A senryū exploring the paradox of love, freedom, and control, reflecting human psychology.

Title.
Smothered
#Senryū

(A lone voice whispers)

My love needs freedom
Inescapability
For we've gone too far

5/7/5

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

A haunting piece whose power lies in how it encapsulates the inner voice of doubt, that many experience, but rarely articulate.

Does it feel personal and universally relatable, a fragile cry that lingers in the silence after the final question?

The Monologue of Self Doubt

(A lone voice whispers)

There's a secret place I sometimes go
Where the birds don't play

For all hopes of love and happiness have flown away

A sacred place where the skies are dull and grey all day

Sailing by lonely, with nothing to say

As I pray to a strange God and whisper

Why did you make me this way?

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

Have you been to Khartoum? The Black and White Island?

Where memory, myth, and prayer merges into a haunting meditation on loss and regret?

As once intimate and cosmic events, turns isolation into a path toward repentance and the possibility of transcendence?

Title.
Khartoum.
The Black and White Island.

(A lone voice whispers)

As I lay here, under my apple tree

With my head on my pillow

Looking at my only treasure
A white feather by the sea

I can still remember the first time, The Ebb, and Flow came looking for me

And I witnessed all those old things once hidden,
when my eyes couldn't see

When it engulfed me in its fine mists, of secret memories

The mysteries
Insecurities
Jealousy
Lies

And all other forgotten things

That Ebb and Flow from beyond the Great Sea,
Brought to me

Forgotten moments
Missed chances
Last dances

And the loneliness of standing in a dark circle, of never-ending silence

Gripped knee-deep in the black sludge of the Highlands

And now alone on this island, in the middle of a black sea

With only a white pillow
White feather and an apple tree, for company

I still see her
Skin as soft and white as snow

Dressed in blue Levi jeans
White tee
And black high heels

Blue sharp eyes

Beautiful and blonde like a young smiling Marilyn Monroe

Resurrected by the swirling grey mists of the Ebb and Flow

Which touches all things and binds to the spine

The past
Present and future

For they are the Pole stars of all good and evil

The collector and receiver of all things made of matter on Earth

By making the forsaken see all those hidden missed moments and mistakes

Like when I let that girl ride on her horse called Wildfire

Right out of my paddocks gates

When my heart took shell fire from Desire's Gatling gun

Is that why I'm stuck on this lonely island in the middle of this Black Sea

Sentenced to lay underneath this great apple tree

Inscribed with the many etched in names of past visitors

With a white pillow and white feather for company

So Lord,
Until I find the Repentance candle, to climb higher out of this darkness

Haunted each night
By the Ebb and Flow

About the girl with blonde hair

Who looked like a young smiling, Marilyn Monroe

Wearing blue Levi's and a white tee

On a horse called Wildfire
Who I once let go

Oh, Lord, Please forgive me

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

(A lone voice whispers, looking at a photograph)

Do you still miss me
The one you left behind blowing your horn

When you crossed The Acheron

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

Acheron:
One of the five rivers of the underworld.

The effigy— laden with strange malice—
Collects its roots from amidst the leaves,
Fashioning crude doll from old ceremony.
And it seems— as if stolen from dream—
To possess the countenance of ancestral steam.

The unspoken truth in the title hints at the silent suffering surrounding cancer:

Its emotional toll, the quiet battles fought behind closed doors, and how survivors are sometimes left to navigate grief.

If you're going through this, sending blessings and if you've been through it, sending prayers.

Cancer. The unspoken truth.

(A lone voice whispers)

Looking at our wedding photo,
Crying every night

Where did you go

Leaving me crying alone, at midnight

With my head held low, in the dark, no longer in the light

But deep down I'll always know, you had to go, the pain was just too much

So it's why now every night, your photo I clutch

Crying
Where did you go

Leaving me
No longer in the light

But walking in pains red snow

Knowing
I'll never be alright

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

Have you been through this emotional, physical, and existential transformation from innocence into experience?

Or more precisely, from youth into adulthood?

Metamorphosis

(A lone voice whispers)

I still dream of the beautiful moments, when I was first introduced, to the Red Goddess called, Sin

Still feel her soft red fingernails, on my hard skin

Still taste her red lipstick, as I became her king or queen

And walked like, Adam and Eve, naked

Into my own Garden of Eden

As I remember the noises of the early morning Blackbirds

Who just loved to sing

When I became of age, and walked reborn, into an adult's skin

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

A reflective piece on modern technology, particularly phone addiction and AI, and how they can impact human relationships and genuine connection.

The title sets the tone, Separated but together, with a subtle paradox:

People can be physically near (or digitally “connected”) but emotionally or socially distant.

This question being at the heart of the poem:

Is our dependence on phones and AI leading us away from authentic living?

Is the devil’s trick, a seductive but destructive modern version of temptation?

To separate family friends and lovers in real-time, with an addiction to AI in various forms?

Do you think technology, especially phones and AI, creates distance even when people are together?

Or have you felt a sense of isolation, surveillance, or emotional disconnection, when you're with someone or in a group?

Do you think Phone Addiction to be a subtle, seductive tool that was created, for amongst other things, to erode intimacy and presence, as powerfully as a weapon?

Title.
Separated but together.

(A lone voice whispers)

I sometimes wonder in silence, for if I say what I think aloud

It will turn into another long AI conversation with something nameless, which now lives high up, in some clouds

But here goes for the curious, who is eager to know

Is phone addiction one of the devil's greatest ever tricks

To separate family friends and lovers in real-time

With an addiction to AI

While holding the death of real engagement, like a Heckler & Koch hk416

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

One after another hellbound lash,
Slashing skin with imprecated ash.
A whistling scourge of cleansed sin,
A passing veil of the harridan’s grin.

It cracks a hymn of fleshly anguish,
Enough to force the gods to languish.
Yet soothes and heals the wretched soul,
As a blaring rumble of a belfry’s toll.

The sinner thrives in ****** perdition,
His body aches with god's attrition.
Transfiguring so infernally demonic,
Emerging as a deity facinorous and chthonic.

He is ablaze in unimaginable fires,
Burning in the depths of frozen pyres.
Embedded in ice he shall live for eternity,
Drinking his torture and torment so fervently.

Shackled by chains of Tartarean depths,
Fetters of sins and of hellfire’s deaths.
In which he serves his mistress of sin,
As anathema is blazed upon his cursed skin.

In a frigorific and caliginous dungeon,
You ensconce me along with the dust.
Our flesh is so terribly pungent,
With the scents of a violent lust.

Two vile and barbarous lovers,
Indulging in our brutal embrace.
Teeth stained with vermillion colors,
As a baneful grin adorns your face.

You pounce upon me like your prey,
As I helplessly lie in pure rapture.
Mauling and kicking away,
You have me blissfully captured.

I am entombed in your grip,
As vermin between beastly jaws,
Leaving my heavenly ichor to drip.
Soon to be torn by bellicose claws.

Quaff the crimson from my veins,
Suckle at the jugular nectar,
For I shall bide in these chains
As a bloodless and pallid white specter.