The Great Lost

The Fool

Nihilism gnaws at Persephone as she surrenders the last of her love to the darkness. She knows Hades will welcome her there; place a crown upon her enlightenment.

She wrestles with catastrophe.

Despair, wraps her arms around her and comfort finds a home in the familial wasteland of the Great Lost. Confusion offering up the last dying shards of illumination into the nothing.

She sinks to an all-time low.

She is broken beyond words, an unimaginable state of being, untenable suffering refusing to let go rendering her moot.

She trusts in the All of everything.

Right time, right place airs grace her presence and she is alone once again. This is her destiny? If only she could be happy here.

As above, so below.

Psyche is not stupid, knowing she must fall in order to rise, she feels compelled to find Persephone dwelling in the dark and look to the beauty hidden there; her ability to love dependant.

‘Fuck me!’ she yells.

They say no pain, no gain; no light without dark but the world burns while she waits for it all to end and it can’t come fast enough! Persephone can’t believe she signed up for this hell hole.

‘You can all suck my phantom dick!’

In the meantime, soul searching becomes a crash course on survival for her demise. She wishes — magical thoughts skip the tutorial and head straight back home where Demeter pours her a cup of sweet leaf tea.

This too shall pass.

The aftermath will give her a reprieve, a reason to put one foot in front of the other and leave those betrayers behind. Solitude giving her security in the end. A simple life if she can find a way to live.

Give thanks and gratitude.

But what about anger? Persephone wants to continue to die on her own terms admitting defeat. Psyche’s heart beat only for Cupid and yet she is not worthy of love. Everything is an illusion, a false construct by design.

It is only through death we find life.

The only life Persephone wants, is with Hades — conditional love built upon mistrust and betrayal. What hope is left when that’s all there is on offer?

© Copyright 2023, Jodine Derena Butler. ‘Poetry Out West’, All Rights Reserved

Acceptance

Let it Rain

She sat looking out, watching the wind berate the trees, watching the stretched leaves wrestle; it looked a lot like holding on for dear life, before the next calm came, if it came.

She allowed her mind to wander, to question, likening it to the meaning of life, and death, savouring the Earth’s language as if it was her last breath and it would eventually be.

Perhaps then she would come to understand her place in the world, come to an understanding a little too late, that she had actually belonged here all along — but she doubted it. Her life was as fragile as those leaves.

For her, she found only small relief in the concept of belonging to something bigger than her self. Her existential crisis was more like a distraction and the more she questioned her existence, the more she felt separate from it.

She reduced herself to a single leaf, flapping uncontrollably in the wind before it finally detached, or was it ripped away? Either way, she was lost.

A spot of blight upon the earth, that’s all it was, a contagion that needed to be isolated. Nothing clung to her, in her minds eye, or was it that she didn’t cling to it? Whatever it may be. A mere leaf, or speck in the grand scheme of things unbeknownst to her.

No matter how hard she tried to feel at home, here, looking out into the magnitude of life in her own backyard, she could feel herself dying by the minute. She wanted it all to end.

It was a desolate time.

There were so many other thoughts she could have, but like the wind and the autumn leaves, they were at the mercy of that something bigger, that threatened to tear her apart. Hope for a life worth living, felt moot.

She sat looking out — and finally it started to rain.

© Copyright 2022, 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 Jekyll 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

Malady Peg

Artist: Unknown

You build a picture of me
outside the elongated square
peg shaped box
I find myself circling.

Each single step
widens following
two side steps lengthening
nearly five decades deep —

before I’m back in the shit
standing in front of the same scale
stained window or solid oak door
or Samsung S4.

My self imposed barricade
chain and key close
to my heart keep-safe
trusting no one

except a chain gang
of miscreants and misfits
mulling over life, just right.
Subliminal messages

only those in the know can
decipher; wisdom in code, words
biting off more than we can chew
at times, like these.

You help build a picture of me
outside the elongated square
peg shaped box
I find myself picking apart

with my fingernails, prying
into cracks like an
unsuspecting little upstart
who has everything and nothing.

We are social creatures
by nature, nurture featuring ways
to stray outside our four walls
where I space out

dependent distance, my avoidance
keeps my heart still beating.
Any attempt to heal is an affront
my demons wreck havoc,

threaten to cut me off at the knee’s
if I don’t conform or dance
to the pipers tune. My malady
freaks the hell out of everyone.

Torture held captive.

You are a picture of my self
outside my elongated square
peg shape box, my reason
to die respectfully

circumnavigating
ways through and around,
bashing my head up
against invisible walls

that thwart my existence
here, questions unanswered
philosophical paradoxical paradigm s;
the meaning of life and death.

I want to go home,
listen to the ebb and flow
of waves, seagulls and the sound
of sand crunching between my toes

and decide to live.

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

Farce

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,
unlike 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. 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
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

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

Interstellar Medium

1.

Orion takes my breath away!

His belt & scabbard first
then shoulders
& I wrap myself around himI am at peace
looking out over the ocean
& a sky full of stars

You are not unlike Orion
guiding distant ships on the horizon
I am like Klingon
(Klingon usually mate for life)

but not this tide
we are an interstellar medium:
the space between
Euryale & Poseidon

2.

