I am
The High Priestess
Lifting the Second Veil
I am grieving
That I am
Invisible
That I am
Denied
Used & abused
Wounded
That I am
Powerful
That I am
Spiritual
Magnetic
Eternal
That I am
Goddess
That I am
The Medicine Woman
The Artisan &
The Determinatress
I am healing
My Akashic DNA
I Am
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
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
She longs to be held,
my Mary Magdalene, in a lovers embrace.
Spooned & cocooned
Jesus, giving his life
for her.
His arms, extend
holding on giving in
sinking further; a fusion
of flesh & bone,
a comfort hold & home.
I know he too saw
the black curtain fall
& from that moment
they were lost. Lost
& found.
Karma settles scores
resets the All, divine demands
an eternal sacrifice
& Mary yearns for desire
to make it all worthwhile.
A light.
Recognition, foretells
omens coming in three’s,
a wiccan rede; magic, morality
& the afterlife,
a promise from Eden.
She wails. Mary
kisses the soul of destiny,
trusting something bigger
than her parts & let’s go
giving in to fates fury.
A slow grind
losing lust’s sake
to find love & the third eye
delves to depths of compassion
just to be touched.
I long to find her
bring her back whole
to let you in & feel
time expand & contract
as-if we were one.
Despair leaves her wanting.
Holy moments
of magic come & go
Mary holds on, buries herself
in Jesus’ warm arms & hides.
Two lovers lament
looking for something
& leave with nothing; numbness
held in a vice-like grip.
Begone!
Time, will ignite
the cosmic fire
that drew them together. Love,
is bigger than what they once
knew of love.
If I surrender, we can
let go — trust
universal intelligence &
rebuild the architecture of life
in our own image.
Mother Mary is finding her way
& it is already written in the stars.
Jesus IS the way, the truth
& the light.
Ours is creation.
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
Demeter feels deep shame.
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.
No Light, No Light by Florence and the Machine
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
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
My heart aches.
I feel your absence &
withdrawal; a choke hold on my creative impulses.
Punishment for some unforgivable crime?
Another cycle of illusion.
Another full moon delusion.
I wait.
Patience, Aphrodite’s one remaining virtue
bites her tongue.
Still, her voice will not be silent.
Another cycle of illusion.
Another full moon delusion.
She holds you even now
but where are you taking her?
I hang by a silver thread, a hangman’s noose
on a whim & a prayer.
Another cycle of illusion.
Another full moon delusion.
Aphrodite is on her knees!
Still, I remain invisible.
All the excuses in the world are unworthy
of the Emperess’ devotion.
Another cycle of illusion.
Another full moon delusion.
They all remain at arms length.
Close enough to touch
yet too far away to miss; a bouquet of wildflower’s &
the greener grass of home.
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
It’s taking a while to penetrate.
Belief,
depth
conviction
lived realities
a survivor’s strength and courage,
in the face of adversity, love and loss.
The dedication
commitment,
the hard work you put in for others,
from your self
for love.
All those beautiful, wonderful, loving words you woo
of depth and beauty,
a kind heart,
care and thought,
steadfastness and
bravery
grinding.
It’s taking a while to penetrate
into your world of darkness
into your world of light
to see if truth comes anywhere close
to what we need or desire.
Most days, delays are lost
important little things
two minutes too late.
We are filled with flaws – holes.
Belief waxes and wanes,
cycles of movement entice
Psyche and the Emperess to dance;
the jurisprudence of my mind
staying grounded.
Eros and Midas hone their power
and fortitude swings the pendulum,
slows down time —
creates a rhthym
from which you will rise.
It’s taking a while to penetrate
thick skin membraned
dura mater cores; my heart,
lining a sweaty forehead
forced to furrow,
contemplating
Life.
Living in moments
loving every minute,
letting you in
under my skin — layers,
melting my ice.
Chronos knows what the past leaves behind; betrayal,
the dying dreams of
Aeon’s infinite chaos.
Is it worth the gamble?
It’s taking a while to penetrate
the concept of love,
but witnessing miracles
every single day since
you graced my presence.
From that very first night,
I knew there was something
omnipresent between us
and I’m learning to trust.
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
His aura hell bent; Phoenix halo,
sparks, fire
& inertia creep.
Cool swagger sways a third eye,
the back of his head
scans in infared.
The Rainmaker’s blood
red right hand fisted to brawl,
gets it done.
Dirty deeds wipe the slate
clean — a power vacuum sealed.
Still waters run deep.
%
Hozier moves the tempest
to where the heart meets
the sun & the moon.
Atlas, holding up
the weight of the world,
brings him back down to Earth.
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
The best thing
since sliced bread
this partnership / relationship.
Two whole slabs of
canna-buttered magic,
set the scene for
an esoteric mind fuck that
wrecks our bed,
churns what the water gave us
into fountains of esctasy.
You’ve ruined me.
Turned my counterparts
into full beam,
full steam ahead
where I don’t want to hide. Hiccups
where opposing forces
try to fuck with our chi,
set us back a step or two
but we bounce, roll & resolve. Easy
to give up — walk away,
put grandiose expectations down
to paranoid delusions of grandeur.
