Hello, everyone! My name is Ellie. As you may have read, I am one of the super-admins our this disaster system. I am still sick, so this post may read as incredibly sleep deprived. Or loopy, take your pick. In any case, I am going to pick up where Eight left off and discuss Allēna’s harrowing “Guernica” Part 2. If you missed yesterday’s post and you’re looking for that, it’s right here. And as always, the poem in full is part of our second poetry collection, Singing Molten Gold To The Morning.

This section is a kick in the soul. I’m just going to be honest, we couldn’t read it aloud for years without crying. It made for some very odd performances. Allēna makes some very powerful declarations here and in many ways foreshadowed Eight’s Operation: Dead Hand. Both Eight and Allēna wanted to get away from Hera. However, it wasn’t until Dead Hand was complete that we completely broke away from her, and we haven’t had contact with her for the past year, thank the gods. However, she does directly tap into her rage here for one of the first times in her life, and the results are something else.

In order to best show you these results, I think Eight’s approach yesterday was excellent, so I’m going to continue doing things his way. First, I’m going to show you a video of Eight performing “Guernica”, Part 2. Next, I’ll write the text of the poem out for you. Then, I’ll analyze it for you. Without further ado, let’s do this thing!

“Guernica” Part 2

The Poem’s Text

“Guernica” Part 2

thresholds are for brides

and i was a bride once

but that was a moment and

i wore a dress as red as blood

people asked why i did that

i know why i did that now

i didn’t know how else to say i was angry

when my mind was taped shut and i was

kept in a fog 

damn those pills!

damn the nightmares!

damn that house that should have caught fire

with all inside!

i am not the crazy child kept in the attic!

not anymore

i am the human unchained,

i am the one that walks free!

i have doors now

i have miles in my pockets

i can and will lock you out. 

and there’s blood on their hands

they kicked a child 

they should have loved the child

but when they dropped the bombs

the empty house of my mind caved in. 

but the structure is stronger than that

i am stronger than that

and this is me calling it what it is….

you make your own hell, 

i say to the bombers

i say to the horrors that i experienced

some people see battlefields

i have seen a mind turned inside out

i have been trapped in my own body

i have seen my innocence die before me

and i’ve shouted into the hole of loss

and i’m still hearing the infinite echo. 

i don’t know which is worse.

you make your own hell, 

i say to the demons i fight

your hell is not mine, 

your chains are not mine, 

i am not your wall to punch.

i’m not a pewter cup to drink from and laugh with

your hell is not mine

not anymore. 

this is me calling what it is…

hell. 

and i enter it on my own terms. 

not yours, 

not anymore. 

For Context, Allēna Is A Born Anticonventionalist

Practically from birth, Allēna was a fighter who was determined to fight convention and expectations that were placed on her without her consent. She hated the fact that women had very little power in the church she joined when she was 14 after very thorough research (she is a Byzantinist and avid scholar of early Christian history, after all).

So she charmed all of the men in power so thoroughly that I’m convinced they might have let her get away with anything she wanted to so long as she could explain well enough why she had done it. She charmed damn near everyone else in multiple congregations, as well, so much so that many people cities away would go to her if they needed anything.

The Mormon Social Nexus

Everything and everyone passed through her. Eventually she knew hundreds of people in five to ten states who would go to bat for her if she needed them to. All while committing what would be for most people in the Mormon Church tantamount to social suicide. But it wasn’t, not for her. She had hundreds of people in her pocket. And it wasn’t like she was using them, she genuinely loved them and many of them still love her, despite her now openly being a Pagan gremlin.

“Guernica” Part 2’s Seeds

Her wedding to her first husband, Fang, was no different. They were married in late 2018, and Xavier, our father, had been dead from an aggressive brain tumor for nearly two years at the time of the ceremony. In that time, Hera had completely lost it and had gotten tired of Allēna’s fiery nature and had subjected her to severe mental and emotional abuse and medical neglect. We aptly compare it to a DIY version of the now-declassified CIA experiment MKUltra in order to make us more compliant, easily suggestible, and weak. It very nearly worked. Fortunately, we are all very stubborn and have a very resilient brain.

The pills Allēna mentioned in the poem were prescribed for bipolar I, which we didn’t even have. We were autistic, plural, and extremely traumatized. We later learned that we were on the highest dose of one of those meds that our excellent psychiatrist in Alaska had ever seen, and she’d been practicing at that point for longer than we’d been alive. Allēna, completely gutted by losing Xavier, and seeing no hope in living, fell into a deep suicidal depression, which she met Fang in the big fucking middle of.

