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.
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.
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
A heart-throbbing beat to a rhythm only Demeter knows, her secrets etched into her bones. Intricate carvings honed into marrow, and stem cells multiply like a plague of disgruntled wasps.
Anger.
That sudden rush of indignation, followed by a concoction of vengeance and vindication – abdication and a refusal to surrender. Hades infiltrates Persephone, her abduction an embodiment of everything war, consumed in his indifference.
People.
All that is love and all that is hate, two halves of the same coin and no one escapes joy, ecstasy, grief and pain. You can run but you can’t hide – everyone has to pay Charon to get into the after life.
Temperance.
Biting tongues, letting go, being the better person, swallowing those hard lumps and walking away relatively unscathed by comparison. There will always be someone who offends and someone who is offended. Which came first?
Balance.
Good and bad, black and white, up and down, left or right. Choices and free will all come at a cost. Pros and cons, rights and wrongs; there is only compromise, but that middle ground remains as grey as the ghost it inhabits. A visceral, haunting entity.
Atonement.
As elusive as the Holy Grail, hidden inside Pandoras Box in a chapel somewhere in Africa. Peace is not what Hades is about, his warmongering lust for grandiose self-entitlement takes no prisoners. Still, Zeus brokered a deal for his part in Demeters wrath and Persephones demise.
Death
and rebirth – the Fates will have their way and so the cycle continues.
The three Fates furiously pull Demeters hair / dragging resistance, weaving fistfuls of slate grey strands into knots through gnarled fingers. She struggles to break free.
Their mummers puppet, refusing to stay a decision, deciding that nothing can be done that hasn’t been done before.
Demeter in her craven mind, reluctantly resigns & begins her inevitable descent into death / succubus airs sliding down around those slippery steps like a mortal wound.
What terrible unknown awaits?
Letting go, becoming a ghoulish nightmare / a back-lashing monologue of regret that terrifies her waking hours leaving nothing else to be desired.
Oh the fury!
How ill-equipped her gaze, stripped bare of stippled ends & brushed strokes / all hope is lost, perished in the long-black-abyss of eternal sleep.
She remembers Persephone, in her full bodied beauty & wails at the indignity of brittle bones & a peeling river of flesh falling from her ancient body, with every maudlin step.
Demeter stumbles. Trips. Her fall from grace crash landing at her own feet / anything is better than another mask, in the pantomime of lifes abomination.
She finally meets Persephones gaze / a ravaged maniacal stare, steady amongst the carnage of after-birth strewn all about her.
There is no escape.
It’s here her malicious appendages thrash / manipulating moans & pathetic misery, chaos finally falling on deaf ears.
If the end must come, make it swift!
/
A hard, fast jolt into the after-life, where the ambrosia of a ravaged soul is drained from existence / that rancid elixir of a life less loved, can finally be laid to rest
It was the venom that slowly ravaged her tiny frame. I nursed her. Four days of hugs, crooning she’s beautiful, so beautiful & that I love her; the emancipation of denial.
She never left my side, until the day she faded away, her expectant brown eyes slowly glazed over an opaque skin & it sunk in.
I dripped drops, to keep them moist – mine overflowing a continuous silent stream.
I held her floppy skin & bones close, before wrapping her in a purple Silk Air blanket, tucking her in for the last time.
I buried her in the morning sun, her favourite place to wake up, bask & warm.
Her memory lingering longer in my heart, her quirky quirks igniting my giggles – multiple kisses on her petite deer face, carrying her bundle under my arm to our next time & place.
In the event of an imminent thermonuclear war, all we can do is watch,
& wait.
We wait for the sun to rise in the East – Putin, putting on the ritz, while the West opens their vintage wardrobe & rummages through threadbare tassles, choking on clouds of faux fur.
We, watch & wait
witnessing White Helmets filming fake news, staging fake attacks, doing God’s dirty work not dissimilar to Custer’s last stand.
