Dreaming of my dead dog (my fault)...

Hard to believe that my favorite dog ever, Sockeye, died approximately 10 years ago, because it certainly doesn't feel like that long ago, and maybe I'm wrong or my mind is somewhat screwed up, and my mind is terrible with timing, but...

I tried to look up (on facebook) when Sockeye had died, but my fb Life Events seem to have been erased (see my blog post below this one for more thoughts on that...), which made me feel tempted to leave the fb platform (because if they're trying to erase individual's life events, then what else will they try to erase?...) etc...

But I did see an old photo of mine, which gave me the impression that Sockeye had died about 10 years ago, which is hard to believe, but...

The reason I was trying to remember the timing of his death was because Sockeye unexpectedly appeared in one of my dreams Sunday.

In the dream, Sockeye was in a small cage, in a bedroom, in the dark, and I felt guilty that he was in the cage, but unsure if I was the one who had (somehow inadvertently) caged him. (I did not choose to regularly place him in small cages in my real life. The only time he was caged was when he was a puppy and we temporarily kept him in a decent sized cage in the bedroom when we went to bed and when I/he was in someone else's house who wanted/needed him caged).

So in this dream, I wasn't sure if I was in my own bedroom or someone else's bedroom. I felt confused. Because if it was my own bedroom, then why would my own adult dog be in a cage? Because dogs in cages seem kind of like hell to me. Because if you don't want a dog (or cat or other pet) around you, then just don't get a dog. Because adults caging other adults seems like a horrific control freak horror fest.

Dreams don't always make logical sense (although neither do many parts of so-called reality these days), so I figured the disconcerting cage was in my bedroom (for whatever illogical reasons), since Sockeye was there. Maybe my bedroom had somehow changed. But my uncertain feelings about the situation caused me to feel overly anxious, bordering on panicky.

I removed Sockeye from the cage and realized he needed to go outside. I thought I had taken him outside. But then suddenly I was inside another somewhat unfamiliar small room in front of my computer and his leash was hanging out of the door, but he wasn't attached to his leash and it was my fault. I thought I had put his leash on him, a leash with a long cord, and affixed the cord to the door so he couldn't go terribly far, but either I had forgotten to attach the cord to the leash or something unexpected had happened, and I was either lazy or overly confused or ridiculously discombobulated or SOMETHING, for not going outside with my dog.

And now he was disconnected from his leash or cord or me. And as soon as I noticed the disconnection, I hurried outside to try to find him before it was too late.

And there was snow on the ground and the atmosphere/air/sky seemed to be quickly changing from light to dark.

There was a growling sound in the distance and I wasn't sure if it was Sockeye growling at another creature or another creature growling at Sockeye or if my mind was making it up. But as far as I can recall, in real life, Sockeye didn't growl. But maybe I don't recall correctly. But what is correct? 

The dream's outdoor location resembled my parent's long back yard, and it's not too uncommon for them to see deer there, so maybe Sockeye had unexpectedly encountered a deer, but I don't think deer growl (but maybe I'm wrong), but nor did my Boston Terrier (but maybe I'm wrong), and I didn't know what I should do, other than walk toward the growling sound and call his name, because then if he heard me, maybe he'd leave a potential attack scene. I didn't want anyone to be attacked, injured, or killed just because they ended up in the wrong space at the wrong time (and especially if I was the one who had accidentally gotten them into that space).

When I first stepped outside in this dream, to see if I could see him, I started walking though snow, calling his name, but the horizon seemed to shift very quickly. My initial reaction was that maybe when I had stepped outside to try to find him was right when the horizon was shifting from light to dark. But then I thought, the horizon doesn't shift from light to dark THAT fast. So I'm either suddenly losing my vision or I'm about to have a seizure in the snow or both.

I'll wake up in the snow and my dog will be lost forever.

And it will be my fault.

And I won't be able to see.

And I will be freezing.

I woke up from the dream but then a few past memories were in my head and one of them was my fault.

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...

NEW! My Violent Seizure Orgasm poem is making an appearance in Black Flowers!

 "Birds hold razor blades inside their mouths.

Chirps turn into screams." The first two lines of my short "Violent Seizure Orgasm" poem, which appears within the NEW Black Flowers Volume Twelve HERE - https://blackflowers.online/violent-seizure-orgasm-juliet-cook

Malfunctioning Tampon Dispenser Dream

Not sure how to interpret this odd little dream last night (or at least the part I remember). I was in a public restroom that had one of those tampon dispensers where you stick in coins to have it pop out tampons. But the dispenser was malfunctioning and instead of tampons, a bunch of colorful masks were sticking out of its slots. Nobody else was in the restroom, so I quickly stole some of the masks and stuck them in my purse. Then I walked out of the restroom and was in some crappy college bar from which everyone was gone and there was trash all over the floor. Half empty plastic cups, wet wads of paper towels, no people other than me.

a bad dream on the 5 year anniversary of my dog's death

Uncomfortable dream last night in which my pet dog was possibly approaching the end of its life. The dog basically looked like bones. Literal bones, like if you're walking through a forest and see bones from a dead animal. The difference was all the dog's bones were connected with each other, so it had a head, a body, legs and feet, and even a tail - but no skin or tongue or eyes. But it was alive. But it was in bad shape.

Someone said they could fix it - some woman who acted like an expert who knew what she was talking about. So we were in a dark old basement and my dog was on a table that resembled a table at a veterinary office. The woman who had said she could fix him was cutting into parts of his bone in a way that was supposed to somehow help whatever his issue was - but then she accidentally broke part of one of his bones - and part of me knew he couldn't be fixed or saved after that.

