunted past

A wandering soul

A seductive supernatural presence

The surrender of one’s identity

A descent into mystical obsession

The collapse of self leading to rebirth. (“a new Genesis”)

 (A lone voice whispers)

I once heard a wild story of a rebellious, seductive woman. Hailing from somewhere deliciously dark.

Down West Side, East Washington, DC.

While lost somewhere in the middle of a seemingly never-ending night.

Drinking expensive whiskey.

After I landed from leaving my old life behind in the army, in Corpus Christi,

Wondering, as I drowned my sorrows.

If my old love from Russia, Katalina Brzezinski.

Would ever miss me? 

You know the ones.

Those good old loose Mephistophelian nights. 

It's there I heard a story about a voodoo woman who whispers so softly, which said she hooks you captivatingly with magical words.

If she only spoke your name but once.

No matter what you're drinkin'.

No matter what you're thinkin'.

What you’re wearing.

Man or woman.

At the end of that long good old dark, seemingly endless, Mephistophelian night.

No matter how hard you fight.

How hard you look for her long shadow over your shoulders.

Left or right, after she's gone.

If she only speaks your name.

No matter what pain you’re going through at the time of your naming.

You’ll just be another poor, tainted soul; she’s just done with claiming. 

I once heard of a similar New Age mystic.

And now I know it was her. 

When I was younger, in my prime.

And drinking red wine, Lost in Downtown 

Memphis, Tennessee. 

Lost somewhere, talking to one of her devotees called Louie.

In a backyard club, filled with flashing strobe lights.

As The Eagles played live their mythical , Hotel California.

In the middle of that wild night.

That good old apocalyptic, Mephistophelian night.

He talked of a dark-eyed Bayou goddess. Of whom I should beware in these parts.

A woman so beautiful beyond all compare.

Who whispers so softly.

So captivatingly and seductively to all who dare stare.

And if she only speaks your God-given secretive name but once.

No matter what you're drinkin'.

No matter what you're thinkin'.

At the end of that dark, seemingly endless, voyeuristic night.

It’ll be your soul she’ll be wearing as a new fur coat.

Before riding out onto The Great Cosmic Plains.

In her red and black Ford Mustang GT as her Pale White Horse.

For she hails from the dangerous Age of Cataclysm's.

And when I was told that unholy truth, oh, why didn't I learn?

For her sweetly spoken words to me now herald a bringer of a new dawn.

Of divine encounters.

The furious fire and the crazy fury before The Great Sensuous Cleansing.

A new Black Genesis for the Flesh.

Before True Peace and Love can return.

I once spoke, beer-brave, to that wild, rebellious woman. Sitting with the aura of a blazing midday sun.

In the corner of an empty bar, smiling like a snake charmer. In Down West, East Washington, DC.

And as she drew me towards her.

Then whispered so softly.

So captivatingly and spoke my spirit name. Making me feel like I was drowning.

Swirling, lost in her soul's ever-expanding universe's bright lights.

These are now my last words that I'll ever type.

As I now patiently wait, like good old Louie.

Just now, another of the many new slaves of her New Age.

Waiting for her rhythmic, two-one-two knock. On my front door.

After she said my God-given secretive name that crazy night.

Outside Bar 32, as we French-kissed in the falling rain.

And all I can now do is wait in vain. 

For my poor soul has been well and truly claimed.

By the crow-haired goddess called Babylon.

And my soul-purging and grand cleansing will soon begin.

My own version of a new Genesis.

Now I'm alone but patiently waiting. 

Not hiding but just starin

g out in the long shadows. 

Watching for my dark-eyed Goddess.

Called Babylon to arrive.

As the morning sun rises.

(C) Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy.

Are you an Imajician?

 

Are you an Imajician?

(A lone voice whispers)

Have you visited the Wetlands of The Great Imajaca?

To the Others, called Imagination, and got drenched.

 A wild and sometimes dangerous place, The Mundane plead to peruse and use, but through social conditioning:

The fear of standing out in the rain and anxiety linked to feeling and experiencing newer visceral or sensational emotions. 

The Lands of The Great Imajaca may lead them to.

It may as well lie at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. 

(C) Copyright John Duffy

It's quite a deep piece.

Many I know personally aspire to write but are held back by what their peers may think.

The anxiety they feel linked to looking inside themselves through introspection.  

Using their imagination to create instead of posting already created memes on social media.

Imajician is simply a play on magician.

In this case, a conjurer of words.

An explorer into the wetlands of the human experience.

The dark and the light.  

A place many writers, maybe like you, visit, for

 you too are a magician.

Salute.

Image shared under fair usage policy.