Still, we watch
& wait,
while royalty fight over the spoils; children picking bones apart, the rise of Zion (Judas) & the damnation of Mother Mary
respectfully, although they both feed off one another like zombies in a blood bath.
Watching & waiting,
for the irony of it all to become clear. The penultimate finale – being surrounded by the proverbial white light.
Fucking bastards!
The last sun ever to set in the West, leaving everything we knew behind.
A spectacular sunset, followed closely by a long, dark, cold, post apocalyptic nightmare.
“Brown nosing is considered commentary, while deceit still lingers in gaslit ovens” JD Butler
People could learn to say what they mean, & mean what they say but
brown nosing is considered commentary, while deceit still lingers in gaslit ovens; no professionalism, integrity or due process.
Fraudulent essentially – powerful people full of egotistical self righteous bigotry, who really don’t give a fuck! Zealots who would suck off anything & lick the rim, just to play the press.
I’ve retired, & that doesnt give anyone the license to try to get their end away by throwing a ‘seemingly solid’ literary curve ball at me, that’s totally full of shit!
Honesty died with Bukowski & I wish I lived in America, because I know exactly where to buy a cheap gun
“Who gives a fuck anyway? This makes no sense at all to anyone with amnesia” JD Butler
Give me a .50 calibre assault weapon & I’ll show you how it’s done properly!
*
I’m from New Zealand & I can still marvel at the Milky Way, navigate my eyes toward the Southern Cross & find South in a flash.
Orion has a huge belt and scabbard & it still makes no sense; forbidden clichès sneaking up like a sniper in a sonnet.
What matters, is that poetry is devoid of faux pars & bright stars or anything obviously too subliminal for the masses that may require a deeper space continuum to ponder, an intellect that uses advanced thought to communicate,
falling on deaf & dying stereocilia hairs. Ears, to those who need further clarification, while my advanced alien brain sits within a universe only the top 2% of the world’s population can grasp.
The bourgeoisie cream themselves over it, while they play with their pencil & sharpener.
/
Poetry is only for those with a university education – an English degree, followed by a Diploma in Counselling & a Master of Creative Writing (an advanced degree with Honours). A PhD means power has been attained & is now ready to weild.
We, are merely stepping stones to someone else’s grandiose glory. Poverty & distress are relegated to the past, hidden in a black hole; inertia becoming the internalised abuser. Orion was once the great cosmic overlord,
looking down his nose.
/
Better not piss off the editor either, she’s next in line followed closely by someone we all know & love with his proverbial nose shoved up both of their arses.
Who gives a fuck anyway? This makes no sense at all to anyone with amnesia, but it is my way of creatively dying; poetic suicidal justice, is in a league all of it’s own.
*
Now, you’ll all have fodder for your next project fail & that makes me
“If I had the grace to fall apart respectfully, there would be no need for enlightenment”. JD Butler
He’s using me, I’m using him – both of us working on a palatable means to several ends & everyone’s happy on the dance floor, except me / Lady Lazarus, fully loaded
machinations mimicking my madness & everything I have survived is temporarily erased from my memory / the neglect, the rapes, the con artists & the turning of blind eyes. The violence
of insanity, cleansing the last of my contemptible dirty pieces. A ruse in the end, designed to ratify my plea bargain, still set to drown in a sea of toxic shame, churning
out green bile – something the dogs love to salivate over.
/
It all sounds so depressing, except for the sun that continues to rise; refracted light beams infiltrating my cracks,
forcefully illuminating all remaining fragments of hope that haven’t yet marvelled at a setting sun. I am thankful.
If I had the grace to fall apart respectfully, there would be no need for enlightenment, you would all marvel at my unadulterated halo & drop to your knees, prostrate
but I am a mere mortal woman. No God could ever carry me across the sand or walk on water or set me down on the island of my choice,
without some sort of comeuppance; paying the ferryman requires nerves of steel / I lack the will to either live or die,
Poetry Out West 