My last selfie of me (and the doom bunny) while I'm still 52.

Stuck in the basement with dead feet and eyes...

Disconcerting dream last night in which I was downstairs in a dank basement and had fallen asleep on the floor. The basement itself was not horrific, it looked like the basement in my parent's home. I don't know why I was sleeping down there though. (In real life, when I was a kid/teenager still living in my parent's home, I would sometimes go down into the basement to be by myself. To poke around at potentially interesting stuff, mostly books that might have been considered inappropriate for my age at the time, so I'd read them downstairs in the basement. The Exorcist for example. I remember finding that book in the basement and reading it. I also sometimes used the downstairs space to walk around in circles and tell creative stories inside my head, before I had reached the point where I could extract the creative thoughts/words in my head onto paper). So I don't have many bad memories about my parent's basement, because it seemed like a place where I could do what I wanted, because nobody else was there.

But in the dream, I was an adult asleep in my parent's basement for an unknown reason and it became disturbing and disconcerting when I couldn't get up. I heard my (dead) dog whimpering from the shut door upstairs and I realized he was probably worried about me or needed to be taken outside. I tried to open my eyes and tried to stand up so I could climb back upstairs and care for him, but my feet wouldn't work. When I quickly fell back down the first time, my initial reaction was that it was just a fluke because I wasn't very awake yet and had tried to stand up too quickly.

But then I tried to stand up again and fell back down again. Several times I tried and kept falling back down on the ground. I started to panic, because it seemed like neither of my feet worked anymore. I also couldn't see very well either and at first I thought that was just because the basement was dark, but then I realized it was because I couldn't seem to open my own eyes all the way or my eyes weren't working anymore. So suddenly both feet and both eyes had lost the powers or abilities that tend to be taken for granted.

I still had to try to manage a way to get upstairs and help my dog, but I couldn't walk normally and couldn't see normally and nobody was there to help me. I tried to tell my dog I was coming, but he just kept whimpering. Last thing I remember is that even though I still couldn't walk or see normally, I somehow managed to slowly stagger my way to the staircase and start clutching the handles on each side and forcing myself up step by step. Then my alarm woke me up before I found out if I could make it all the way up the stairs.

(Maybe the vision issues in the dream were partly because I was trying to wake myself up from the dream, but couldn't until my alarm went off. But it all felt rather unsettling, depressing and doom-ish on a variety of levels...)...

Me and my doom bunny holding my CONTORTED DOOM CONVEYOR!

Me and my doom bunny holding my CONTORTED DOOM CONVEYOR.

***

"Try this pill until you run out of power.

Let your body and brain get used

to this manufacturer's version of this pill,

and then you will be switched to another

like your brain is just a light switch

like your brain is just a plug

like your brain is just a hole in the wall

hotel room with a bath tub that doesn't work anymore.

So you either die underwater or else

you'll have to handle new pill side effects again

and again and again and again and again.

Sometimes I feel like I'm on a bad dream carousel,

moving in rickety circles, taking turns

sitting on different unnatural broken animals."

in the poem "INDUSTRIAL CAROUSEL" in my new poetry chapbook, CONTORTED DOOM CONVEYOR, published by Gutter Snob Books in July 2023.

get it HERE - https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/doom/140

or get it HERE - https://www.amazon.com/Contorted-Doom-Conveyor-Gutter-Books/dp/B0C6W7C2HV/?fbclid=IwAR3KE6QSri7SdVZ9EvZet0EuUhju862Ju9jlnhpWqUiPlZ8tSi7Qce0z0TE

or please feel free to let me know if you'd like to acquire a copy directly from me...

CONTORTED DOOM CONVEYOR, a NEW poetry chapbook by Juliet Cook is coming soon from Gutter Snob Books and is now available for preorder!

My Gutter Snob Books poetry chapbook, "CONTORTED DOOM CONVEYOR" is now available for you to RESERVE YOUR COPY (limited edition) and will exist in July!

Thank you very much to Gutter Snob and poet/editor Michele McDannold! Here's what Michele McDannold posted (including a photo) which also includes the preorder link! ***

LAST but certainly not least, the FINAL title from Gutter Snob Books --Contorted Doom Conveyor by Juliet Cook-- can be reserved now. Cover Art by Juliet! signed, limited edition...book releases 7/23

https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/doom/140

Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a small multitude of print and online publications. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including "Another Set of Ripped-Out Bloody Pigtails" (The Poet's Haven, 2019), "The Rabbits with Red Eyes" (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2020), "Histrionics Inside my Interior City" (part of Ghost City Press's Summer Micro-Chapbook Series, 2020), and "red flames burning out" (Grey Book Press, April 2023). She also has another new chapbook, "Your Mouth is Moving Backwards" forthcoming from Ethel Zine & Micro Press (tentatively in October 2023).

Cook's first full-length poetry book, “Horrific Confection", was published by BlazeVOX. Her most recent full-length poetry book, "Malformed Confetti" was published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2018.

Cook's own tiny independent press, Blood Pudding Press, sometimes publishes hand-designed poetry chapbooks.

Cook also sometimes creates abstract painting collage art hybrid creatures.

NEW! Two creepy collaborative poems by me and Darryl Shupe in DIAGRAM 23.1!

"Spiraling down doom ribbons
hide inside this cart's cotton candy,
aiming to invade your cavities."


Delighted to share that me and Darryl Shupe have two collaborative poems making a freakish little appearance in DIAGRAM 23.1!

"EVERYBODY IS A LOSER HERE!" and "SUGAR WATER AND GREASE FIRE"!

read more HERE - http://thediagram.com/23_1/cookshupe.html

***

Furthermore, you can read fifteen more of these creepy fair(y) tail poems inside our collaborative poetry chapbook entitled Short Poems of Violence and Chickens, published by Blood Pudding Press, available HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/1321276974/new-short-poems-of-violence-and-chickens