Qedesha & The Lovers

Sacred Egyptian Temple Prostitute (Qedesha)

Nefertiti has her father’s eyes: blue grey, round and slightly protruding but entirely captivating. The all-seeing eye of Horus and Crow’s feet compliment her aesthetic smile by design. She enters the chamber, swathed in flowing layers of ivory silk adorned with lapis lazuli, onyx and handcrafted strands of golden pearls.

Akhenaten sinks low. Robe, legs and heart open admiring her curves, her sweet sway – ripe fruit seducing his eyes and craven appetite with every languid step.

Nefertiti slides in between. Akhenatens’ serpentine manhood rears, her narcissis skin soothsayer hips, drape and he slips, thrusts and bursts! She lifts, slides and rides his chariots rhythm, beaming through Ra’s realm and back again into her self, sated.

Amarna steps aside, hides behind a sandstone pillar. Stealing moments, she watches the lovers embrace, arch and peek.

She notices the tingles first, then a soft thudding throb that intensifies with every passing moment. A gasp! An electric spasm shooting upward from her liquid apex, filling her with euphoria. She quickly muffles her mouth, burying her face in her hands and shrinks back into the shadows.

Nefertiti pricks her ears and looks over her shoulder, peering back into the chamber. Akhenaten raises up on his elbows and follows her gaze, glimpsing a wisp as it pulls back out of sight.

‘Step into the light’, he commands, lifting Nefertiti from his rod, setting her aside.

‘Come forward slave’, calls Nefertiti, beckoning the shadow from the dark.

Amarna bows her head in an odd mixture of shame and excitement, tepidly stepping a toe out from behind the scene, testing her courage with fright, flushed cheeks betraying her desire.

Moving forward, she stands deferred waiting for her next command, allowing her hot wetness and damp musk scent to allay her senses.

Nefertiti glares. Akhenaten stares, his mouth parting at the recognition of his newest and most beautiful sacred qedesha. He leans into Nefertiti and whispers Amarna’s name, betraying his lust. She turns, spurned then reads Akhenatens desire, rekindling her own.

‘You have come to join us unannounced Amarna’?, Nefertiti leads. ‘What have you to offer your King and Queen that we have not taken before?’

‘Ripe fruit, my Queen, and moist Basbousa’…

To be continued…

Egyptian Bust if Nerfertiti

Egyptian Sculpture of Akenaten

© Copyright 2020, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved

Ms Writer (Drem Inspired)

           Me – Jodine Derena Butler 

I write because it helps me to express myself abstractly when I can’t figure out what’s going on around me in my head I write in layers most of it shit I’ve completed three undergraduate papers in creative writing I learned some techniques different ways to write but ultimately I didn’t go through with the Masters in Creative Writing I still get published I write as a distraction I write when I’m moved (usually depressed) I write about random stuff when I can’t sleep (like now) I’ve even opened random pages of a dictionary letting my fingers point to words with my eyes closed made a list then wrote something about what my unconscious picked out for me I write to avoid what’s going on outside my solitude I don’t like being distracted by outside influences when I am overwhelmed in emotional pain distressed angry whatever has flawed me in words I can write for hours days on end without stopping I’m learning to write flash fiction I read historical researched novels by Phillipa Gregory Ken Follett I love medieval times the clothing the way things were so absurd I’m naked in bed at 11.50pm wide awake Friday 4th December in Cairns Queensland Australia I might write something about bees tea leaves one day I’m going through some trauma right now so I am all over the show but this too shall pass I’m 47 48 in January I’m living a very full on life I play/ed various roles within it I haven’t yet found all those different voices to tell my story I’m closed up or free spirited it’s either one or the other my roller derby name was ‘Flash in the Panties’ in a past life that could be a funny story I’m really fucked right about now what color is your underwear?

© Copyright 2015, Jodine Derena Butler & ‘Poetry Out West’.  All Rights Reserved.

REBLOGGED: By Art of Drem, 2015

REBLOGGED on Dream Big Dream Often

Halfway House

I have a beautiful husband. Loving beyond anything I could ever ask for. His children are gems, the littlest one is an Angel I swear! I miss my man even when he yells at me and says the worst things imaginable in his pain. The man I once knew has eroded away before my eyes. He doesn’t remember how he loved, except his children and rightly so – they are himself and they were stolen. I understand that, I do. I only wish the love I feel for mine is returned in my lifetime. Mine are gone. It seems everyone I love disappears.  I take the blame. It must be my fault, some days I don’t want to be here. Some days I want to fade to black, let that white noise sing me a lullaby and take me home. I lived in many houses once, and my worst nightmare continued. Maybe I relive that moment when I was stolen, against my will. It took me years to find solace in that place till the time came for me to leave. I was homeless, loveless and inconsolable. I did my best with what I knew, made decisions I thought were the best for me and mine. I still feel their eyes upon me, watching me fail and imagine them raising a toast to my demise. Such is life. Whatever I try to do, whomever I try to love, it seems like none of it returns. Sometimes I feel like a desolate child,  still. I’m nearly 50 and I have nothing left least of all to give myself. I exist from day-to-day listening to a monologue of misgivings and self doubts that continue to remind me I’ve never truly belonged anywhere. When I’m gone, I’m still nothing more, nothing less. Of course there are those that profess to love me but that’s only so they can make penance for their own sins – you know, make themselves feel better. That sounded so jaded – I don’t really mean it. I made the most selfish half-hearted attempt at finality. I was chastised for buying my beautiful step-daughter therapeutic books to help her heal.  She’s only four.  I was reminded how I failed to buy books for my beautiful happy grandson.  He turned one recently. I wasn’t thinking straight, obviously. “Your new family can have you!”, she doesn’t want to be a part of that mess. By God I cried. I cried like a little baby. It doesn’t matter what I do its never going to be good enough for her. I may as well resign myself to a life of condemnation, contempt and misery. My man loved me once a long time ago. His daughter is here to keep me company, while we wait for our littlest princess to return. My home may as well be a halfway house. Where is the love? I’m too hurt to see anything beyond what’s yelling at me, leveling me, sucking everything left from inside of me. I sit. I wait. What will happen next? Your guess is as good as mine. My machine parts are too rusted; too many salted tears have cut through all the bullshit. It’s just me and always will be.

