Atlas wakes up at 5am, jumps into bed and snuggles me. He’s wet, but I’m too tired to move except to throw my arm over him and pray he’ll fall back to sleep. Peace, lasted all of ten minutes.
Sleep deprivation creates at atmosphere that’s blurry at best and tunnel visioned at worst. Quick to rise, de-escalation tactics take all my efforts to stay cool, calm and reasonably collected while I fumble through toast and a nappy change.
I make my coffee, roll a cigarette and head outside to watch the sunrise from the balcony. So far, so good. Atlas is giggling with his iPad, seated at the table and picking at his breakfast. Happy, lasted all of 10 minutes.
He doesn’t want toast, he wants something from the pantry instead except that’s not going to happen. Out come the fingernails – gouging and scratching and a temperamental defiance that escalates into a full blown tantrum.
Matty storms out of the bedroom, red-eyed and livid and puts his foot down. Peace, lasts all of another ten minutes before the pattern repeats.
I’ve had enough too. Gone are my attempts to keep the child’s mood on an even keel, gone are those feelings of inadequacy that I can’t contain Atlas long enough to let his father have a much needed sleep-in and so I take him to his bedroom, shut the stairwell gate and try to discipline the problem.
I fail miserably.
Snap! The proverbial shit hits the fan once again and this time, silence is a warning best served cold. Matty descends, a leg is slapped, a door is slammed and peace returns for at least an hour this time.
Meanwhile, I contemplate taking Atlas out of the house for a drive before he starts the cycle again. I panic. My clothes are in the bedroom, I’m not sure where the car keys are, will Matty approve, will Atlas lose it in the car anyway? I decide to wait a while longer. My jaw is sore from grinding my teeth.
Matty needs respite but I’m all there is and so we lurch from dawn to well into the early hours, exhausted and running on fumes.
Atlas is a cockblocker too.
The countdown to esctasy on hold for the indefinite future. Foreplay, fails to get either of us off the ground or high enough to move to first base, let alone dive in fingers first and squeeze one out. The conditions of our release barely blow off steam and the only thing getting hard, is life for the next two months, while we reassess the situation.
A temporary adjustment. Life is actually pretty good. Most days Atlas is on form and we make a great team but school holidays with a child with special needs, without any respite, requires strategy.
Some sort of mangy matted thing tethered to a rope and stake. Fragments of cracked bone and coagulated mud puddles, stuck to my fur.
In my dream
I saw the man come— he brought his cold black eyes and set his sights on me, hurled another bucket of slop at my feet and I wept.
In my dream
I saw through the black hole in his soul and my insignificance outshone the brightest star, even then I wore my existence well, shut my mouth and kow-towed, I became nothing more than a flea.
In my dream
I wore a collar and bore love just to prove that point I once knew before I disappeared into a maelstrom of mourning. Nothing left to give.
I am reminded of the wife beater singlet and mullet crop of men way back then, the stench of decay followed by assault and I know it’s only a matter of time before I die.
Still, in my dreams
I am honoured to be graced by his presence but in reality, I am worthless.
My heart is breaking today. I want to die. I am all alone in this world, unloved and forgotten. I am breaking down in the moment surrounded by strangers and strange smells that have come barraging into my sacred space and pegged me into a corner. I don’t have the will to live anymore. I look for ways to end my life that doesn’t require umpteen steps to get there. I wish to just slip away in my sleep, in silence, in peace. There are spies everywhere. Pseudo friendships of users and manipulaters. Pretenders. I want to simply vanish, disappear without a trace knowing no one would ever call to find me and it will be as-if I never was. If I am a Goddess, it doesn’t add up. There is something inside me that fails to love or be loved. I must have been an angel once, but the universe has me outcast. I pray for my quick death but my whole life has been a slow grief stricken process of dying. I want it all to end. I visualise my soul manifesting in mist; graceful swirls arising from my lifeless body. Ascension taking me back home to timeless euphoria and relief. All I’ve ever wanted was to love and be loved but I am not worthy. None of us are. If life is a gift, I have been an ungrateful bitch.
But we all have down days. Poetry helps me to purge and heal.
I feel like I’m on the last mile home. Everyone is gone. Although most people are just lost trying to survive.
