Category: Our Poetry

Hey everyone! This is your boy Eight once more. We took a short break from writing yesterday because we took a lot of emotional damage from writing Part 3 the other day. Kalla handled Part 3 since she wasn’t directly traumatized by any of the events of “Guernica”. However, she felt deeply for Allēna and her teenage plight and still sobbed while she wrote it. So a break was in order. I’m back today to discuss “Guernica” Part 4 and how Allēna held both the visceral and the beautiful in equal measure and alchemized her pain.

We’re gonna do this the same way we did the other three parts (which you can read here, here, and at the link above respectively). I’m gonna show you my performance, then the section’s text, and then I’ll break it down for you. As previously stated in the other posts, you can read the full poem in our collection Singing Molten Gold To The Morning. Without further ado, “Guernica” Part 4!

“Guernica” Part 4: My Performance

The Text

guernica part iv. 

you can paint darkness
and you can paint conflict
but there’s only so much you can paint
if you have never experienced it
i want to paint as much as i possibly can. 
etxea is the basque word for home and i find home in things
that hold no home for others. 
i feel heard in horror stories and seen in the shocking and visceral. 
i’ve made mansions out of sadness and i destroy the happy ones
because something in me
says i don’t deserve them. 
fuck that something. 
fuck that something. 

i’ve seen enough and yet i haven’t
desperation guides my lungs and my mind. 
i’ve had enough. 
this is why i write now. 
when i was 12 they called me selfish
i think in hindsight it was because i wanted love
and they couldn’t give it to me
so i fought with the wind.
i knew i couldn’t chase it
so i fought it. i fought anything
that moved for so long and so hard
that i forgot how to make peace. 
it kept me alive.. 
when i was 7, my dad got sick
and i think that was the beginning of the end. 
that was when the war began and it didn’t end
not until i was 18 and by that time, the damage was done. 

when i get sad, my inner child screams and cries
and wants love from people unable to provide it. 
i wish one of them would’ve told me i was okay
instead of pretending i was the bomb in the corner
or the crazy one in the attic
the scapegoat, 
or the black sheep. 

i’m not crazy. 
what they did was wrong. 
sometimes you’re the airplane high in the sky
the reason why they don’t look up anymore
and for a long time
that was them. 
i look up now to spite them and ask where
their god is now 
now that they’ll make their own hell someday
and have no one to wipe their bloody hands on. 

I Look Up Now

My Thoughts

Like we’ve said in many other posts, we were born fighters. “Guernica” Part 4, to me, sings to me like victory, a victory incredibly hard won. Part 4 marks the transition from victim to victor. She starts to go from someone who had always cowered in fear and allowed others to control the narrative to someone who owned her damn self, owned her voice, and owned her demons. This is the voice of a poet who says “Yeah, I’ve been through some fucked shit, but I’m a powerful alchemist. And goddamnit, I’m going to turn this pain into a powerful story. The world will know what they did to me. The world will know where I came from and where the fuck I’m going. And news flash: it’s a far cry from this hell you people dragged me through.”

Around the time she wrote this, she was beginning to understand that what her mother’s family had done to her was terribly wrong. She didn’t deserve an ounce of that torture. Three things set her down that path to self discovery – the first kind and skilled psychiatrist she’d ever had, the novella Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and some very important friendships.

Hera’s Plot Begins To Unravel: Allēna’s Compassionate Psychiatrist

You may recall from an earlier post in the series that Hera, our mother, had essentially press ganged us into a medication regimen we didn’t need in an effort to get Allēna, who was the system’s host at the time, to be more compliant and easier to mold into an image her and her family wanted her to be. She vehemently denies this to this day, but she’s lied about everything else up to this point. This is the only explanation that makes any sense.

By the time she even married our first husband, she was on enough of these psychiatric medications to be about a quarter dissociated at all times. Her previous psychiatrists had her on dangerous levels of three different medications – lithium, lamotrigine, and Abilify. All three of these drugs are mood stabilizers. Lithium is essentially a pharmacological lobotomy, and is very harmful for a developing brain. She was put on it at the age of eighteen. I got the body off of it at 23, and mercifully our brain recovered. I’ve heard that most people aren’t so lucky. Often the damage to the thyroid and the resulting cognitive dulling is permanent.

A Chilling Concern

However, the lithium wasn’t what our very compassionate psychiatrist in Alaska was concerned about, which I frankly find telling. She was concerned about the lamotrigine. Upon meeting with her for the first time, she informed Allēna that she was on the highest dose of lamotrigine she had ever seen in her entire career. This woman had been practicing for longer than we’d been alive. She asked Allēna if she could remember how or why her dose was so high.

Our psychiatrist looked like she had seen a ghost when Lēna informed her that no, she had no clue. The dose she was on just wasn’t working, so her doctors kept raising it, often at Hera’s insistence. Hera would often come to our psychiatrist appointments and speak over Allēna, which would piss her off. Then Hera would turn around and use her reaction as evidence for why the dose should be raised.

Sick And Fucking Tired of Hera’s Bullshit

Allēna hated that Hera came with her to most of her appointments, had access to her medical information, and ultimately went to great lengths to keep Hera out of most everything. Hera believed she had a right to control Allēna’s medical care, psychiatry especially, since she was the one paying for it. Privacy laws could get fucked, in her opinion. Her money, her rules. Allēna hated it and hated her for the reactive abuse and other abuses of all stripes.

