. Poetry from The Great In-Between

Saturday, August 2, 2025

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.

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Thursday, July 31, 2025

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.


Wednesday, July 30, 2025

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 


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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

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.

Monday, July 28, 2025

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.

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Sunday, July 27, 2025

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


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The love letter to Germaine

 


Press play before reading.


Foundation.


Relationships are so complex.

Arguments come and go.


Some intense, but when all seems lost, if you're with the right person, the light of hope to reunite > sometimes seems to shine.


Have you nearly broken up but then got back together?



The love letter to Germaine


You may still need time to heal and

I’ve only just figured it out


Only God can put us

Together again


I may need

To kiss that old fantasy


My treasured dream with a final

Goodbye


You see

I gave you my heart and soul

And everything in between 

I once owned


But now I’ve walked through the long, dark night of the soul

Past all the illusions

I've seen through it all


Past all the black and white


If there were a second chance at loving you

I'd take it right away

Starting today


But Father Time played his painful cards


In seconds and minutes

These tears are still going to fall


Have we gone too far this time


For when I look in your deep, dark eyes

I can see there’s

No common ground


They're telling me it’s over

Yelling at me to

Leave


To go

I know how it goes

We can never make it


 So I'll retire alone to grieve for

God doesn't love us


It's a deep truth 

I may now come to know


Too many lies you think have seemingly been

Spoken


Too many sacred

Oaths now lie on our bedroom floor

Scattered into so many pieces


Screaming as we cry out in pain

Totally broken


But I still don’t want to leave


For deep inside

At my very core


There's still only one truth

I cling to that, I truly believe


Your love is all that I need

To really help me breathe


(C)

Copyright John Duffy

The Call of the Ala--Kai