Sinking In

Let the water take us down

Sinking in

Under your skin

Amongst the blood & bone

Psyche,

Cocooned in the marrow & stem

Cells honeycomb;

A brittle, fragile hokey-pokey helix

Bittersweet & delicious.

To where the river runs red

Hades, scries a foothold & clings

To the matrices of you & I

Of our past lives & love.

Psyche, licking her lips

Offers herself to him

Desire sinks her teeth in

Biting off more than she can chew

& feeds on the canker & stench

Of death.

Let the water take us down

Hades, warming Psyche to ember

Psyche, tempering Hades to surrender

& all the essence of my being

Is holding space for you.

To wash us both clean

What the Water Gave Us

© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved

Killing Heidi

Last night was a true clusterfuck.

This morning, she’s thinking about taking a class

Act.

Flashbacks of a child making desperate promises she can’t keep

Pray.

She learned there was no one who really cared

Naked.

A victim of conditioned responses or lack thereof killing Heidi off

Halo.

Inextricably separate, forever grieving the loss of her

Forgiveness.

When all it takes is to swallow it down whole and roll

Die.

Does she know how much it hurts?

© Copyright 2019, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Heidi

Insurgents & Demons

If it weren’t for you

O-Great-Poetic-One,

I’d be dead.

Dead!

Instead,

I brutally murder

my self in thoughts

several times a day,

churning over the past,

the future & my

flawed imperfections.

I pander to worms &

the soup of blood

& bone,

till I can’t stand

it any more

&/or they take me

away.

Torture temporarily appeasing

the masochistic God

who takes down

mental notes

& I transform parables

into atheism,

in order to re-line

my keloid brain.

She is brazen.

My alter-ego

tempts me to desire

a public beheading /

a martyr’s death

by diatribe & by

my inner monologue.

What poppycock!

Disbelief betrays

her ever-widening circle of friends,

bringing her closer

to the edge, where that fabled Fool

steps out into no-man’s land,

off that ledge of no return.

However,

I choose to die

in stanza’s, paraphrasing

my life into mythical metaphor’s

that transform those insurgents &

demons into words,

trying to leave behind

another seedless watermelon

Neruda would be proud!

*

The truth is,

I want someone

to love me

but Mr Young said it better,

‘it doesn’t mean that much to me, to mean that much to you’.

Is it any wonder

to want to die?

Is it any wonder

I’m still alive?

© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Indigo Girl

Left alone, thoughts ring and bells toll,

Clanging inside my brain; memories running down

Corridors, splitting off at the junction. Persephone – dead,

That wilted little wretch with amazing airs and graces,

Grating on the pickle of pain. Demeter with her blind eye,

Hades and his jeckyll juice Pomegranate wine

Infiltrating an indigo child holding her breath.

Mauve dug in, embedding her chariot rose

Heart to a stranger. Charon, larger than life

Roaming the dark halls, death casting shadows

Wherever he went. Survival weaving invisible

Threads; a silver road to nowhere, her woven makeshift

Sanctuary cocoon. It was Persephone. Alone in the darkness,

Warm amongst catacombs and the river Styx.

Charons lantern waving in the distance

Side to side, taking an age to dawn.

Here in the crawlspace of time, refuge

Settled in like mothballs and cobwebs

Swung between the skull and crossbones; A subterranean

Mosaic of Dante’s Inferno where prayer echoed off the walls

Falling, on deaf ears and forgiveness became a hopeless

Lost cause.
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

11 Typical Unintentional Behaviors of Emotionally Hurt People

Remembrance

They were so young and

no one really knew them

before they

fell.

Every now and again

bones of remains

find their way to the surface

in some raggedy

field in France

or Turkey.

They DNA test,

pick through leftovers

hiding in a ribcage –

dog tags

and old photographs,

still found in remarkable

condition.

They contact any last

known relatives,

mark a grave and

plant flowers to

remember a time that

refuses to

die.

*

It was all just government

sanctioned genocide,

on both sides.

Lest We Forget.

© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Soul Searching

Desire.

Manifest in music, love, people and places.

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.

Torture

© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

A Mummers Dance: Demeters Descent into Hades

What will become of her?

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

& lost for all eternity.
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Hard-wired

It’s a hard-wired

ephemeral life

I lead.

Half of me yearning.

Half of me mourning.

Desire

for a quick death,

overcome by the

monotonous grind;

clandestine,

dragging

it’s heels inching

forever forward

toward an unremarkable

destination.

Except for

that constant ache.

A low throb

moan between my

legs,

rising up & into

my belly, disturbing

the dying butterflies

there.

Oh to be blindfolded!

Black out spread eagled,

all solidified reminders

teased to know pleasure

for pleasures sake.

Played

like an object

of your imagination

& devoured

like a ripe peach.

I’m too old

for this shit!

Wanting

to just be loved.

No out-back

salt lakes to be found.

Slip streams

giving way

to an avalanche

in a classical black

& white silent movie.

