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

Craving

I’m craving you, today.

All those beautiful things about you
that glittered like gold; your face,
a ray of fucking sunshine
portending our future
happiness, growing old together.

I crave to see your smile, fall
about the place laughing.

I look back through photographs,
those ones on the balcony
encapsulating you against a green backdrop
when we were ecstatic, tripping
over our good fortune pleasured to meet,
makes me weep now.

I loved you so much it’s unbearable
witnessing our demise.

I chastise my foolishness,
choosing to believe in love – you,
I would do anything to turn back time,
start over knowing what we know now,
hold on to that part of us
that was true, before

reality ripped me a new one
and I belly flopped into despair.

My eyes search for you everywhere,
in my rearview
to steal a glance, catch a glimpse
to see if you remember me, re-ignite
one final psychic spark
awakening those butterflies.

I don’t want the dawn to sing to me.
I long to dream rainbows and fairy floss

instead of axe handles / switch blades
cutting off my head,
dismembering my brain stem
from my heartbeat for you.
Some days I look for ways I can feel,
my fingers frantic

without prying ears interfering
and I ride you into rhythm; doublets

triplets and fours
before I stare transfixed
into the silent night – did you feel anything?
I don’t like this, nastiness unbecoming
it’s not how I want to remember you
but it’s all you’ve ever known.

It’s not too late to salvage respect
putting it all down to folly, our hurt

doesn’t need to scar, on par
with adolescent angst.
I love all those who have gone before
each finding that special place
lodged in the spaces between
the good, the bad and the ugly.

Forgive me, for I will in time; make
it all worthwhile.

I want you to be happy,
successful and content.
Please don’t fall back into line,
choosing thugs for pittance —
you’re worth more than pseudo security
it’s all bullshit, that old way.

You are made for enlightenment
not eternal darkness.

I still love you the way I remember you,
I just don’t believe in the Devil.

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

Blossom

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

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

Get Over It

Original painting of Jodine Derena Butler, graffiti on canvas by Adrian Falkner aka SMASH, 2007

He said get over it,

& he’s right. My friend said to me once that I had to learn to live without needing a man. My daughter said, there’s plenty of replacements out there, (not that she was suggesting anything of the sort) but,

are these really the answers? I know they are all three, onto something, but me. I haven’t recovered from the last one, the trauma that stripped me down to my bare brittle bones & left me incarcerated in my mind – me, the iconoclast

reduced to a smidgen of my former self. I feel my body buzz, that digital alarm clock refusing to turn off, snoozing indefinitely in some futile attempt to deny it’s existence. My only relief,

an altered state that heals me, temporarily igniting serotonin filling me with laughter & lust, leading me astray into pleasure – the pain, retreating into recessed cavities like tooth decay.

In my natural state, my zombie-like vessel of despair is frozen in a headfuck, not dissimilar to those offering themselves up for cryogenic enlightenment; an obscene experiment, waiting for the utopian dream.

I struggle to hold on.

I smile at memories of when I was on fire, & you gathered around me like a moth, my flame fanning a wildfire of desire & I controlled the burn.

Life’s not like that now. I admire those who can turn a lemon into lemonade, mutton into lamb & a deep dish Russian pie served with liquor, into a feast for days.

I’m so introverted & egocentric that I can’t see you – you, with a heart the size of a universe, a mind as creative as Tesla’s & nature like a Phoenix that’s died a thousand times, only to be reborn, transformed into the beautiful man that you are.

I lie. It’s me who can’t seem to find herself, still lost in that ethereal realm inhabited by visceral ghosts, inciting death & despair into anger & self flagellation.

I am so blind I can’t find my way home. They say home is where the heart is – my home is an empty shell; it’s roof resembling dismembered body parts, now strewn across the lawn in a cyclonic fury, like pieces of me.

It was way too soon to start over again. I am still too fragile to smash.

*

Despite it all, you tell me you love me everyday.

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

Cavity

Yoyo

‘Visons’ by Jefferson Muncy Art 

I’m so up and down

nightmares

falling about the place

picking myself up

dreaming

dusting myself off

planning my future

scared

neither here nor there

clearing clutter

turfing rubbish

cleaning

pulling out weeds

rotating my garden

sleeping

up all hours

drinking coffee

high

low

bursting into tears

mowing the lawn

numb

lonely and tired

keeping appointments

shopping

feeding the cats

cuddling the dog

rearranging furniture

another movie

hungry

empty

moving this way and that

taking big chunks out

falling

waking

on a shoestring budget

/

wondering where it all went

wrong

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

Clean