Our past lives set us up
to fail, prove that point
we once knew without a shadow.
Done with kowtow!
Fire; vibrating nuclear fission
fuels my frequency, propels
inertia from the fulcrum,
devouring adversity like a black hole
creates nothing out of something.
I make peace my lover, pray
to my Godhead & surrender
my self to you & only you.
My happy bubble
blessed by a big God
blessed by a bigger Goddess,
stirring up a pagan concoction
that’s good enough for royalty.
Good enough, is good enough!
You are my equal.
I will fight to the death
to hold on to you, knowing
I need to let go
ride the lightening
set the Phoenix alight into freedom
before the day is done.
You’re big, blue & beautiful
my whole world right here, now
centred in my universe
Florence & the Machine
creating an atmosphere for us
to breathe.
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
Wide open, heart splayed fish knife style
Psyche, screaming white light laser beams; shoots
all remnants of Eros back into the ether
from that gaping hole he left behind, where he once belonged.
Back into the darkness.
Back into the arms of Hades.
Charon mimicking that elusive eternal light with his sway,
caressing Eros once again.
Psyche, abandoned
sinks like a torpedoed battleship straight to the bottom — much to Aphrodite’s delight.
Zeus, doing us all a favour by staying away this time,
crash lands lightening bolts a million miles from now.
One can only imagine the carnage.
Respect is earned.
It costs nothing to behave with honour.
Psyche deserves much more than angry lip service.
Love is not a fucking game!
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
In the depths
Of my despair, flawed
Imperfections serve only to pander to Delilah.
She is much too fast for freedom, too slow to let go.
She could never bring her self to Samson half arsed.
Her darkness tempers his desire
Cool, waters his deflated ego
And she, too far away from home
Floats like a lotus.
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
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
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
I am a whirlwind of indignity
A seething wrath of maelstrom
I am the all-seeing probing eye
Calling out subterfuge and lies
I am the calm before the storm
The thunder and lightening excuse
I am the violent edge of reason
The force behind insanity’s truce.
I am the truth, the way and the light
Infiltrating your delusions of grandeur
I am the beacon warning lighthouse
Flashing morse code in the ether
I am my self inside all your drama
Calling it as I see it
I am beyond my years of sacrafice
Laying my heart to rest.
I am the Barron River snake
Carving my way through life
I am wide awake woke
And there’s no where you can hide
I am the foothold on a cliff
The finger spaces between
I am the carnal knowledge incumbent
Hell bent on escape.
I am a fire woman’s Psyche
A Goddess to the core
I am your Hades vengeance incarnate
With nothing left to lose
I am your Freddy Kruger nightmare
The Punch and Judy show
I am your juicy jezebel whore
Mary Magdalene halo.
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler Files. All rights reserved
i
Cyberus the black dog, creeps in under Mary’s skin, licking his lips, penetrating her holes, gnawing away at her sinewy tendons and succulent bones.
He rapes her subconscious crawl space, probing his wet nose into her closet crotch, sniffing out the buried remains there like Cujo; gnarled lips, protruding tongue and crazed eye stare.
Mary pricks her ears, Cyberus howls at the April blood moon, his mourn calling her out from behind her silvery veil, behind her mindful interludes – moonbeams bleed crimson and red rivers pour from her nightmares blurring the edges of her days.
Cyberus spreads his malaise like a disease.
He infiltrates cavities and grey matter mimicking the ebb and flow of tides; dopamine highs and serotonin lows, squalls hovering on the horizon – the ramblings of a mad woman batting her eye lashes, baring her sharp teeth.
ii
Mary flatter’s her fans upright for .50c an hour to satisfy Cyberus’ insatiable appetite, gulping down terabytes like an insomniac slip streaming strip scenes and Mary rubs herself raw, learning how to love the hands that feed her.
The water slides off her duck downed back, down valleys and cracks her bareback fingertips squeezing every last drip from her drops.
Mary turns off the shower, wipes away the steam from the window and peers outside. Two stray dogs have escaped lockdown, causing havoc on the streets.
She would take them both in and give them a good feed, if she had a backyard big enough to bury bones.
iii
Tom stands outside on the pavement, peers up at the window, his threadbare trenchcoat just as superfluous as his empty pockets, except for the cornerstone content bulge. He watches Mary’s jailbird swagger dance and sway behind a steam curtain.
iv
Cyberus can feel her skin crawl, he allows himself to rise – settling in between her mind and the blurred edges of breasts, buttocks and inner thighs.
Infared penetrating his night vision.
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler Files. All rights reserved
1.
Am I a feminist?
I make the fantasy real for him, giving up parts of myself –
My look
My mind
My body
My heart.
Pieces of me, served up over silver platitudes,
three course meals
and French champagne.
2.
Malleable breasts and tight buttocks
reclaim their complimentary one half of the whole
reality
filling holes in Psyche every time she is alone.