It’s all too much

to take in,

the depravity

of age & of consent.

Too young, yet

too old to let

things slide.

Still, the tears come,

let loose

to chide & deride

my feminine critique;

that contemptible self

loathing that likes

to sink her

teeth in.

Heart

broken,

wanting for nothing

but life’s

simple pleasures

to sweep her

off her feet —

lead her into

an ecstasy of wanton

abandonment

for just one moment,

to still the voices

& discard reality.
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Nude

Mourning Molly

My Molly died today.

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.

Mourning my Molly in the lonely spaces in between.
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Famous Last Words

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.

*

I for one, watch

scanning the horizon willing it to rain,

waiting

for a new dawn.
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Power

Disrupt

Maximòn

Photographer: Scott Wilcox, Fuzion Photography, 2017

“…fine tuning the in-between of harmony; hearts, earth & sky” JD Butler

Maximòn,

the epitome of balance:

patience & frustration,

softly spoken & vehement.

Ritual billowing, vaping

new life

into old lungs,

filtering

pure tobacco into undulating balls of steam.

His stage is an altar.

We dance, cleansing much more than our spirit,

fine tuning

the in-between

of harmony; hearts,

earth & sky.

Our effigy, enlightening the soul & keeping her secrets,

venerable in his wisdom.

Our Columbian overlord garnishes

the Mayan temple our grandfather’s bestowed.

Protective.

Upcycling shadows, illuminating the light –

breathing new life.

He is the embodiment of patronage & the people,

regenerating

health, crops, marriage, business, revenge & death.

Holding

our community together.

© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Maximòn

Glimmer

Sylvia Prefers Madness over Insanity

It’s going to hurt digging in, under my skin.

\

Trust. Pain.

Death before dishonour – the Cold War sits in Sylvia’s parlour,

pretending patience is a virtue. We all watch,

a slow burn, already warming the tips

of her lasciviously long

fingers,

licking at her lips.

/

She would rather shake you all off, than let loose another tirade,

another stone, another reason to beg

forgiveness.

Sabotage sinking to a new low.

\

Silvia’s far too unreasonable, although

she prefers irrational; madness defining her in the end. Hands

& feet securely strapped,

her mouth,

stuffed shut with gauze & gaffer tape.

No sign of life – metal bars

& padded cells

resembling reason.

/

Floral oriental lilies.

\

Shes always known how to let go.

© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Honesty Died with Bukowski

“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

without any background checks.

© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Dim

Astral Dissociation & the Unattainable Cryogenic Pathway to the Stars

“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

an evil genius.
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Conversant

Lady Lazarus & the Voice of Ratified Reason

“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,

in peace.
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Imagination

Copper Carries a Gun

He wants to be a copper, so he can carry a gun

In public where everyone can see, the man

He wants to be a copper, so he can shoot people

Pass the buck onto a badge

He wants to join the boys club, on the right side of the fence

He wants to be a copper, so he can bludgeon you all to death

/

With a smile on his face, masking his distaste 

Joking in the watchhouse, hiding his disgrace

© Copyright 2017, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Gold Coast Whistleblower

Police Body Cameras Rarely Used

Rogue Cops

Dormant

Oh Amsterdam!

Anne Frank was here living in squalid conditions, only to be ratted out by patriots in 1944, Gestapo herding her and hers out like cattle transported far, far away from this place.

Just like the world today, history repeating in Chechnya where gays are sent into concentrated camps, denying their existence as the world watches with a limp dick or wet fish and everyone has an arsehole about Syria.

Patriots still hide behind fascism, racism, Islamo-xenophobic’s beating their sunken chests to within an inch of their white male privileged lives – nothing more than vitriol!

Passive narratives join in the furore, patting collective backs up against invisible walls dividing more than the usual apartheid regimes of monopoly – needing a change? Freedom comes in sanctioned collateral damage, onlookers merely pawns in the battle for world domination and white suited supremacy, lead by Uncle Sam of course!

My world is tainted, leftist humanity tipping the balance in favour of compassion and tolerance, set to split my heart in two where atrocities are rendered into political manipulations; illuminated lies and propaganda.

Religion sets the scene by revisiting inquisitions and crusaders choose selection over perception again, and again failing to unlearn the inevitable apathy and indignation that comes from slavery.

Amsterdam was once a safe haven till in her final hour she succumbed to insanity, and I remember Anne resisting adolescent outbursts in her diary – not unlike our Facebook counterparts where truth is confused with censorship and fake news by design.

I am here in Amsterdam with the weight of the world at war against my back, looking for salvation in the past, lessons to consolidate so that I can pilfer some sort of peace of mind from the rabble.

Mushroom soup set to lift the lid off my self imposed restraint. If only I could find a way forward that doesn’t leave me looking over my shoulder, and cannabis prohibition just makes no sense at all!