I think about people, wonder how they are but I don’t really believe they care much. ‘Trust no one’, is being bandied about like Al Capone’s mandate in the Godfather but I’d rather have him on side than deal with the average Joe Blow shitcunt who’s self absorbed selfishness means it’s only a matter of time before they want something.
Everyone is just trying to make it through another night, live another day and create a semblance of paradise in their own backyard before they flip the bird for the last time.
I’m really struggling to make my ends meet. I can see no end and I’m getting older by the year. I find myself dreaming of the last mile home; the last death row to freedom.
That uncomfortable feeling of awkward recognition and detachment — that made me want to run least I fall apart, reveal my core which you saw, reflected back at you between glimpses.
That unspoken knowing.
I felt the push of energy and the pull of old habits back into regression, back into the familiar comfort zone of old where nothing changes and we both die a little bit more inside and destiny forgets to reset.
I’m wondering if we’re humble enough to surrender, strong enough to become vulnerable long enough to push through the sparks, ignite the fire and transform pain into passion so we can both decide to rise.
We dance as if we’re going nowhere but in reality, we are already somewhere. Somewhere untapped, viscerally raw and undeniably on the edge of something far greater than either of us anticipated of love.
I want us to push through.
We are free falling to unknown depths and still creating marble pillars from blind faith alone, to eck out an existence that illuminates the veils so we can both find freedom in enlightenment.
All we need to do is walk through the door and let go of the past once and for all and finally fall completely and utterly in love where nothing else matters, except us.
My thoughts are a jumbled mess of confusion (yours, his, hers & mine) scrying for something to hold onto long enough to make sense of the anchors and foundations we’ve both forged from pain, which now threaten to cave in. There is nothing I can do but watch. You are the man. My dreams and cracked beams are giving way to violence — detachment and oblivion. Nothing will be left but a fully loaded house of teetering cards.
All I feel is loss.
The aftermath will have me face to face with Charon. He sits upon my chest now, opening up my third eye bidding me to say goodbye one last time. My soul declines, offering suffering in silence, compassion finding release in a steady stream and I overflow. My ears make wells to muffle his bargain but I belong to no one, not even him. I am a lost cause.
If I accept, demons could still tear me apart, dismember my appendages piece by bloody piece before sewing me back together skew-whiff, over and over again until I am utterly insane. Therein lies the abyss. The place that makes my life a living hell and all my heart aches for, is to love and be loved.
But all I feel is sadness.
Abandonment caves in my ribcage too. It digs in like a tick underneath my lungs and sucks every last drop of fluid left from my life. I am wrung out and strung out, so I waste no time in knocking myself out just to get lost — I wander in the ether to find her again and bring her back home but there is always a catch.
Twenty two foregone conclusions reek of tyranny. You can’t save me! I was lost before you found me and I don’t belong to you or them or here or anywhere and it will always be like this! I don’t want to believe in angels! I don’t want to believe in demons! I don’t want to live in this place!
There is another outburst of pain.
I seek comfort in my magic, my wand set to low creates slow circles that mimick your gentle touch. I feel pleasure for the first time since I last felt your gaze reach in to pull me out and into your Temple. You try to worship my foreign body, send ripples ricocheting between our vibrations but we have failed to find synchrony. In my delirium, I think I must have died.
That niggling voice belies demons who whisper their disapproval. I don’t want them to hate her. It’s easier to hide away until she can return, find compassion for their mistrust.
She is too big.
The things she pontificates under duress, scare me. It is best that I learn to trust Hermes – to ask for something with a reason instead of stealing something without one.
Mourning.
Loss, tears open a hole — splits a scar further apart; destroying a perfectly sealed crust. Fragments of flaky skin scatter to the wind, shed a diatribe of unforgiving.
She moves in and out of the ether.
Flying through space and time searching for another wormhole, another passage to take her to Persephone, that damned alter-ego who dwells in the deep recesses of purgatory. Home is where her heart aches to return.
Demeter negotiates another extrapolation.
Manifesting a spiral vortex, she hones her parts and I wait for the impact to knock me off my feet — wake me up with a jolt of epiphany where I love the magnificence of my creation.
She does not belong to Hades.
