The Judgemental

Judgment and cruelty live just beneath the surface of people or society. They are animalistic, destructive, and always waiting for an excuse to be unleashed. 

Only restraint keeps them from causing harm.

It’s a warning poem:

About mob mentality.

Moral superiority.

How easily judgment turns into violence.

It reflects exhaustion with human cruelty.

A sense of foreboding.

An awareness that civilization is fragile.

The poem warns that judgmental instincts are savage forces lying in wait beneath consciousness, and if unleashed, they will act brutally and without mercy.

It portrays judgmental thoughts, impulses, or entities as dangerous, restrained forces lurking beneath the surface—in a “Lower Dimension.” 

They may not be active yet, but they are waiting, tense and eager to break free.

The poem suggests that judgment itself is a primal, animal instinct that must be consciously restrained.

Title.

The Judgmental.

(A weary voice whispers)

In the Lower Dimension, they wait. Beasts, waiting like chained-up wild boars to be let loose.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Judgment and cruelty live just beneath the surface of people or society. They are animalistic, destructive, and always waiting for an excuse to be unleashed. 

Only restraint keeps them from causing harm.

It’s a warning poem:

About mob mentality.

Moral superiority.

How easily judgment turns into violence.

It reflects exhaustion with human cruelty.

A sense of foreboding.

An awareness that civilization is fragile.

The poem warns that judgmental instincts are savage forces lying in wait beneath consciousness, and if unleashed, they will act brutally and without mercy.

It portrays judgmental thoughts, impulses, or entities as dangerous, restrained forces lurking beneath the surface—in a “Lower Dimension.” 

They may not be active yet, but they are waiting, tense and eager to break free.

The poem suggests that judgment itself is a primal, animal instinct that must be consciously restrained.

Title.

The Judgmental.

(A weary voice whispers)

In the Lower Dimension, they wait. Beasts, waiting like chained-up wild boars to be let loose.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

The Goddess from Glastonbury Tor

 

At its core, this poem is a mythic, symbolic celebration of renewal, using Glastonbury Tor as a sacred focal point and the Goddess as a personification of Spring, rebirth, and spiritual cleansing.

The Goddess as Spring and Life-Force.

The “Goddess” represents:

Spring itself.

The Great Mother and life giver. A solar, regenerative power that returns after winter.

She is described as:

“Life-giving.”

A “warrior queen”—not ”gentle only, but active, powerful, and transformative.

Bringing warmth, fertility, and light back into the world.

This blends pagan, Celtic, and mythological imagery, common around Glastonbury, which is often associated with ancient goddess worship, Avalon, and ley lines.

Winter vs. Spring = Death vs. Rebirth.

Winter symbolizes:

Darkness.

Stagnation.

Spiritual coldness.

Emotional or inner numbness.

Spring symbolizes:

Renewal.

Awakening.

Cleansing.

Hope and new beginnings.

Lines like:

> “As Winter’s toys go back in his box”

Suggest winter is a temporary force that must step aside once its role is done.

The Vernal Equinox as Sacred Turning Point.

The Vernal Equinox is central:

Day and night are equal—balance is restored.

It marks the true beginning of the new cycle.

Nature “wakes up.”The equinox is personified with:

Robins singing.

Bells ringing.

The cockerel crowing at dawn.

All of these are traditional symbols of awakening and transition.

Purification and Spiritual Fire.

The “Purple Flame” and “molten arrows” represent:

Spiritual purification.

Burning away the residue of winter.(darkness, despair, stagnation)

Divine energy acting like a forge to reshape life.

This implies an inner transformation as much as an outer seasonal one.

Glastonbury Tor as the Sacred Source.

Glastonbury Tor functions as:

A spiritual beacon.

A mythic “heart” from which renewal spreads.

A meeting point between earth, sky, and spirit.

The Goddess’s power radiates outward:

> “Spreading from Glastonbury Tor / To all”

The Call to the Reader.

The poem ends by directly addressing you:

Will you hear the call?

Will you allow yourself to be “purged” and “reborn”?

This makes the poem not just descriptive, but invitational—asking the reader to:

Let go of inner winter.

Embrace renewal.

Begin again.

So here we have it.

A seasonal myth, a spiritual allegory, and a personal invitation to transformation, rooted in ancient symbolism but aimed at modern inner renewal.

Title.

The Goddess from Glastonbury Tor.

