Companionship
True companionship
Comes from creating what you want
Creating the environment
Letting each other go
To see if we keep coming back
Home to freedom
Home to peace
Home to love
Home to our selves
Away into chaos
A way into the darkness
To find the light
The joy
The unknown
And live a fulfilling life.
So Tied Up – Cold War Kids & Bishop Briggs
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
You don’t get to my age
Without learning a thing or two
I’ve learned to trust no one
But myself
I’m not about to risk everything
On blind faith, alone.
You think you’ve been burned?
You’re not the only one.
Do you think I haven’t been there?
Because I have, and it didn’t end well.
You think your trust is broken?
You have no idea about my life.
I’m not about to risk it all, again
When your cards are not on the table.
I am an aging woman, in a man’s world
Willing to show you who I am
To a point. The rest is up to you.
I am a partner, not a trophy
An equal, not a mistress
Older, wise, psycic and astute.
I am here now because I trusted
More than once, twice too many.
Don’t you dare tell me I have broken your trust!
When I’m the only one who is here for you.
I am still here, waiting for you
To stop cutting off your nose
Yet you expect me to trust you
Your word, your honour, your faith?
That only goes so far
Actions speak much louder than words ever will.
You have no idea how much I gave
Am willing to give, how much I have
To bring to your table —
Treat you like the King you are
But I don’t have first world choices
And I don’t want third world realities
Everything I do, is to survive
Calculating risks, hedging my bets
I don’t have to be dishonourable to do it.
I can see well enough when I look.
What I saw, was not what I wanted to see.
You, your tells betrayed you.
Nothing more, nothing less.
You are not willing or able to see me
Yet, but you will.
The best five months of your life
Is compared to borderline personalities from your past
And those voices set you up to fail.
Still, you choose to see only what you expect to see in me.
I am not here to play games.
I chose to be with you because it felt good
But you are uncomfortable with good.
You don’t know yourself as well as you think.
You are not me.
I am holistically unique and
Cruelty is not my style.
I don’t kick the dog when he’s down,
I take responsibility for my part
You will not humble yourself enough to bare.
I have not abandoned you
You pushed me away, again.
I see you for what you are
Right here, right now a mirror.
I can roll with you quite content
But I keep her on a leash
(You know exactly what I’m talking about)
Till I sense something isn’t true.
The difference is I feel,
I express and I talk to you about it.
I asked you to meet my darkness,
You left me.
I process my thoughts and feelings raw,
I know no other way
To show you what I’m willing to risk
Of myself for you.
You lie, because you think it protects me,
I call it as I see it.
I saw.
You will never know who I am
Until you see yourself through my eyes and feel.
If you actually love me
You’d show it when shit gets real
By being kinder, softer
Compassionate and loving.
I don’t need your help
to take out the rubbish.
You discarded me
Because I called bullshit.
Does that mean I was right?
Prove me wrong.
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
Worry, picking apart my brain, forms tentacles & infiltrates the darkness demolishing barriers discarding all sense of reason.
Fear, prys open the latch & pokes it’s ugly noggin out amongst folded loops, sensing freedom & an opportunity to breed.
I recoil; form more sunken chests & box in my indignation, push it back down subterranean & throw away the key.
I threaten to rip the legs off my giant colossal squid if she doesn’t do as she’s told!
My kraken nemesis.
That self entitled bitch, sticks her beak in where it doesn’t belong!
I square off, walk the grid like an executioner plans strategy & make the first move.
I am flawed. No better than humanity subdues & ignites.
I feel ashamed
I feel ashamed
I feel ashamed
Finding my place, my people & my self taking an age to surface.
I can’t make head or tails of it.
I float, drift around in the ether, neither up or down — threads like silk ferry me away. Is this what it’s like to crack?
Psychicly split down the middle.
One half tending the earth, grows old gracefully, wears away the lines to paint a picture. The other chips away at my sanity like a termite.
She is mad. A lost cause. A first world problem searching for a third world solution, juxtaposes sense.
I don’t know if I’m any good at treading water. She’s drowning.
I think I’m gonna crack.
Who is there for me?
© Copyright 2021, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
Isolation
Lonliness
Altruistic tendencies.
