The Slow Toll Bell

Image

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

Hyperbole

Image

You colour my world igniting synapses into hyperbole…” JD Butler

Cairns Birdwing Butterfly

I saw a beautiful butterfly today, green with hints of red & yellow, not dissimilar to how I feel about you

I am reminded of transformation

My solar plexus squirms, churning up a cacophony of nervous tension & something else 

Breathe, I tell myself or I fear I might pass out, fear having a lend of me

I tell myself you’re not him, over & over angry that even now his incubus infiltrates my psyche, penetrating my light

I’m an observer, always on the lookout for anomalies, my brain overthinking camouflaged sabotage 

You colour my world igniting synapses into hyperbole; my protection in overdrive & you are my stargate

*

Just relax. Take all the time you need, whatever will be, will be

(Fuck you & your pathology!)

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

Transient

Lilith & the Incubus

image

Photographer: Ange Harper

Here we go again
for those of you sick
of this shit – Karma

Happiness, eludes me
over-analyzing everything
searching for that choice to make

Looking to purpose choose life
simplicity a complex solution
blind, numb, lost & forgotten

My brain hard-wired my eyes shut
Persistent Depressive Disorder
convincingly sees only what was

Nothing gets any better
I’ve never known anything different
happiness is Far Far Away, folklore

Farther apart I age, no wiser
life flashes before my eyes, wasted
it’s a miracle I have survived thus far

I may as well be dead
it’s like I’m dead
I feel dead

Burdons not just my own; contagion
leaching into every soul I touch
Incubus fornicate in my sleeplessness

Pervasive nightmares & thoughts
leave little light – my aura
hedonism postulating pleasure

Shit shows on at 4am

Doom & disaster, spiritituality
leper colonies shun; shamed
beyond toxicity

I am cursed
so is everyone in it
locked up for my own safety

Where is Lilith?

© Copyright 2015, Jodine Derena Butler.  All Rights Reserved

REBLOGGED: By Art of Drem, 2015

Incubus & the Nymph 

Incubus circle
in delayed formation
my nymph
debilitated and abandoned now
satiety a vestige
of reckless abandonment
elsewhere
pledged allegiances suffer
stuffed down the gullets
of imploding rivers
seething Red
in distaste
indecent proposals are
swallowed whole,
recalcitrant yearnings
succumb to the dirge
mountains begin to crumble
the ingratiate turns
her back, again
rock and debris fall
on deaf ears
on deaf ears, my
dwindling reserves
purge the last of my resolve

© 2009 Jodine Derena Butler.  All Rights Reserved