Separate and connected,
happy and unremarkable
half truths, open to anyone who will listen.
3.
In her deepest recesses, she is compartmentalised – a waif, aloof.
Dissociation
learned to leave a long time ago, doing only what they wanted to make them happier
for the two of us.
A tragedy, waiting for a fairy tale ending that doesn’t involve
the death of Eros.
Instead she paints pictures that never quite get finished –
My pencils
My paints
My inks
My pastel chalks
covered in charcoal dust fingerprints,
scared of letting go.
4.
She still held on
to dreams
of Volkswagon beetles,
Austin land crabs,
Holden utes and XD Falcon
panel van’s reinforced with 6ml steel plates
pink stickered on the side of the road.
5.
I say goodbye to all the abusers –
My family
My friends
My lovers
My colleagues.
Self care now cloistered in her abandon while you watch,
published one day by some back shed press, captioned
‘Clichèd-Poet-Ends-It-All’
because forfeiture has no shame.
She was happier then
and then she died,
turning grey like her foibles and colourless lines.
6.
Am I a feminist?
© Copyright 2019, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
It’s taken conciliatory surprise to remind Ariadne of her desires;
Her pending resignation of all things malodious and contrite.
Old crone bones proffer up a willingness to decay
Lay still, let mummified old sticks and stones settle in.
A labyrinth of bygones remind her of a well spring run dry
A summer of joy, cut short. The autumn equinox bears down
Bending boughs to straighten those willowy heart strings once and for all.
She feels the clew constrict, stretch the last of the wine —
The last dram of mortality’s mundane, quenching nothing in the end
But a lust for a life lost, rendering her a prisoner and one of Klimpt’s women
Peeling back the golden years in rebellion, a fight to the last breath.
Abandoned yule tides of December wax and wane
When all she wants are lilies, and to be crowned Queen of the Damned
To be held in the arms of a consecrated man.
Alas, winter brings sadness and loss, chaos organising
The last remaining gasp muted in surrender, a fish. One final beat
Forces remnants of hope to leave as gracefully as the slamming
Of a door / his melted wings and her angst roar!
© Copyright 2019, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
Little Red Riding Hood wearing shoes, stepping through balancing on pins, holding on to handles in case the latch breaks and the garden gate swings shut, accidentally locking Goldilocks out while she’s peering through foggy windows vying for attention, except she’s standing on tiptoes wondering what went wrong wishing she was back behind a red door out of the cold, flying like Dorothy clicking her way upside down, looking around for a place called home behind a blue door, where fish peer out from holes in shipwrecks inside a fishtank looking outside into my world, wishing Ariel was a shark that ruled the universe with clown fish laughing behind closed doors ordering sushi, just so she could meet Sponge Bob and go out on a date in a restaurant behind a green door seated in a corner watching everyone stuff their faces on pork bones and rib cages smothered in red sauce that sticks to the side of her wicked stepmother’s face, picking breadcrumbs and gingerbread between crooked teeth, eyeing up the shoes hiding behind a wooden door in an attic where Cinderella keeps her mice, making it impossible for Alice to find the key to a parallel universe where her doppelganger is one of three fairies destined to raise Aurora into a raving lunatic behind bars, until a knight in shining armour sees her hair and hoists himself up into a flying machine, snatching Rapunzel before she ends up covered in thorns, talking to a teapot and candlestick waiting the hills to come alive, just so she can close the door and her eyes.
© Copyright 2019, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
If it’s not the bloody buzzing mozzies, it’s a bell jar of mixed blessings and a monologue of nothing but geese!
Voices resounding, reimagining, conjuring up memories about red shoes and dwarves and something out of Aesopica!
This totally ridiculous,
unwanted attention seeking behaviour burns my eyes, while my jaw grinds like carpet burn and my ears ache.
If I have to bite the bullet – I need to do it by 9pm and knock it back with a big shot of poison!
I’m not up for this kind of angst, destined to play and replay on repeat. I already made peace a priority but where is she now?
(Sylvia is waiting in line for electroconvulsive therapy, just to wipe the slate clean; clear the air so-to-speak).
That’s the truth of the matter!
Finding my own voice and lifting the skullcap off Pandora’s Box, just enough to breathe.
© Copyright 2019, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
Jack behaves like a cunt just like any other man, when he’s finally had enough of his own reflection and pulls himself away from the pool.
He can’t help it.
When he’s not obsessed, he’s hardwired – his testosterone crossing over somewhere between being John Malkovich and Jack Nicholson.
Blame and excuses.
Reasons why, justifying those cutting, whining remarks (when he’s really only pissed with himself). Why’d you fucking put me down?
He’s a cunt just like all men.
Patriarchal conditioning bringing all their cuntiness to the surface when things dont go according to plan.
One minute we’re a Goddess, the next a whore.
Riddled in perpetual conflict (and guilt), but really they are all their fathers sons.
If I were a man, I would have punched him in the jaw.
Apparently its ok to punch cunts when they deserve it.
*
I’d rather you punished me with a tongue lashing any day!
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
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
Poetry Out West 