© Copyright 2015, Jodine Derena Butler, ‘Poetry Out West’. All Rights Reserved

Grey Matters

She stepped down from the Northern Explorer, weary after the 12 hour sojourn from Auckland to Wellington.

All reasonable precautions had been taken to appear non-plussed but she was feeling more than a little ridiculous.  

Her fingers unfurled letting go, simultaneously dropping one shoulder, gravity to catch and release the taut strap of her laptop.  

All hit the platform with a collective thud!

To make matters worse, the baggage door rolled up, revealing more purple Sabini suitcases, added one by one to the mountain of dogs balls now assembling on the pavement. 

She picked past heads, shoulders and backs, furtive in her search of recognition, an extra pair of hands, a baggage cart.  

It had been 12 years since the last time he had crash landed on her doorstep, his purple XC Falcon panel van parked in the driveway.  

Jandles, jeans and a T-shirt, cap in hand.

He was at the Trax Bar, pint in hand, chatting up the female bouncer, blind.

His goat-skin duffel bag slung over the corner of a bar stool.  

His Yahoo Serious attitude to life rolled up into unkempt, sun-kissed natural dreadlocks that leapt out at all angles, confronting even the most liberal senses.
He was in no hurry.  

What did she expect?  

It had been 20 years since they were an item that could only be described as an ‘eventful interlude at the crossroads of life’.

He traded in everything he’d accumulated (including me) and bought a ticket to nowhere in particular.  

I could hear his favourite mantra replaying like an unpublished Cure single on repeat – there is no such thing as Grey.

Life was black and white.

Grey was something she understood but for once there were no shades anywhere to be found.  

What on earth had possessed her to cross the Tasman with her most worldly possessions, an array of summer dresses and shoes?  

She could feel her stomach tighten, those butterflies rising like her awareness, threatening to expose her presumptive guilt.  

She walked away from her former life, pinning all her hopes and desires on another loose end she knew much better to mess with.  

Hope urged her on wondering if time had been kinder to him, an old flame may re-ignite…  

God knows she needed to feel something.  

Her mind and body had long since turned down any flicker of excitement, preferring to wallow in stoic self-pity; feigned permanent damage, rendering her frigid.

He had always been her potential escape.  

Her reason to live without seeming too dramatic.  

She would have gone anywhere with him, she reflected, knowing he would see straight through her faux par – her cheeks peak that most wanton shade of Crimson.  

Lowering her eyes, she made up her mind wrestling her way toward the lone baggage cart, daring anyone to make a beeline.  

Heading into the terminal, sweat running down the crevice of her back, she tapped out what she needed to say and waited, checking her mobile appearance in its reflection.

Her long tousled hair was a true expression of her frustration.  

Her large blue eyes smudged and blurred, once perfect Charcoal eyeliner betraying her yet again.  

Why did it have to be the hottest clear day of the most piss poor summer New Zealand had ever known?

© Copyright 2015, Jodine Derena Butler, ‘Poetry Out West’

© Copyright 2013, Jodine Derena Butler.  All Rights Reserved

Windows

I remember sneaking out of my bedroom window when I lived with my grandparents for the second time the mescaline cactus was chopped off at the bottom which surprised the wall that held the house up lasting so long over the years  it was an old house but not prickly when the juice drained and my first boyfriend knocked I had to be very quiet except for the old metal blinds that didn’t work and I could hear them talking amongst themselves in the bedroom too  I didn’t think they could hear me then together snuggled under their feather duvet warm as I was soon to be most of the time when nana would bring me a cup of tea in the morning like soup but after she read the tea-leaves so I knew I had to be quiet I remember the house built by his own hands after the war it was farmed and raised by the family at the time the steps are gone now replaced and the house has sunken with age like grandfather buried at the rsa with nana soon when the results come back outside the window I remember climbing back in easier than outward appearances and a lot quieter than at night with the still crisp morning light over before it had begun again ahead of its time at breakfast with sweet leaf toast I was fifteen and I liked danger when the grass was much sweeter than the mescaline and the sex of two young lovers defying gravity on the window ledge of lust giggling and groping for the branches scraping the side of the house beside the hole giggling because I might catch the altered perspective and succeed with silence impossible with the teapot pouring I remember the pink bedspread sneaking into something paling by comparison more like crimson and stained like the window he once said to me but could not decide what it was about when the window slammed shut and I was angry for a moment  the front door was easier than tiptoes being bruised seeming to yellow past the bedroom door and the feathers were warm and soft cocooning them in embraces when I smiled I could hear their listening thoughts I remember the days when chairs sat in reclining positions side by side rocking by the fire looking out onto the front window like a doorway a much bigger window than mine was wiser than the cactus planted on the side of the road in season the windows were necessary to see into the future and the night and the teapot arrived as expected when I sat up in bed…

© 2007 Jodine Derena Butler.  All Rights Reserved