A poignant poem exploring deep themes of grief, disillusionment, and spiritual exhaustion.
Capturing a transition from seeking affection to a total withdrawal into solitude.
The speaker rejects passion—symbolized by replacing the color red with black—and surrenders to a profound weariness with their past existence.
The gothic imagery, such as swaying grief clocks and blackbirds, enhances the melancholic atmosphere of a journey permanently ended.
(A lone voice whispers)
And so like before love came
I return to my lonely home
Seeking no longer to atone
As my world suddenly stops
A new strange refuge where blackbirds now play as grief sad clocks sway
While my spirit guides come out to mourn
Dressed in black as in
They are re-swown
No more will I seek love to be adored - for now my only crimson ship has been moored
And love is now forever dead
Black is my new colour not red
So please forgive me Lord
But to truly live in happiness
I no longer horde
For of that old life
I'm now
Bored
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
Senryu
Title.
Relationships
At the very core
Is yearning to be cherished
Our endless desire
575
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
A poem exploring the fundamental human need for affection, validation, and emotional connection within relationships.
Universal Truth:
Line 1.
Vulnerability is the foundation of intimacy.
Human Condition:
Line 2.
The pursuit of love is an infinite, lifelong journey.
Emotional Core:
Line 3.
Strip away conflict, and only the need for belonging remains.
Want to live forever?
Title.
Relationships.
Eternally young
What we leave are memories
To be collected
575
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
Senryu are three-line, unrhymed poems (17 syllables in 5-7-5) focusing on human nature, irony, and humor rather than nature.
Secret Confessions
(A lone voice whispers)
You're my book of revelations
Every page, a divine creation
My alpha and my omega
My rebirth through every weather
You’re the rhythm in my heartbeat
Soft and sacred when you hold me
Life and death inside your eyes
Heaven wrapped in your sighs
And if you walk away from me…
Oh girl, what would I be?
If your faith in me is gone…
Tell me how do I go on?
You’re my hope… and my joy
My night… and my day
Don’t you ever drift away
You’re my light… when I’m lost
The only truth I can’t deny
Girl, you’re my reason why
Oh stay… stay… don’t fade away
You’re the song my soul can’t destroy
My hope… my joy…
If you leave, I’d be in shadows
Dancing with my broken echoes
Every prayer would sound your name
Every tear would fall the same
You’re the fire in my silence
The calm within my storm of violence
Only you have ever known
The child inside I’ve never shown
So if in me you don’t believe…
Girl, that’s all I’d ever need
To fall apart, to lose my way…
Don’t let our love just fade to grey…
(C) Copyright John Duffy
Birthdays come, and birthdays go.
As you get older.
Falling quickly like white snow.
But it's always great to get a nice hello.
From those you remember, and who you gladly still know.
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
Poetry is the gateway into once-unexplored realms
Where the soul can rise or fall
When someone follows its call
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
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
(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
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
(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
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
Whispers of Lord of the Khemenu
(A lone voice whispers)
Beyond what tired minds pass by as memories, fires, and embers fade.
Beyond what the missing say, while fluted pipes play.
As in deep waters you wade as life slowly fades and Mother Darkness calls your way.
Just look for the magic while your resolve holds as everything unfolds.
And try to empty the cold and all it tries to remold.
(C) Copyright John Duffy
A poem portraying a spiritual crossing through grief and dissolution, guided by ancient wisdom, urging the soul to seek meaning and release despair before it reshapes who they become.
(A lone voice whispers)
There are strange things man should not see.
Mythical creatures hidden in the half-light glow of dark places below, where it's too hot to snow.
Wild plays of rebellion and submission.
Far from church pulpits or crescent glows from so long ago.
I still can remember the deal I made when it-I into my house bade.
What was I to know when The Elder contract I did sign?
Only to hear my angel bell no longer chime.
So here I sit by the sea at a quarter to three, waiting for the thing man shouldn't see.
Will thou pray for me?
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
Will you try to do something higher than impulse or ego?
Title:
Being Human
(A lone voice whispers)
Will you deny realizing your desires and self-serving needs for a higher moral, religious, or selfless purpose?
Will you try to put your comfort and will behind trying to help others by being kind?
And not being brainwashed by the circus?
If you can, reach out your hand.
We are as one… we are true humans.
(C) Copyright John Duffy
A poem exploring the moment someone finds faith in any religion.
A moment from seeking to knowing, from external pursuit to internal acceptance, and from loneliness to spiritual belonging.
Love is revealed not as something missing but as something forgotten—rediscovered through faith and self-recognition.
As they find themselves included in divine joy, celebration, or grace.
Jubilee implies forgiveness, restoration, and release—suggesting that love is not earned, but granted through existence itself. Salute.
Title.
Have you been reborn?
(A lone voice whispers)
I once searched for love over land and sea.
Looked deep into all of life's many mysteries.
Only to find it lives within me: when I finally realized—I'm part of God's own jubilee.
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
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