Demeter is radiant. All the virtues I try to bestow; a culmination of strength and vitality and love to honour – my integrity in spades.
I am omnipresent.
Her mouth is shut preferring solace over a wailing lament that conjures a maelstrom of death and dying. I could do well to endure no more, wrath has held me bound.
Tonight Demeter ascends.
I return to myself and you are free to wander in search of true love and find your Artemisia, a perfect match for your Nemesis.
My ether box graunching & grinding through stargates shudders, misfiring synapses lurch from push to pull ascending descending traversing my self worth, mitigating losses tempering gains. I am giving in, my self esteem proving much harder to love and set free.
I’m trying to make peace my lover. Finding my path with you is unconventional at best excruciating at worst, leaving behind socially acceptable hopes & dreams settling in to formalities — contracts designed to pave the way; a gold lining to my pewter paradise on that long road to happiness. I stare into Aphrodite through my looking glass & blow her a kiss goodbye.
Skeleton’s eventually decay but demons still want to purge pain, set me up to fail tempt Narcissus to stray, to step away from his reflection & risk a coward’s death. I ask the Goddess for forgiveness trust my fate & fury & instinct to guide me. Psyche would lead me astray to plummet over the edge of reason — but Aphrodite will broker a deal.
Start over. My fossil fuelled forge will always find a way forward, transform blue light beams into fire, illuminate those pitchforks & burning crosses hiding in my ether; shadows that threaten to cast spells & incinerate whole galaxies, merely pseudo reflections of my reality. I choose you & take no prisoners at the same time, for I choose wisely.
There is no burden I cannot bear when it comes to you, how you see yourself is a reflection. We hold our head & hearts in their hands; their hands create a destiny for us both. We are intertwined & enlightened — a gift from God. Our souls recognise, accept & understand there is only now, the past is gone. The future is whatever we divine.
Killing me softly like that song, trying not to harm me, trying not to lie — letting me fall to see if I come back stronger. I know what you’re doing; giving me facts to face my fears so you don’t have to wear a mask.
Sinking me down further, bit by bite.
You watch me wrestle with Psyche, see the squalls before they arrive, the rogue waves looming on the horizon and try to navigate the shit storm that is my life or so I imagine her lot,
Sometimes.
Forecast’s based upon trust, an old school remedy tried and tested over centuries of trial and error, almost on the doorstep of my abandonment. I have to want to choose my life over my life, play with fire or die in vain — seek some sort of comfort hold that pulls me close (safe), that doesn’t strangle me in my sleep.
Demeters demise.
Comes as no surprise then. Her return from the underworld fraught with danger, shed the All, her only hope of salvation and ascension coming to light; Zeus rumbling his desires expects nothing less than a fathers love in return.
I think I am forsaken.
You think I am like Poppy, offer me a chance to be apart of a real family, show me another way to heal, to find warmth and trust that I am genuinely loved where I can thrive, in time. Something I have too much of and not enough to squander.
I want to give it all away.
My job, my friend, my life in exchange for something worth fighting for, yet I am bereft, devoid and damaged beyond repair and you cannot reach me. I need more time to get over you.
Another, will begin another end
to wear me down to char. Somehow my destiny taunts me, forces me to watch and become nothing but a burdon I still have to carry when I can no longer fight and I don’t have what it takes to push through, for you.
Trust no one.
Bravery has always been a strong fulcrum point, an internal compass that leaps toward faith, a little too close for comfort in the end. My judgement will come as swiftly as Hera came forward to claim what was rightfully hers, tearing out her own heart for the sake of her enemies!
You don’t want me.
My demons are telling me I have to die a bit more in order to live but it still hurts to say goodbye. Either way, I am lost right now and there’s nothing anyone can do. You’re all in for a hell ride while I deconstruct and I make no guarantees that I will survive intact this time.
Evolution.
My head is trying to cling to straws while my heart is breaking and I have no where left to go, except home. The secret to survival is balancing hope and despair. I am doing my best and I am so tired.
Guflydktskyl vg j jkhlhc. Khhc khckhc. Uclhfflh. Yxjrekh. Kyeekgxkyggl. It all makes no sense to me. Just empty words in hollow spaces
Poetry Out West 