Pain eats you up
it gnaws on my
already
frazzled nerves
Pain is a game
I play against
my self,
my will,
my mind
Pain wears me down
it sucks away at my
strength,
my soul,
my life
© Kait King, 2015
Pain eats you up
it gnaws on my
already
frazzled nerves
Pain is a game
I play against
my self,
my will,
my mind
Pain wears me down
it sucks away at my
strength,
my soul,
my life
© Kait King, 2015
Lonely words
on a hungry page
I see you through
a love-drenched haze
I’ll make it through
the crying days
I can’t help it that I love you
Bleeding heart
in a tortured mind
I never thought
You could be unkind
But I ll make it through
the hurting time
I can’t help it that I love you
© Kait King, 2015
With a chattering
anxiety
A rattle pill-filled
state
the brain-numbing
chemicals
change the look
on
my face
That’s just
on the
outside
inside
it gets bad
Outside
is just a
cosmetic push
Inside –
you can’t change
sad…
© Kait King, 2016
Any time and everywhere
when you’re thinking people stare –
you’ve got a problem
If it doesn’t matter what they say
And you think yours is the only way –
you’ve got a problem
When you think you’re doing fine
Everyone else says you’re out of line –
you’ve got a problem
And if you think it stops right here
I don’t think you’re thinking clear –
you’ve got a problem
When a lover walks on out
saying your’e just a lay-about –
you’ve got a problem
© Kait King, 2015
Sometimes I pull my jersey up over my head
or just want to stay curled up in my too big bed
I just want and wish everything to go away
I feel numb, time is timeless and I don’t know what to say
Sometimes it makes me feel like I’m only ten
and I’m playing hide ‘n’ seek
again
Sometimes I want to curl into
a ball
and say good bye
to it all
Sometimes I don’t know if I have the energy to breathe
let alone anything else life has up it’s sleeve
Sometimes I wonder what a life would be like
if I could be set free without string and fly like a kite
Sometimes I doubt what lies in front of me
I try not too look too far ahead
as I might not like
what I see
© Kait King, 2015
My joy
your face
My life
misplaced
My breath
filling space
Alive,
still
© Kait King, 2015
Here comes
A virus
Here comes
A plague
Here comes
The UN
The WHO
Der Hague
Here comes
Mad Max
Here comes
The Stand
Chaotic
Pandemic
Just a question
Of when
And death:
Is it 1 in 2
Or 1 in 4?
Or 6 out of 10?
Or even…
More?
Here is
The second coming
See the
Novel mute
Silent
Violent
Sneaky death
A body
Down a chute
Listen…
Gloves are
Snapping on
Facemasks
In demand
No one knows
This chaos
The world is
Out of hand
Kait King 20/03/20
Does it sting?
Can you feel
my hate
my anger
blistering at you?
Inflamed and furious
that not even the
Herculean strength of my own
sanity will tie it down
My bitterness seeps out
of my pores
leaving a trail of
achingly sad tearful
nights and aimless lonely
days
Does it sting?
Can you feel me
loathing you from afar?
My hate for you is so
giant – it has to be visible
surely you can feel this
surely you know I am hating you
betrayed by you, unforgiving
of you – surely….
What do you mean, he’s got another girlfriend?
© Kait King, 2015
Something
is missing
since we’ve
been apart
A part is missing
Something
has been lost
and I thought
it was you
Since you’ve been gone
I thought that piece
was you
A part of me
has been missing
I truly thought
it was you
But when I look at
it closely
it was a part of me
you took –
I was missing
not you
© Kait King, 2016
I was standing at the front desk, chatting to another work colleague and an awkward scrawny middle-aged man came up to the counter. I was in the watch-house at the Police Station. Being closest, I turned to talk to him. Behind me, I could feel everyone else cringe. I wasn’t sure why, but it dawned on me as I chatted with him to find out what he was here for, why the audible intake of air from my colleagues. I was just in work zone and had been troubleshooting all day.
Let me start from the beginning. When I turned up for work that morning – it was like 4 am or something horrific, being shift work. Anyway, we had three women and a man in our team that night and as shift changed over everyone caught up and swapped information – did the hand over thing. Of course we all gossiped about things we had dealt with, seen or heard that day, what the constables had been up to, failed at, succeeded in catching, blah blah blah and of course, some real oddities and this was one of them.
A young detective came into the office after his shift to catch up with us. I must say, he looked a little green around the gills but I didn’t think anything about it at the time. He gathered those of us who wanted to see (only myself and the guy I worked with), some evidential photographs of a case of abuse. It took a couple of seconds for him to get his personal screen and files up. He knew I was interested in the abuse of the vulnerable, certainly children, but the animals, handicapped and elderly were all in my sights and desperately needed help. So the photos upload to his screen and I take a second to understand what I’m looking at. I thought a burnt body initially and then realised she was on a gurney in a hospital with tubes and an oxygen mask swallowing her “White-walker”-type face. I turned to the detective and with a rather incredulous tone asked him if she was actually alive.
