The Maenad's Bone Garden

Meant to post this yesterday on World Bipolar Day but that was not to be. Very seldom do you see someone's bipolarness in combination with everything else (some of us) have going on. The world is not very kind to us and sharing details like this is greatly stigmatized and feared by a lot of us. Knowledge banishes fear so here goes. On some level I feel and deal with all of this shit, everyday and that's on a good day. Over the decades, many _many_ people I know have and have had lists/arrangements that make this look like under the tree at White Ghetto Christmas. Be kind. What you don't see may define another's existence. #MadPride #worldbipolarday #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthwarrior #befearless

Today at  Beyond the Underground ,    The (white) American Experience and the Music of Lana Del Rey One of my favorite things about her stuff is the very clever (blink and you’ll miss it clever. Subtle is best.) way she speaks quite self-disparagingly but in this completely meta way.     Great example – from Gods and Monsters   In the land of Gods and Monsters I was an angel Looking to get fucked hard Like a groupie incognito, posing as a real singer Life imitates art She is like the Tyler Durden of white chick music.   She speaks to the worst parts of our nature.   She talks about things we feel but do not speak of,  Wants Suppressed.   This will get me shot but her music, at times, is like you went to the Cozmik Bartender and said “ Hey, lover pour me a glass of your finest Sylvia Plath,  light on the madness.”     Not in terms of quality or depth but speaking purely in terms of it’s pure co...

All of my poems are my children, all of my works are my children.   With my books I tried to spoil them and well they are all fat but very happy children.   Now I’m not the slimmest fiddle in the kit and I would never judge anyone for that – that would be stupid.   But I felt my children could be stronger so with – most of- my poems, honestly, I am a deliberately horrible mother, some sort of Victorian workhouse stereotype, constantly birthing children and then abandoning them to the universe. I prefer to think of myself as Echidna, or Charybdis if we’re honest but now I’m splitting hairs. I do love them, and I do check on them, and try to give them a good start and hope they find a home but at the end of the day I only know what happens to the ones that get adopted, that find a home. The rest? I shudder at the thought. It is perhaps best not to ask. Maybe though this is how poets die. Maybe some night, some night soon, I will wake one final time to find that ...

 Screw you Instagram Southern Girl Digital , 2021

This past week it has been my distinct pleasure to be featured @tales.from.the.underground allowing me to show off some of my newest work.   It’s been a blast but today is our last installment.   Be sure to look for my amusing essay The (white) American Experience and the Music of Lana Del Rey in the coming weeks. FOLLOW them @ https://beyondtheunderground.com/ And on IG @tales.from.the.underground   to not miss   or any of the other great work they are posting daily.   Monday’ s selection was So thoroughly reduced ( White Savior )   Tuesday we brought you Suburban Cage Match.   Wednesday I am Renovated Weight Thursday Sometimes release only requires exposure of the hollow spaces beneath the surface   Patching DryWalls   On Friday, the piece presented is in many ways the centrepiece of this lot.  Is she trapped or precisely where she wants to be? XII the Hanging Whore   Today brings my series o...

  Lick my salty tips Feel the blue suede’s caress Bathing in the scent of Violence and mischief. Misconduct? Unbecoming; Never, no punning quip No punishing whip of Hair or fate nor saving grace. Only your face is safe from My monstrous, beautiful Alien blue tendrils, babe. - the Maenad IG  @scarletmaenadum Twitter  @dreaminggynoid https://linktr.ee/GwenScarlet Buy the Maenad a coffee Buy the Ishtar Cycle from Lupercalia press 

Middle age Is watching Cabaret Alone with a full magazine of boxed wine. Unafraid and not yet unconscious. There is some humor in the Ishtar Cycle but otherwise I am still dipping my toes in the well of Thalia. Most of my funny stuff goes in Galaxy Black, but this comes from a richer more self-deprecatory mine 😊 If you’re going to be honest, you need to be brutal and relentless in that honesty, not just when it’s convenient or on-brand. IG  @scarletmaenadum Twitter  @dreaminggynoid https://linktr.ee/GwenScarlet Buy the Maenad a coffee  Buy the Ishtar Cycle from Lupercalia press   

  Your expectations are not my concern. At the end of the day, I come back to this first principle. I can only articulate my own experience; for good or ill this the palimpsest that my work slips through to become comprehensible to you.    I can only describe the reality I experience, the walls I can’t get over and the ones I can, which frequently have – or seem to have – very little overlap with many of you.   So be it. Since I can only describe the contents of my light cone, it’s not going to be unnecessarily bright and cheerful. All of my hope is hard won and hard earned.   It does not come easily or casually.   Often, hope is only arrived at through careful, calculated, mental upkeep and hygiene.   (Neuro hacks IOW) Even when I’m not discussing gender or sex or sex work, it’s all there mentally, all the time. It’s my normal.    Since it is my normal, it is only natural to quilt from it. Telling me not to do these things is bot...