Rush Job

She saw herself attempting suicide within the year if she stayed in Texas, Hera was hurting her so badly, and her fate in Alaska with Fang would be unknown, but at least she wouldn’t have to stay in Texas anymore. Allēna and Fang wanted to eventually marry, but not immediately, setting a wedding date of April 8, 2024 once they were engaged. However, Hera didn’t want us living in sin, so she threatened to cut off our lifesaving health insurance if we went to live with Fang unmarried. So, medicated into a fog and pushed into a marriage she was unsure if she even wanted yet, yet still mad as fucking hell, she settled for her favorite skillset, one she knew would drive everyone up the fucking wall – malicious compliance and bucking the hell out of convention.

A Dress As Red As Blood

The wedding came together in three months, during which time Hera and Allēna had an explosive argument in which Hera spat “you’ll be someone else’s problem in three months, anyway”, which inspired Allēna’s iconic folk-punk song “Someone Else’s Problem”. The result was a dark, almost cowgoth ceremony that Allēna dictated down to the last detail on a shoestring budget, since Hera had spent all but forty thousand of the millions of dollars she’d inherited upon Xavier’s death. Allēna and Fang were married beneath an Osage orange tree per her orders, a nod to Xavier, who had taught her all about them.

Like the Osage orange tree, which we affectionately call the “offensive tree of the forest” for its stubborn nature and tendency to drop things on people who are beneath them at random, Allēna would not be moved and blindsided the guests with a few bold choices – a bright red wedding dress, the song she walked down the aisle to, and the song that she and Fang left after the ceremony to, though that was more her brother Blue’s choice. She walked down the aisle to “First Breath After Coma” by Explosions in the Sky, a band from Texas like her, and the newlyweds walked out to “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. Blue was the emcee, and he did a damn good job. That dress would later appear in “Guernica” Part 2.

“Guernica” Part 2 As A Declaration of War

Once she moved to Alaska, she was able to process more of what Hera had done to her and how fucked her childhood actually was. She reasoned that she should have every right to be angry, Hera had hurt and betrayed her repeatedly, violated her autonomy, and tried to neglect and abuse her into a blank slate that she could finally reshape in her own image.

Hera and a large part of her family had destroyed any chance she had ever had at normalcy beyond what the stroke did to her. She wanted her innocence back. It was time to reclaim what was hers. Her voice, her power, her fucking birthright. So by the old gods, she was gonna fucking claim it. She boldly asserts herself and her autonomy with that iron will of hers,

“I am the human unchained. I am the one who walks free. I have doors now. I can and will lock you out.”

The “doors” line and the next few lines are significant. She was quite literally kept in an attic from 2017 until she married Fang The entrance to her sleeping space – I can hardly call it a bedroom – was merely a staircase that opened up to the rest of a very open-concept house. Allēna didn’t even have a bed. She had to sleep on a window seat. Hera wouldn’t allow her to do anything to make the space more private or even more personal. Blue had a room, however. He had a private bathroom – that Allēna had to use – and had all the autonomy and freedom he wanted. He didn’t even have a curfew, and Allēna did.

I Have Doors Now

When she got to Alaska, she fought Fang for a space of her own and won. The showdown occurred in the summer of 2019, around the time she wrote “Guernica”. This was fierce argument in which he threatened to take away her health insurance if she didn’t stand down. He was taking a leaf out of Hera’s playbook, and she was pissed and terrified. Fortunately, her friend told her to call his bluff and see what happened. He was indeed bluffing, and now Allēna had an office of her own. This was a profound relief. She could finally be herself in her own space and have a measure of her own life now. To me, that shows in the poem. Now, for what must have been the first time ever, she could enter hell on her own terms, if she chose to at all.

She cut Hera off for a time around the time she started writing “Guernica”, and this was a profound relief. Finally, freedom was within her grasp. All that was left to do then was to heal the damage that had all of Hera’s bullshit had done.

She also cut off most of Hera’s family, and this was a scandal for them. This is why I sort of subtitled this post “Allēna Declares War”. It ignited a powder keg of bullshit the family still wasn’t over by the time Peri left Fang in 2020. The first time Allēna cut off contact was such a big fucking stink for them and so out of the ordinary that it pushed Eight into creating and completing Dead Hand. Heaven forbid people have boundaries and autonomy! My gods, the world is going to shit!

Final Thoughts on “Guernica” Part 2

How’s that for a kick to the damn soul? “Guernica” Part 2 always hurts me so good. I love it when people actually dig deep and be real with the world. Pretense sucks. Anyone can put on a mask and play a role, that’s easy. It takes true strength to be honest and open with the world about your story, and those are the people I admire. I really think Allēna opens herself up to the world here, and in my opinion, that’s true beauty. That is good poetry.

What do y’all think? The comments are yours as long as you be kind. And as always, stay tuned for more magic – and “Guernica” Part 3!

-Ellie Ulvaard, Your Faithful, if Sleepy, Super-Admin

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