A real man looks after his woman.
Builds up hope
Says all the right things
Means what he says
Does what he means.
Love.
Means nothing if it’s bullshit.
Is he going to break me?
Is he breaking me?
Old habits?
Does he want me to leave?
Could I leave?
Would I keep coming back?
Hurting me
Being hurt
Loving you
Being loved.
What is magic?
Where do I belong?
Destiny.
Who is there for me?
Who is there for you?
How long do I wait for what exactly –
Love, security, money, both?
Hibernation.
Am I discarded?
Be like water.
Do I belong here yet?
A limbo suffragette.
A caregiver.
Am I just a caregiver?
He doesn’t want me for that.
What does he want me for?
Companionship.
Am I expected to be faithful?
Am I enough?
Convenience
A means to an end?
I’m not sure what he wants.
Friendship.
Am I on the market?
I’m not sure I’m available.
Marriage.
Will I accept the contract?
Do I really belong here?
I want a partner.
He needs a wife
Wants a legacy.
More children?
Hanging by a thread
Dangling on a ledge.
Friend, enemy, lover, acquaintance.
Loving.
Leaving?
Family, security
Money, happiness
Asking for nothing
Expecting something.
Dignity.
Respect.
Honour.
Am I worthy?
Is he worth it?
Will he build me up?
Bring me down?
Take me on?
Walk away?
Why does he want me?
What did he get?
What am I taking?
What did I get?
What is he taking?
Just roll with it.
Wait for nothing.
Be grateful for everything.
The Devils’ going to make me rich.
I don’t have to worry.
We’re all in it for something.
Yet you offer me everything & nothing.
I just want to love and be loved.
© 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
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’m only as good as my last poem, and that sucked a kumara.
So, why do I care what some hua thinks about me?
I’d rather kia kaha and hīkoi tóku mahi.
To stand strong and walk the talk.
It is what it is.
Ka kité ano apopo kurī.
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
I’m not that kind of girl.
I am that kind of girl.
I can separate work and love.
I can’t separate work and love.
I know what I want.
I don’t know what I want.
Laughter and light.
Sadness and dark.
I don’t like one night stands.
I could like one night stands.
My heart is not for sale.
My heart is open for business.
I’m not a fuck buddy.
I could be a fuck buddy.
I am so much more.
I am all there is.
I want to be number one.
I don’t want to mean that much.
So I can learn to trust.
So I will never learn.
I don’t want to be second best.
I want to be what you want me to be.
I am worthy of love.
I am unworthy of love.
I want to be desired.
I don’t want to be desired.
I am a loving woman.
I am incapable of love.
I’m not an after-hours opportunity.
I am open all hours.
My time is precious.
My time is wasted.
I want to feel like I belong.
I don’t want to be here.
Not at someone’s beck and call.
On someone’s speed dial.
I’m not available for players.
I am available for everyone.
I have integrity.
I am immoral.
I want a partnership.
I don’t want a relationship.
Equality and compromise.
Selfishness and control.
I don’t want to feel alone.
I feel alone.
With or without.
Without or with.
I want to be independent.
I am co-dependent.
Choose my own lane.
Follow the leader.
I don’t want to settle.
I settle for much less.
When I deserve the best.
I don’t deserve any better.
I want to feel secure.
I feel trapped.
Relax and unwind.
Wound up like a spring.
I’m not someone’s distraction.
I am someone’s excuse.
Present not present.
Affect not effect.
I want to be happy.
I don’t want to feel good.
Spontaneously combust.
Slowly decay.
I don’t want to cry.
I want to smile.
No more tears for fears.
Lots of laughs and hope.
I want to be loved.
I am unloveable.
Expand my horizon.
Stay locked away.
I don’t want to be used.
I am a user.
I want a place to call ours.
I like my own space.
I can’t change who I am.
I could change if I wanted to.
I want it all.
I don’t want anything.
I am the kind of girl you take home.
I’m not the kind of girl you take home.
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
You’re dead to me. I’m dead.
My mother with her snide, jealous perversion sticking her tongue down my husband’s throat.