“She is,” he said, “she’s still alive. This woman’s son was supposedly looking after her. Somebody who managed to finally get into the house found her and called an ambulance.”
“I just can’t believe someone so thin is still sucking in air! And how old is she?” Her dirty, mottled skin was just managing to cling to the bones of her body. She was filthy – hadn’t been washed properly in years.
“She’s 92. When we got to the hospital they told us that it was a miracle. I personally think maybe not – poor woman. Her son hadn’t fed her properly or washed her, medical needs ignored. She had maggots crawling around in her vagina…”
“What the fuck! Are you serious man!?” I was mortified.
“I knew you’d love this case Kait,” he said smiling up at me from the desk chair. ” Not only that but her toes had fused themselves together – there was green mould and a stink you would never believe possible. She smelt dead but was breathing – the living dead, literally!” he looked quite pleased with himself at the reality of his reference.
“I’m absolutely stunned! So what did her son say…has he been arrested then?” I ask.
“No, not yet anyway – he’s coming in to be assessed by the psyche team and questioned. Apparently he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong…whatever!”
“Good grief! Who’s he been sleeping with if he thinks it’s normal for flies to come out of a woman’s hoohaa!” We had a bit of a giggle – it’s like that in the face of horror. Apparently she had gangrene as well, on her fingers and other extremities. One of the worst abuse cases I’ve ever seen and I’m sure many of the police – even seasoned ones – felt that way too.
So the day carried on and we had all sorts of shit hitting the fan – parolees, detainees, people who had lost kids, found kids, P cooks, drunken idiots, abusive situations – just the usual crap.
So anyway here is this awkward guy in front of me. I am my usual helpful self and ask him what I can do. He tells me he’s here for an interview with a certain detective. I contact the right detective to come and get him from the watch-house, in the meanwhile I say “So are you having a good day?” just to be polite and make his wait in a police station a little less awkward. I had no idea what he was here for – he could be being interviewed as a witness for all I knew. Well this was a trigger question for him as he just spilled his guts to me about how he had hurt his mother even though he was trying to look after her. He told me about the maggots and the mould – as if I was giving him the interview. It only took him a few minutes to vent his story and he stood quietly with his head down in front of my counter.
“How come you didn’t clean her or help her to clean herself?” I asked cautiously, making eye contact with him.
“Well….I….I….” he bumbled along.
“It’s OK,” I said “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to…” I trailed off.
He looked pleadingly up at me and I could see tears peeking out of the corners of his eyes.
“I want to.” he whispered.
I kept quiet.
He took a deep breath in and said “That’s my mum y’know ? I don’t want to wash her there or her top chest or anything! It’s not right…I’m her son – not even a daughter – I couldn’t do it!” The tears fell off his face. After initially feeling slightly ill talking to him, I found I was feeling sorry for him.
“Hell, I can understand that.” And I certainly could.
“So can you tell me why she’s so thin then? Why didn’t you feed her anything?” I pushed on through because there must be some accountability here. How can he get out of this one? Surely if he’d fed her she wouldn’t look like this. I tried to keep the picture of the poor old woman in my head, the decrepit, stinking semi-corpse that was his mother, to give her justice and keep a strong mind in this.
“I tried – I tried everything but she wouldn’t eat anything! I tried to force her but she choked so badly I was afraid to give her anything…I know now that this was wrong…” he looked down at his shoes, the tears still rolling off his nose and landing on the stations’ loud carpet. “She was my mum and she used to beat the crap outta me if I talked back or didn’t do as she bid. So I listened to her when she shook her head away from the spoon or growled at me, I left her alone….I was scared…” A slipknot of snot was making it’s way out of his nose and I tried desperately to keep a gag down. I managed. I passed him a box of tissues gingerly – not wanting to touch his skin at all.
Thankfully the detective who was going to do the interview arrived and took him through the security doors to an interview room. I stood there for a moment and realised where the blame lay in this. Society, society was to blame. Yes, he was at fault for not contacting the hospital or some sort of care for his mother, but he didn’t know anyone would help him. Surely if his neighbours had just said hello once in a while to the slightly, strange, creepy guy he might not be suffering endless guilt as it dawns on him in his slow mind what he has actually done. And his mother would not have had to suffer the enduring starvation and pain she had. It is about accountability – but who is accountable? We call ourselves a welfare state but whose welfare are we really caring for? I consider this man and his mother both victims in this instance and a severe failure on our many organisations parts. He was charged with numerous offences relating to the abuse of the elderly. I wondered if he wanted to lay charges against his mum for what she had done to him – for the monster she had created in him who would become her living nightmare.
What’s really sad is he will more than likely end up like his mum did….