She didn’t want the meds at all or deal with another adult meddling in her life. Hera had inserted herself into our affairs our entire life and we had been sick of it since Castor was host at about the age of five. She wanted to have a conversation with Hera, adult to adult, about her abuse. But Hera would never do it. So she kept as much from her as possible, which wasn’t very possible in a house in which she had little to no privacy.

Shaking Off Her Chains

Getting out from under Hera’s thumb and finding a psychiatrist that listened was an immense relief. But it did Hera no favors. As she worked with her psychiatrist to come down off of the meds, she found herself viscerally angry at Hera. She cut her off and made her wrath no secret. This took immense courage on her part, as Hera was well-connected and had eyes everywhere, including in Fang, which we’d find out later.

The Next Piece of “Guernica” Part 4: Fahrenheit 451

The next inspiration for “Guernica” Part 4 came about by chance. Allēna was working as a tutor when she wrote the poem. A potential student reached out, asking if she could lecture on Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. She agreed, despite having never read the book. So she devoured it in preparation for the lesson, which never actually ended up happening. However, the book changed her life. She saw herself in the characters and the sharp, quick prose.

She saw how the characters who thought for themselves and read books were persecuted and their possessions burned – and saw her life story in the narrative. Hera homeschooled us for most of our education, and taught us how to critically think and analyze literature. Hera herself had a background as a professional seventh-grade English teacher, and was just as masterful a teacher as she was a cold, abusive, and emotionally absent mother. It’s because of her that we can write blog posts like this. She started us very young. Yet, she punished us harshly when we used those skills to criticize the way she treated us. What a cruel, ironic turn of events!

Allēna found solace within the pages of Fahrenheit, a sort of solace we’d not found in many years. I think the last book she’d related to that hard was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Card’s politics and beliefs aside, Ender‘s Game is a harrowing illustration of what it’s like to be young, gifted, different, and traumatized, much like Fahrenheit is. We still want to get Fahrenheit’s opening line tattooed on the body somewhere. It was a pleasure to burn…

A Resolve Stronger Than Iron

What she’d found in this book and in turn, in herself, strengthened her resolve. She told her story without shame and spat in the faces of anyone who told her she should make up with Hera and consider her perspective. Hera had betrayed her repeatedly. Why should she? She’d had Hera’s perspective shoved down her fucking throat her entire tenure as host. She could recite all her talking points verbatim by that point. Hearing them again was a waste of time and would only piss her off. Hera wanted to control us, and by then, Allēna couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. She had seen Hera for who she was, a conniving snake, and we’ve never given two shits about people like that. Why waste her time on a person who’d only betray her again as soon as she found an opportunity to do so?

The Final Seed of “Guernica” Part 4: A Little Help From Her Friends

Yes, Allēna and the rest of us didn’t want to waste our time on traitorous bitches, but there were many people in our life by that point that were worth our time and effort. Beginning in early 2019, Allēna started making many friends online once it became clear to her that she wouldn’t have much luck making friends locally. Many of the local townsfolk were polite, but just as withdrawn as Fang. She wasn’t going to get anywhere in person with Fang as jealous and controlling as he was, either. If someone even looked in our direction with what looked to be romantic or sexual intent, he’d lose his fucking shit and go as far as to blame Lēna.

So she struck out on her own online and simply stopped introducing her friends to Fang. He’d inevitably start heavily criticizing them behind closed doors, as well. It was no fun for anyone, so she kept her life to herself and stopped asking about his, as well. She wasn’t going to give a flying fuck about someone’s private life or creations when he clearly couldn’t extend the same courtesy.

A Cradle of Masterworks

Many of her friends showed her and later Peri what healthy love actually looked like. They treated her far better than any partner ever had and expected nothing in return except her presence. They were also genuine fans of her work and encouraged her to write and share to her heart’s content. It was this supportive semi-secret virtual environment that helped Allēna begin to process what Hera and her cronies had done to her. Through this process, “Guernica” Part 4 and the full poem spilled out of her.

Peri’s magnum opus, The Secret History of Doloras, was born a few months later in the same supportive cradle. We attribute the fact that our album Light on the Final Day saw the light of day (ha!) at all to one especially loving and persistent friend all the way across the world, as well. We would have never found our voice or the courage to alchemize all of our deep, deep pain without the support and love our friends gave us.

Parting Thoughts on “Guernica” Part 4 (another pun, haha)

In my opinion, Allēna is exceptionally brave. Not only did she stand up to our formidable spymaster of a mother for the first time in our entire family’s history, she persevered through severe neglect and abuse of all stripes and found the guts in the meantime to turn that pain into something aching, visceral, and profoundly beautiful. I fucking love this poem and respect the hell out of my fiery pint sized headmate. I wish she’d had an easier lot in life, but I don’t know if we’d be half as insightful as we are without it. There can be no wisdom without experience and no pain without beauty. Allēna, sweet woman, is one of the rare few that is able to see beauty in the horrible things that happened to her and use these gems to craft a new story, one of resilience, courage, defiance, and ultimately – magic.

Speaking of magic, stay tuned for more of THAT. Part Five is coming up before you know it! Are you ready for another kick in the pants?!

Bastardly yours,
Eight

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