(A lone voice whispers)

Can you hear her faintly call / The Goddess now seated at Glastonbury Tor?

Spring / The life-giving goddess of all.

The warrior queen to emerge from / The deep depths of winter's cold.

To rally round the young and old / On the Vernal Equinox / As Winter's toys go back in his box.

And the warm blooming of Spring can begin / As choirs of Robins sing.

With the Goddess and Queen / Sharing her life-giving rays / To all in sight / Day or night.

Summoning forth the Purple Flame / To purge all winter's darkness that remains / All in the Great Creator's name.

Shooting molten arrows from the midday orb / To relight the cycle and the great forge.

In the many sleeping / Awaiting her ringing yellow bells / To break the winter's spell / When dawn's Vernal Equinox cockerel sings.

Welcoming the Goddess / Great Mother / Of all living things.

Awaiting the moment for her / To open her angel wings / So new life can begin.

Spreading from Glastonbury Tor / To all / With her New Year's weapons of war.

Will you hear her faint call / Once more / And purge your soul.

 From winter's cold / To be reborn.

With the blowing / Of her Great Golden Bannerman's horn?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

 

Lower Dimension Dreaming.

 

This poem reads like a quiet, inward meditation on loss, especially grief tied to a birthday. 

(A lone voice whispers)

This sets the tone: the speaker is isolated, speaking softly—suggesting private thought, mourning, or inner dialogue rather than celebration.

It’s your birthday today. / A day of happiness and tears.

Birthdays usually symbolize joy, but here they also trigger sorrow. This strongly suggests the person being addressed is absent or deceased, and the birthday brings both loving memories and pain.

Juxtapositions and revisions.

This line points to contradictions and rethinking—how life places opposites together (joy and grief) and how the speaker keeps revisiting or rewriting their understanding of events, perhaps replaying memories or regrets.

Why is life unfair?

A direct expression of grief and frustration. This is the emotional core: a feeling that what happened should not have happened.

Why doesn’t God care, or are you now with him?

Here the poem moves into spiritual questioning. The speaker struggles with faith—wondering whether God is indifferent or whether the loss has meaning through an afterlife.

Standing by his side, up there?

This line softens the anger into longing. It imagines the lost person at peace, close to God, which offers a fragile comfort even amid doubt.

Overall meaning

The poem captures a moment where grief, love, faith, and doubt coexist. It doesn’t resolve the questions—it sits inside them. The “lower dimension” of the title may suggest life on Earth as a limited, painful plane compared to a hoped-for higher spiritual existence.

In short, the poem is about remembering someone on their birthday, confronting the unfairness of their absence, and wrestling with belief as a way to cope with loss.

Title.

Lower Dimension Dreaming. 

(A lone voice whispers)

It's your birthday today.

A day of happiness and tears.

Juxtapositions and revisions.

Why is life unfair?

Why doesn't God care, or are you now with him? Standing by his side, up there?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

Seeking Absolution.

 

This poem reads as a confessional elegy—a blend of grief, guilt, and spiritual longing after a separation or loss.

Title: “Seeking Absolution”

Absolution is forgiveness, specifically in a religious sense. From the outset, the speaker frames their pain not just as loss, but as something they feel morally or spiritually responsible for. This suggests regret, self-blame, or remorse.

“(A lone voice whispers)”

The whisper signals intimacy, shame, and isolation. Confessions are whispered, not proclaimed. The speaker is alone with their conscience.

“Sometimes the rhymes cry for you to return and join our choir, but now we sing alone.”

The “rhymes” represent thoughts, memories, or even poems themselves. They want the lost person to return.

A “choir” implies harmony, unity, and shared purpose—once plural, now singular. The absence has fractured something communal or intimate.

“Singing from our hymn sheet. / The Song of the Broken.”

A hymn sheet suggests something once sacred or shared. Now the only song left is one of damage and sorrow. The speaker isn’t improvising joy; they’re repeating pain.

“About you.”

This abrupt line isolates the cause of the suffering. Everything—song, prayer, guilt—centers on this one person.

“Oh, Lord. Forgive me. / For I have sinned.”

This is a direct confession. The speaker believes they have done wrong—possibly causing the rupture, the loss, or the pain. The repetition reinforces sincerity and desperation.

“Oh, Lord Almighty. / Forgive me.”