Longing for that balance to tip where I am appreciated for my self while belonging to no one, safe in my tulip tea party knowing I have a place to call home to go back to, is no consolation for rejected refugees.

My heart has an ancestry here in England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain and France with an Australian convict deportment threatening the sin of a potato famine, back to New Zealand where it all began.

If I’m not careful, I will be made to do penance against my Will and I don’t believe in god! No gods ever made sense to my rationale or their behaviour, and those postulating as priests are nothing but wolves!

Religion is best served cold, where it belongs tossed into a neocon salad with all the trimmings of Kali on the side just to rub it in to both christian and muslim radicals.

I prefer to chow down with the artists and define my existance as heresy and colour my world with its shadows and stalwart resistance, always resisting and history will be on my side eventually, when the smoke clears and everyone is looking for a scapegoat.

Amsterdam is set to blow!

https://go.allout.org/en/a/equalitychampion/

Putin Backs Inquiry

Fake News Purveyors Busted

White Innocence Denial

Gay Concentration Camp
© Copyright 2017, Jodine Derena Butler & ‘Poetry Out West’, All Rights Reserved

Detonate

Yellow

Photographer Renk Renk Resimler

Yellow; traditionally the colour of death

Yellow roses in particular

Yellow, reminds me of my step-daughter

Yellow is also the colour of grief

the colour of cowardice and cowboy’s

jaundice and Nicorette

Lemons leave a bad taste in my mouth

Yellow. Not one of my favourite colours

Yellow

First published on Far North Fiction

© Copyright 2017, Jodine Derena Butler. ‘Poetry Out West’, All Rights Reserved

Salt

Grief is pouring out of me
unexpectedly violent, suddenly indecent

assault tempts me to die, stealing whatever else you left behind

my soul, violated

shredded skin, giving away my heart for safety

killing her off slowly

and I can’t bear it any longer – this pain

consumes me, squeezing every last breath I take

to want nondescript now; everything I had left with you

totally and utterly forlorn, I am bereft of any life, when you said
you loved me – that was an evil lie

there is no faith left in my world when I think of you

I am foetal, cradled in my own embryonic arms

closing bloodshot eyes

for darkness to caress my fetid skin, sinking in

lost; longing for you in vain, my grief is pouring out of me

and it won’t stop – I can’t make you stop

broken, and excrutiating to remember

you abandoned me, destroying everything I thought I meant to you

and the salt, knowing you’re laughing – telling how you want torture

before dismembering my body for a barrel

some days the grief is so bad I want to die, check

my self in to the nearest vein before I slice my way in – till I can’t feel you anymore

and watch my self disappear.

© Copyright 2016, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Imaginary

Set Fire

I’ve been living in a war zone

so it seems, three and a half years
of Hell with nothing left
to show for it,
except heartache
and pain
watching love leach
from my soul; phosphorescent,

sparks like spheres

float up, up and away
to fizzle out in to nothingness

Since when did I become
the enemy?

clumped into the annuls of misogyny
tarred / scarred
for being a woman empowered
because I threaten the old ways
where women were barefoot
and pregnant,
swathed in floral aprons
with floured hands kneading
wholesome Madonna complexes
designed to subdue

I love

depth and passion
moving my heart to where I am
mesmerized in awe; my fragile smile
let loose like an arrow
straight and true into you
and I, jubilant
where I am left wondering
where you have been
all my life – that I would do anything
for you

I love my self more

and I am not broken completely.
I can take those looks of contempt
along with those cutting words
and stand my ground against interrogation/subjugation
I lead myself in cycles, navigating
my way out of ear shot for a while
till I can stand it no more,
when I hide away inside
and stuff my fingers

All is not lost

despite my sense of guilt at not being
strong enough in your eyes,
un-like grandma whom you adored,
admiring resilience
I am merely a shade by comparison
if I subscribed to your anger and hurt
if I took her on and became
a better person, wife, mother for you
if only I chose to keep my mouth shut
like she learned in the war

I don’t believe

staying silent will keep us alive these days
my life requires I fight
for truth, freedom, rights and for love
so you may find your self, lifted from those ashes – Dachau,
and understand that women need
tenderness, a kindness that takes away
the hurt of injustices, finding safety
your arms filling me with hope
that I am not alone

It is with great sadness

that I must choose love
letting go the innocence of youth
and embrace my own mortality
if I am to be a survivor
I cannot condone atrocities
of any kind and turn a blind eye
without losing that part of myself
that wanted to die, finding respect
in being true to myself
Lest We Forget

I am mourning

a life of trials and tribulations
that had me in tears for the most part
my heart is broken, I no longer believe
in you, us – I am setting fire to the 3rd mar
closing my eyelids on my dreams
facing those feelings that I have been too afraid to feel
reaching in to pull them out
into the open and lay myself bare
so I can finally heal

goodbye my love

we will all be OK.

Puncture

Snow Patrol

© Copyright 2016, Jodine Derena Butler. ‘Poetry Out West’, All Rights Reserved