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 retainer, 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

Crime & Devotion

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

Penetration

The Nature of God

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

The Rainmaker

Matty Phoenix

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

Happy Bubble

Matty ‘The Rainmaker’ Phoenix

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

Heavy Heart

Eros & Psyche

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

Aphrodite

Zeus

Delilah

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

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

Wide Awake Woke

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

Cyberus & the Ramblings of a Mad Woman

Isolation Desolation

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

Am I A Feminist?

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

Ariadne & the Consecrated Man

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

Behind the Door is a Metaphor

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

The Bell Jar of Mixed Blessings

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

Kerouac’s Tongue Lashing

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

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

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

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

Trusting Eros

“Love & trust; butterflies dancing the jitterbug of intimacy” JD Butler

Eros,

enlightened, child-like & open, a huge lotus in full bloom, full of all the goodness in this world, his beautiful broken body without any malevolent, preconceived notion’s designed to use & abuse.

He stole Psyche away, saving her spirit in the process, magnetic pulses strobe lighting his way ahead, kinesthetic mind & limbs – delightful fullbodied jolts, his presence filling up the many holes in her senses.

Psyche,

a mere mortal woman; barefoot, pedicured nails flashing glimpses of autumn in-between the dirt, her toes digging in, surrounded by jealous sister’s who would pick & pull her apart given half the chance.

She struggles, resisting all that is good for her, sidestepping melodies with fragrant twists & turns; allowing old fashioned vintage love to lead her astray, before two left feet trip up & over, falling into his arms.

Trust,

in full swing, is the opposite of temptation & betrayal, so she stays & sways to his tune, soul breathing learning to trust a backbeat into grace.

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

Brave

#dailyprompt