Invoking God’s power emphasizes how heavy the guilt feels. Human forgiveness may no longer be possible, so the speaker turns upward.

“Amen.”

The prayer ends formally, as if sealing the confession. But “Amen” also implies acceptance—that the speaker may never receive the forgiveness they seek, yet must still ask.

The poem explores grief mixed with guilt. The speaker mourns someone who is gone—emotionally or physically—but unlike simple loss, this absence is haunted by self-blame. The religious imagery suggests the pain has crossed into the spiritual realm, where the speaker feels unworthy, broken, and in need of absolution.

It’s not just about missing someone.

It’s about believing you are the reason they’re gone.

Title.

Seeking Absolution. 

(A lone voice whispers)

Sometimes the rhymes cry for you to return and join our choir, but now we sing alone.

Singing from our hymn sheet.

The Song of the Broken.

About you.

Oh, Lord. Forgive me.

For I have sinned.

For I have sinned.

Oh, Lord Almighty.

Forgive me.

Amen.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

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Have you too felt a Rupture?

 This poem is a short, intimate expression of grief after emotional separation, not just the loss of a relationship but the loss of what that person represented.

Title: “Have you too felt a rupture?”

A rupture is a break or tear—suggesting something once whole has been suddenly and painfully split. 

This frames the poem as being about emotional damage rather than simple sadness.

“(A lone voice whispers)”

This stage direction sets a tone of isolation and vulnerability. The speaker isn’t declaring their pain loudly; they’re confiding it, almost to themselves.

“I still miss you, you know.”

A direct, conversational line. It implies unfinished business—things left unsaid or feelings that persist despite separation.

“Not your looks or smiles. / Just you.”

This clarifies that the loss isn’t superficial or physical. The speaker misses the essence of the person—their presence, identity, and emotional connection.

“The serenity of being around you. The peace and tranquility.”

The loved one functioned as an emotional anchor. Their presence calmed the speaker, proposing the relationship provided safety or emotional balance.

“For you once brought me peace, and now I'm left alone.”

The contrast emphasizes loss. Peace has been replaced by loneliness, reinforcing the rupture implied by the title.

“Now our love lives dead. In realms of the newly Deceased.”

This metaphor treats the relationship as something that has died. “Newly Deceased” suggests the grief is fresh, raw, and unresolved—the speaker is still in the early stages of mourning.

The poem captures the quiet aftermath of a breakup or emotional loss, where the speaker mourns not romance or attraction, but the emotional refuge the other person provided. It’s about longing, solitude, and the painful realization that something deeply meaningful is gone—recently and irreversibly.

Title.

Have you too felt a rupture?

(A lone voice whispers)

I still miss you, you know.

Not your looks or smiles.

Just you.

The serenity of being around you. The peace and tranquility.

For you once brought me peace, and now I'm left alone. Now our love lives dead. In realms of the newly Deceased.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

The Poet from Sheol.

 

 A poem that reads like a manifesto delivered from beyond the grave—a warning and a challenge from someone who has already crossed the final boundary.

Title: “A Poet from Sheol”

Sheol is an ancient term for the realm of the dead. By choosing it, the poet frames the speaker as a voice outside time and society, someone who has nothing left to lose and therefore can speak truth bluntly. This immediately gives the poem a prophetic, almost mythic authority.

“(A ghostly voice whispers)”

The whisper suggests urgency and intimacy—this isn’t a loud sermon but a personal warning meant for those still alive.

“Try to be rebellious and monolithic. / Magnificent and unspecific.”

These lines intentionally pair contradictions.

Rebellious vs. monolithic:

Be defiant, but grounded. Stand firm in who you are, not scattered by trends.

Magnificent and unspecific:

Aim for greatness without being easily categorized. Don’t let labels reduce you.

This suggests resisting the pressure to be neatly defined or marketable.

“Break the rules. / Fool the Gatekeepers.”

The Gatekeepers symbolize institutions, norms, critics, algorithms, traditions—any system that decides whose voice matters. The poem urges creative subversion, not reckless chaos, but clever resistance.

“The toll keepers of society.”

This deepens the metaphor: society demands payment—conformity, silence, safety—in exchange for acceptance. The poem encourages refusing that cost.

“Be unique. / Share those stories you keep, and never go quietly.”

This is the emotional core:

Your uniqueness matters.

Your untold stories matter.

Silence is a kind of death before death.