Sick cunt
Shit cunt
My mother’s a fucked up, narcissistic shit cunt
and I’m a whore.
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler. All rights reserved
She fell for him.
She learned to feel ashamed.
Feelings; the dirty word for love, left her sitting in the dark on my balcony, stubbed out like a cigarette butt.
He had to go.
He learned to feel afraid.
Feelings; the Venus Flytrap of love, left him closing the door to my apartment, shut down like a stubborn ass mule.
Still.
Denial stole like a thief.
Feelings; think it would be easier to maintain a smile, but neither of them like bullshit or manipulation or lies.
…and I was starting to feel unencumbered until you came along, upping the anti with your sweet smile, ruining my bed, creating an arrhythmia of anomalies in my insulated penthouse.
…and I can see the headlights up ahead in the distance – high beams dip, then cut a trail through the darkness mimicking my lashes for you.
…and I think I’m ready? I think not, decide to ease back on the throttle; engine brake scream rebounding somewhere around midnight.
…and he says he’s not sure, but he wants to be King of the Mountain, the first to reach the top like Brock but without the fanfare.
…and his heart is in her hands. Headphones tapping out instructions driving himself around the bend while I wrestle with red eye and a juxtaposed stick/column shift.
…and we both get what we want. Safety nets and a pit crew who know the ropes better than any nightmare script or Greg Murphy wannabe.
…and all at once I become redundant. I can no longer see the warning signs and cats eyes through my windshield, except for tail lights.
…and you are leaving me behind. It’s time to open the windows and turn up Green Day and contemplate the waiting unknown. “Rage and love, the story of my life”.
© Copyright 2020, Poetry Out West, Jodine Derena Butler Files. All rights reserved
Green Day ‘Are We The Waiting’ YouTube
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
Move over Corona!
You’d have to be bloody blind to believe Corvid19 is the dreaded lurgi: it’s only the common cold repackaged into the dreaded flu, commandeered to implement the first wave of a Globalist attack, the last Custer fuck for the dying imperialistic dream.
The bourgeois are creaming themselves for the last time, while socialism rises like a rogue wave revolting in it’s wake, leaving a trail of destruction in search of the snake – waiting for a drum roll and the last head to fall.
30,000 U.S. troops on the march in time to strategically coincide, singing My Corona and Uncanny Boy and the world follows the Pied Piper like a zombie hoard to a mass genocide. No masks. No suits.
The West is going down, but not without one final autoerotic spasm: a shit storm the size of China forcing everyone into the foetal position, while the banks foreclose with an enema.
Me?
I’m going to hedge my bets on the 1993, season 4, episode 21 of The Simpsons, and buy a bottle of Dettol and wipe the whole slate clean!
If I could do a Weinstein or an Epstein and get away with it, I’d want to open my mouth like Greta Thunberg and renegotiate a ‘Rommel Death’ with a slice of pizza but all the shaming I’ll leave to the Vatican, royalty, past presidents and Hollywood’s boulevard of broken dreams, to remind me I am merely a conspiracy theorist with a vivid imagination, trying to live a pipe dream.
The Simpsons, Season 4, Episode 21 predicts Corona Virus
© Copyright 2020, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
My Corona
My Corona
Ooh my little dirty one, dirty one
When ya gonna give me that germ, Corona?
Ooh ya make my nose run, my nose run
Got it sliding down my lip line, Corona
Always blow my nose, wash my hands, do it all again
My, my, my, ay, ay, whoa!
M-m-m-my Corona
Come a little closer, huh, ah, will ya, huh
Close enough to give you my germs, Corona
Keeping it a mystery, conspiracy
Dripping from the edge of my eyes, Corona
Always blow my nose, wash my hands, do it all again
Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty germ
My, my, my, ay, ay, whoa!
M-m-m-my Corona
M-m-m-my Corona
My, my, my, my, my, my
My Corona
When ya gonna give it to me, give it to me
It’s just a matter of time
Corona
© Copyright 2020, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
Those days are over and my ❤️ is resigned.
Too many complications leave me questioning why.
I don’t bother putting my best foot forward.
I’d rather you saw me at my worst and most awkward.
There’s no point in trying anymore to be honest.