© Kait King, 2015
I’m torn
my soul says
fly, my love
as high as you can
My heart begs
you to stay
as close as you can
to me
I’m torn
my mind says
you must grow
you must be
I let you go
I let you be
I let you be free
© Kait King, 2016
I’m quite happy being a Woman
I don’t want to be a Man
I don’t want to scratch my nuts
or take out the trash can
I don’t understand the confusion
about the Man and Woman sequel
Of course we are very Different
Different, but still very Equal
I am proud to be the Carer
The Fantastical Giver of Life
the gentle softness of
a safe place to fall
When you return from
a hard days’ fight
My Man, the strong Protector
The Bringer of that Life
who will be Honoured to care for me Truly
and with Pride
would call me his Wife
© Kait King, 2015
Everyone is so obsessed with winning at everything – work, sports, relationships – absolutely everything. I wonder if those people who are so focused on winning every argument, every game, every decision – have ever thought that they can let it go – like everybody’s a winner in the biggest race of all as far as I’m concerned. If you’ve been born then you have won the biggest race of all! You are a winner – the biggest winner out of millions of other sperm that were in a race for life – I am a winner – we won! Now let’s just succeed at being our own very best here instead of obsessing about being better than someone else’s best…
He could see
and feel
a slavering beast
He could smell it’s
breath
see it’s sharpened
yellow teeth
It wanted him
to do
bad things
It felt like the
Devil with Hate
Not his usual state
of being
but any Angel
with wings
was going to be too late
It said that nobody
nobody
gave
two shits
And do everyone a
favor
Go ahead
slit your wrists
Kait King 2016
Somehow you get through – it’s not even that you learn to live with these things – they stay in our lives forever as part of who we are. In fact these are the things that make us who we are. They used to say this kind of suffering was character building. That may or may not be so, for me, it allows great reflection and understanding of my capacity to love and give love and in turn what it means to lose that.
One of the annoying things friends and family expect, is for you to “get over it” after a certain amount of time – whatever that time is. But there is nothing to get over. You can’t just imagine it’s behind you – things are not behind us, they are all a part of us. We carry them with the sum of ourselves. Maybe by putting things behind us we let our guard down, we love too easily again, we get hurt so much more because of that. Taking the good and the bad experiences is what makes you the person you are. Are you a fighter? Do you run away? Are you persistent? Do you give up? Whatever you do, you have to live with it – you don’t learn to live with it – there is no manual. You have no choice, choice has been removed from this section of your life and a loss of some kind has left a crater and a giant rock in the same place. Luckily the giant rock plugs up a lot of the feelings for a while – this is often known as shock. Eventually the putridness of your trapped feelings in this hole in your heart starts building up a mass of toxic gasses which must be expelled. This build up, over any period of time (as long as it takes you), causes a massive explosion. The giant rock is blasted apart from the hole in your heart. The tiny splinters of angst, hurt, devotion, honor,disbelief, love and any other betrayed related feeling you can imagine, is dug deeply into your heart and mind. Each little splinter of that pain has barbs of doubt, guilt and confusion holding them in place in your heart. And we can’t let go or it can’t let go of us or we don’t give ourselves permission to keep moving forward even though we are cemented in that time of tragedy and know that’s impossible, isn’t it?
The hard part is learning to navigate around these losses, grievances and betrayals, eventually like a powerful river we keep flowing around these rocks of hurt that seem like they will never shift or move. But they do erode – the erosion is so subtle and slow we don’t even notice and so it is, I believe, with tragedy, loss and grief; be that for a living being or a relationship of any kind. Loss leaves a big hole and a giant rock that you drag around with you all the time. Afterwards we question everything said and done, what could have been different, the “if only’s” and the “what if’s” with hopeless, empty dreams. Nothing can be changed. It is what it is, but I know I fight against this too, even though I understand the futility of the fight!
I think only in time will I manage to erode down that rock of loss, will I be able to take the sharp edges off and flow a little easier around the things put in my way that I have no way of changing. Perhaps time won’t heal the wounds, but perhaps time allows my river of life to smooth the edges of hurt. Perhaps it lets me build up strength so that I can push past that hurt easier, every time I have to go past that hurt again. Because it doesn’t go away….
It’s 22 past 2
What am I here for?
And can’t I leave?
But do you really want to?
I have to go
Are you clear in the sight of all things?
I see nothing
I feel him
I need to –
No
I have to go!
I don’t want to be deserted
Well I want to be the deserter –
It won’t hurt so much
© Kait King, 2016
And confusion rages
like a winter storm
pushing through my
veins and there’s nothing
I can think
Although there is plenty
I could do
But the storm is
blinding and vicious
And I’m thinking of
my life
Like between a rock
and a hard place
And no, I’m not trapped
I’m not unhappy…
with right now
As the ever-bleeding
heart I’m eased
into the terror of
the unknown
It’s not a bad dream
If it was I wouldn’t know if
I really want to wake up –
Does this just mean for me
that it’s time to face reality?
© Kait King, 2016