The Lexicon of Losing It
Ang‑zhy‑i‑tee for brekky / panic on toast / doom scrolling in the bloodstream — the body already an altar of sparks / angor‑animi / Cassandra in the chest cavity screaming prophecies / Cortisol doing doughies in the ventricles / bin chickens rioting in the amygdala / Dunlop Volleys issuing warrants for my pituitary gland / the whole endocrine system going full houso throttle / I roar RACK OFF YA CHEMICAL GREMLIN and the mongrel bolts / breath returns in shards / the body hums with warnings I can’t yet translate / Unexpressed anger gives you cancer — Jack the dancer / two shiners like a panda from the mother who slapped you blue / the trailer‑park pest with no neck who despoiled you / Trauma the informer / Trauma the drummer / Cadbury‑gorilla fists on the ribcage door / Hypervigilance sway / tsunami‑survivor stance / waiting for the next bass drop / Do you think if I earthquake I’ll eat you? / clearing debris with battle fatigue / Ghosts whisper — say it / say it / say it — but the tongue won’t move / Philomela sits in the throat threading truth through silence / Underneath — the old asylum logic: too sad / too loud / too quiet / too spirited / too exhausted / too opinionated / too female / too grieving / too imaginative / too rebellious / too inconvenient — a ledger of lunacy written by his‑story who feared women with feelings / How do you excavate quicksand when the plot keeps stuttering — start / stop / start / stop — a scratched‑out backbeat on the same old wound / My body stolen, exiled / cut out like Philomela’s tongue — silence stitched where the song should be / DV shadows lurking / amygdala hijacking / No saxophone rhapsody — just warped chords / little t / big T / deep‑diving scars incubating illness under the floorboards / The amygdala — almond landlord of fear / hoarder of every shit memory — keeps hitting replay like a kid with a push‑pop recorder that won’t / shut / up / Ang‑zhy‑i‑tee / Angst and apprehension of arrogant arseholes who dread disquiet in a Triple‑D jitter jam / Botheration butterflies fluttering the sternum / A creep creeping — don’t be a Debbie Downer drag, he drools / Fidgeting, flapping, foreboding fuss / He gives me the heebie‑jeebies / Then — the body‑memory ambush / the ribcage‑prison / the outside‑your‑body float where fantasy and reality blur / where everything screams angor animi! even in the Woolies queue / Medusa rises — not monster but witness / hair full of serpents hissing truths no one wanted to hear / The Faraday‑cage mind — no signal in / no signal out / just static / just dread / just the rip‑tide drag no matter how you swim / And over it all — the old asylum chorus: egotism / grief / laziness / novel‑reading / hysteria / superstition / imaginary female trouble — a bureaucratic curse echoing through the skull / Then the emotional drive‑bys — whizzing past like a busted lawn chair in a council clean‑up / Yes, I’m a psycho — but at least I can cook a shitty 80s casserole and serve it on a lazy Susan / Like some kinda whacko / Tissues for your issues spilling from my chest / And still — sookie‑la‑la anxiety, give it the arse — couldn’t organise a piss‑up in Callan Park / a wake‑and‑bake in a bughouse / a root in a nuthouse / piss it off / out it goes — this feral little exorcism is a long way to Hades if you wanna whack‑a‑mole
Statement about the work
This poem began as a triptych but transformed into a single continuous piece — a one‑breath exorcism that mirrors the physiology of anxiety. The slash‑run form reflects the collapse of boundaries between panic, memory, and myth, drawing on Cassandra, Philomela, and Medusa as ancestral witnesses to the body’s underworld. It is a lexicon of losing it — and surviving it.
Alise Blayney is a poet digging through trauma, embodiment, and mythic transformation with feral, rhythmic grit. Her work blends dark humour and raw nerve to map the nervous system’s fault lines and the rough terrains carved by survival. She is the author of Grief for Hire (Verity La, 2020).