We are of the Sea

reef, rocks & shoals
perilous waters
where foghorns & Siren songs sound familiar
where fishy tales flush pink
& my Veuve overflows

It doesn’t take me long to remember
expectation is one, two, threefold
we navigate in the dark sometimes
moonlit mirrors reflect only one part of the whole
our universe is bigger than most.

3.

I draw a line in the sand

for both our sakes
there can be only one
I feel the waves crash on the shore
we are all arms & legs
slipping & sliding

in & out of the water.
I look to the stars & my faith
for one brief moment there is no existential crisis
Orion’s heavy breathing & sigh of relief

bring us both back to reality
under the surface
Death is not an unknown entity:
one last roll of the die
& our fate could be sealed.

4.

Thank you

Orion will always be near
Jupiter will always be the biggest planet
the full moon will always shine on me.

I could never go past King Island
without thinking of you
candlelight, frogs & our best mate
Captain’s call still falling on deaf ears

but nevermind
I’m still as blind as a bat
& you’re as old as the hills.

© Copyright 2015, Jodine Derena Butler. All Rights Reserved

REBLOGGED on Ink & Quill

Demeter & Persephone

Demeter’s world is falling apart
she enters the tomb
leaving behind every last bit
of skin and bone

her heart in jagged little pieces
tears condensed salted earth,
her spirit as dark as Hades, ashen
her womb, a barren undergrowth of loss, her voice, a howling banshee
sevenfold

Persephone revisited in dreams
her escape futile, Hades whispers
she runs, never holding on nor looking back

dismembered dissociation awaits
those who fail
while cadaverous limbs are discarded
fertile appendages flail
her pieces crumble to dust

Demeter withdraws her love
only to find a serpent tongue
suckling at her breast

Demeter descends, Persephone awaits
her chamber the great unclean
unashamedly devouring our lost souls

Demeter falls to her knees in despair
death is just a figment and life
here is just a memory

she breathes in the rancid air,
the smell of a distant pyre
she kisses the hand that feeds her

there are only fools here in paradise.

Copyright © 2009 Jodine Derena Butler. All Rights Reserved

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 and I’ll show you how it’s done properly!

*

I’m from New Zealand and 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 and it still makes no sense; forbidden cliché sneaks up like a sniper in a sonnet.

What matters, is that poetry is devoid of faux pars and 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 and dying stereocilia hairs. Ears, to those who need further clarification, while my advanced alien brain sits within a universe only 2% of the world’s population can grasp.

The bourgeoisie cream themselves over it, while they play with their pencil and sharpener.

/

Poetry is only for those with a university education – an English degree, followed by a Diploma in Counselling and a Master of Creative Writing (an advanced degree with Honours). A PhD means power has been attained and is now ready to wield.

We, are merely stepping stones to someone else’s grandiose glory. Poverty and 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 and love with his proverbial nose shoved up both of their arse’s.

Who gives a fuck anyway? This makes no sense to anyone at all 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 and that makes me an evil genius.

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

Conversant

The Slow Toll Bell

Illaru at Night

I am dying.

My bones leach, ache

In my catatonic state and my mind

Drifts skew-whiff, a vagabond pilgrimage

Across the Never Never astral plain.

Final destination riding slipstreams and moon beams

To infinity beyond nightmares

Passing through spectre

Through astro fields

(wrought iron cages)

Through Aeon.

I am bed bound, Catholicism eyeing my orphan crib

Lined with soggy biscuits and cheap red wine

Remnants of a past life

Neglect, emaciated limbs distended malnutrition

Wormholes in my solar plexus

Infiltrating dessert.

I can see small babies kick—

Dung beetle’s all legs, flat on their back’s

Only half way there.

The slow toll bell calls my body, anchor

Illaru strained against the silver tide

Subsidence destined to reside

In Long Beach under night sky,

Piece meal.

Condor tempt me to stray

Death wish incubus prey,

I pray to an unknown Goddess in my final hour

She comes like Madonna,

Mary Magdalene leven Ishtar

And all I can do is wait

To be held in her warm arms.

I am dying.

My bones leach, ache

In my catatonic state

In my mind’s eternal damnation.

Eternal Damnation

© Copyright 2022, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved

Holy Pizza

Judas tosses my skin dough

kneading

Spread too thin

Wood fire burnt, ends

Encrusted mounds & blisters

Slough

fall

Tears another hole &

I become a meal;

A tv dinner deal.

At the last supper, Mary

Sings a hymn &

All the Angel’s

rejoice!

My veil lifted drifts

Chewed fingertips boxed in

Swallowed whole, followed by

An after-dinner mint & toothpick.

But what I really need is a good

stretch.

© Copyright 2022, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved

The Ungrateful Bitch

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.

© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved

My Delirium

My Delirium

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.

All I feel now is grief.

© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved

Demeters Descent

Demeter Descending

You’ve been breaking me.

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

All This & Heaven Too – Florence and the Machine

© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved

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

Did Heidi know how much it hurt?
© 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

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