“Never go quietly” echoes Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night,” reinforcing defiance in the face of mortality.

“Before you too finally go to sleep.”

“Sleep” is a gentle euphemism for death, bringing the poem full circle. The speaker reminds us that time is limited—and regret is permanent.

Overall Meaning.

The poem is a call to creative and personal courage delivered from the perspective of someone who can no longer act—only warn.

Its message:

> Live boldly. Speak honestly. Resist systems that flatten you. Tell your stories while you still can.

The voice from Sheol isn’t asking for rebellion for its own sake—it’s urging authenticity before it’s too late.

Title.

A Poet from Sheol.

(A ghostly voice whispers)

Try to be rebellious and monolithic.

Magnificent and unspecific.

Break the rules.

Fool the Gatekeepers.

The tollkeepers of society.

Be unique.

Share those stories you keep, and never go quietly.

Before you too finally go to sleep.

(C) Copyright John Duffy 

The monologue of the spirit from The Great In-Between.

A dramatic, mystical lament expressing:

• Longing for a lost or unreachable lover

• Fear of being forgotten or unloved

• Hope for reunion in spiritual realms if not in life

• The blending of memory, dream, fantasy, and metaphysics

It’s both a love letter and a ghost story—a message from someone who feels removed from the world yet bound to one person with overwhelming devotion.

The ultimate purpose of the monologue—

to avoid being forgotten.

(A lone voice whispers)

Lost in this unrepentant noise of an old life, as it still seduces my mind.

Consuming and beguiling, I speak to you from the other side as these magical words, conjured from the deep crimson lips of my inner mind.

Reaches out to hypnotise thine.

Words which once lay lost but are now found in the transient music of the unknown and forlorn.

How my inner light shines ever brighter, as it repeats these beautifully written words with my softly spoken voice, above the unrepentant noise.

My skin comes alive like the Great Canopies in unexplored jungles, in the deepest of Africa, at dawn.

I just now dream a continuous fantasy which infuses my bloodstreams and veins with copious energy.

There have always been subtle moments throughout long-lost days

and cold nights, when that irresistible longing and need seemed too much.

When I pined hourly for just a feel of your touch.

Would I be abandoned like another slave to the four winds by unrequited love, forever burning?

Spinning endlessly in desires, salacious red fires?

Just hoping to walk within your shadows or sate my thirst and hunger.

With just a glimpse of you passing by my pale white window, I still look from.

Just to see you standing by the well by that old apple tree, to break me free from this dark dream.

As I walk, trapped in a never-ending limbo.

It's where I turn to each night as I think of you and stare out my scrying glass, which I use as my second shadow.

How do I reach you?

Those old road maps and contacts are still yours to give.

For they are your deep secrets, you still purposely keep from these lands.

Those beautiful grounds on which you still stand.

There may be uncertainty and unexplored hordes and mountains

to conquer between us.

"Grimoires of Gossip," whispered in the dark to keep us apart.

But still, I send this message out.

If you're hearing this, Josephine.

We’ll now meet in the Astral planes of dreams.

Where we’ll need no more formal introductions as we already know our own truly secretive god-given names.

In the many still alive treacheries which may still surround your broken heart like She'ol, as you traverse this world.

Within your living Universe, when you feel totally lost and so lonely.

Know my white candle still burns even through all the rain clouds and storms, when you feel trapped, and breathlessness spins over your overthinking emotions.

Remember me thinking of you.

Somewhere just over the world's many oceans.

Just standing patiently under that red old lamp post by some Red Churches' wrought iron old gates.

No matter how late.

Maybe I’ll wait forever, but if I'm gone before you arrive.

If I’ve waited too long, and I eventually disappear and ascend.

I'll leave you a red envelope under the white stones by the gatepost on the left.

In it is my road map to the stars, where I will now stay and reside and will always wait.

Where I will now stand by an old alabaster church, I will create and build and wait under its white lamp post.

By its sparkling wrought iron old gates.

Remember me.

(C) Copyright John Duffy

Image shared under fair usage policy.

The Void.

 

(A lone voice whispers)

I know you once said you loved me.

Said you'd never leave, but now on my own after all these sad, lonely years. 

All I can say at your grave before I too leave this world.

Are we created by the greatest of jokers to love life and people we meet—to then be deceived when we are forced to grieve?

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Image shared under fair usage policy.

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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.