I’m too fucking angry to build rapport and flourish.
I don’t want a partner, I’m far too fucked up.
Finding friends is a challenge but that’s good enough.
You can lay it on thick and treat me sublime.
But I’m still gonna take myself home every night.
You just might really be the best thing for me.
But I’m too fucking burnt to begin to believe.
I’d rather push you away and self sabotage.
Than risk trusting you will be, who you say you are.
It’s wholly unfortunate and totally sad.
But I’ve had enough and it was pretty bad.
I like being independent, funky and fun.
I’m afraid to feel beautiful, desired and loved.
I feel myself falling and losing control.
And I fucking hate how it makes me withdraw.
But that’s how it is and for whatever it’s worth.
I think you’re ok but I’m still not so sure.
I don’t know what to do or even if I can try.
Regression takes me right back to being a child.
Then I reflect and feel all ashamed.
Knowing I’m being judged by myself and I blame.
I can feel the anxiety building up inside.
Leave me open, exposed and I lose my mind.
I’m completely imperfect, contemptible and flawed.
Selfish, self righteous and utterly scorned.
I don’t have what it takes to surrender my ❤️.
So let’s call it a day, while we can remember to laugh.
© Copyright 2020, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
The iron asteroid hurtles past
Space dust — dark energy
Not the wind whistling sand storms,
Tidal wave anti — cyclones or
Harmless sun showers prevent
A near — miss tail spin
Where nothing can be done.
Superficial regolith and meteors
Disintergrate rock and pock — marks
Lightning scars part the urban clouds like seas
Where acid rains peel back
The layers of my molecules to dust
I can almost snap my fingers
To create a sound wave. My soul
Stratosphere churns watching you
Leave — plumes, fireworks park
Altered realities into multiple dimensions and
Wag their jagged fingers beaming us up
Like Scotty in the blink on an eye.
Flashes to snuff-out-the-light
Once and for all eternity astral
Travelling a barrel ride to infinity and
Beyond my dying plane, most
Inter — planetary extraordinary
Life. Don’t talk to me
About life — Lester harping on a song
About red dwarfs and the intergalactic space
Stations resounding radio frequency
Alien probing
My space time continuums white noise
Sending shock waves to run rings
Around any metallic meteors
Jet — propelled into my slip stream;
The birth of a worm or
Black hole inertia sucking it all in?
Only to return again, squeezed
Out and moulded by my doppleganger
Land and a star is born.
Super — nova core compressed
Dark matter, gas and fission
Fuse together my parts into a whole
Where nothing can be undone
And everything that ever was, is
Chasing her tail feather
An asteroid, full — speed ahead on a
Magnetic collision course
Forcing fields and gamma rays to
Deflect decay once again,
While shit storms still rain down and
Charged particles and isotopes ping.
© Copyright 2020, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
I see right through everything you try to impress upon me.
My nose is already cut/off, my mask forever cast into the pantomime of the dead.
When I rise,
I won’t need you.
∆
There are no wallflowers here,
just silent observers casing the joint.
My grandfather’s spyglass has a cracked lens — one of those monocled, steampunky brass edged gems that’s uncoordinated at best but it serves more than a purpose.
Without you, I fade into the background.
∆
I am like a mage.
I draw you in, but you beckon me out from behind my crystal pillars dangling wads of money and a job offer that’s on hold.
I come baring more than just my breasts,
I am yours.
∆
Till the thrill is gone.
I am in danger of succumbing to my own spell, rebounding long before
I am discarded,
when you’ve already moved on to Nightingales and page three nostalgia, my unnatural incantations losing their spark along the way.
Still, you make me question where I belong.
∆
I stand in the orange sunset smoking a durry on my balcony, looking down from my lofty thoughts.
My high society, contemptible self-loathing boldly framing my red-hinged double revolving doors that would swing wider — if it weren’t for the sunstrike that has me
blind.
∆
A spectral shade
of surreal light,
trapped by my own
shadowban.
∆
I see right through everything you try to impress upon me.
My nose is already cut/off, my mask forever cast into the pantomime of the dead.
When I rise,
I won’t need you.
© Copyright 2020, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. 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