But he was still alive, so what were we supposed to do? She kept cutting and I was worried he was going to break even more, fall apart, and be in terrible pain. I asked her, "Can he hear me?" She said yes, so I was whispering into the dog's ear bones and the holes where his eyes had been and crying until I woke myself up.

When big deaths turn into more little deaths...

Dreams last night involved pets dying. I don't remember the details of how my cat died, but I think it was some sort of illness that wasn't properly cared for because we were focused on something else. My friends sick mouse died because even though both of us had been paying careful attention to the sleeping area and pills laid out for it in its own little space, one of us forgot to shut the door on the way out and the next time we returned to the room to check on the sick mouse, it was gone and we knew it was dead. We realized one of us had forgotten to shut the door and I admitted it was me, even though I wasn't sure.

Even though the dream focused on small animals dying, when I woke up, I kept thinking about people making too many little mistakes and quick and easy assumptions about what is or isn't safe behavior during this ongoing virus. Such as people seeming to assume that it's reasonable to spend time in person with various other family members who don't live with them and seeming to think that they know what those other family members are doing elsewhere or whether those other family members own living environments (as well as those of other friends or family members they spend time with too) are reasonably and relatively safe, even if people aren't asking each other many questions and are choosing to make decisions based on guesses, assumptions, or a bare minimum of information, because it's easier that way.

When I was a kid and had a pet teddy bear hamster, my family was visiting a relative in another state and we couldn't take my pet with us. I overstocked its cage with extra food and water and put a book on the top of the cage, so the hamster couldn't somehow sneak itself out. When my family returned home from our trip, I almost immediately went to the hamster cage and somehow my pet had gotten out anyway. We searched the home and finally found her, huddled up in the corner of a lower kitchen cabinet, dead.

a dream in which food is way more interesting than me

Didn't sleep well last night. Had a small series of oddly bothersome little dreams involving me and poetry and people I'm involved with.

In one dream, my sister, who has only ever been to one of my poetry readings, told me that all of my poetry was like the same poem on repeat, like boring hospital food or like repeatedly watching some class on feminine hygiene products.

In another dream, I was sitting in an airport or mall restaurant with two people who had chosen to visit me there a little bit before I had to head to work. I had about 15 minutes, so I figured we were just going to sit there and talk, but instead they both bought big fancy sandwiches and started eating them in front of me, even though I didn't have time to eat anything. I got upset that in the limited amount of time we had together, they were both more focused on eating than on listening to me, I said something about that, the man acted like it was no big deal, and said his daughter was always hungry. I told him that he had a sandwich too, it was right in front of my face, and I might as well just leave and go to work. He casually said okay. Then I got in front of the woman's face, called her a hog, and left.

So I guess my dreams were insinuating that in some people's minds hospital food is more interesting than my poetry and me - sandwiches are more interesting than anything I have to say - and I might as well just shove feminine hygiene products into my mouth and spit them out on repeat.

Oh and if I get upset at a man for acting thoughtless and careless, then I'll call another woman a hog. 🐷

bad dream induced by memory issue/doctor appointment stress

I woke from an annoying bad dream, in which I was participating in some sort of poetry reading contest. I was the first participant and went up to the front to read my two poems. The woman who was MC-ing the event was a woman I knew, so she and I talked for a few minutes, then she introduced me to the crowd. Before we'd started talking, the poems I was going to read were bookmarked in a journal, but suddenly the bookmark was gone and I had to start flipping through the book to find my poems.

I couldn't find them and the dream consisted of me repeatedly flipping though journal after journal and notebook after notebook, while standing in front of a crowd and looking like an unorganized mess and feeling increasingly embarrassed and confused.

I told the woman she could just introduce the next reader, but she said she wanted to keep the reading order the same as it had been listed and so if I couldn't read first, then I couldn't read at all. I couldn't find my own poems, so I couldn't read first, so I couldn't read at all - but it wasn't the not being able to read part that bothered me as much as losing my own poems and having no idea what had happened to them.

***

I know what inspired this dream. In real life, I make tons of lists all the time, largely because of my mental quirks AND my aphasia-induced memory issues. I'm a very organized person or at least I think I am or at least I attempt to keep my brain organized so that I don't go mentally bonkers. But despite all the time and energy I spend organizing things onto lists, I also lose lists a lot, or I have so many lists that I don't know which is which and which is where.

I try my best, but I can't do anything fast. The more time limitations I have, the more stressed out I get.

I hate doctor appointments (way too many bad experiences) and I have one coming up this Friday. Because of my stressed out brain issues, I purposely set the appointment up months in advance. This is my first appointment with this particular doctor, and they said they would send me the paperwork to fill out in advance. Several months went by and I hadn't gotten the paperwork yet. I thought maybe they planned to send it closer to the time of my actual appointment, but just in case they had forgotten to send it, I called the office again on Friday the 15th of this month. The woman on the phone said the paperwork would be mailed the Monday after that. Well it's ten days later now and I STILL haven't received the damned paperwork and my appointment is this Friday and I'm pissed off and I feel like they just don't care.

I hate doctor appointments to begin with, I get extremely overly stressed out about them, and even if I WASN'T stressed out, my brain can't dash off medical paperwork in ten minutes (or 20 minutes or 30 minutes), because I read slow, I think slow, and I have word issues. If I'm writing something like THIS at home, I can take as long as I want and nobody needs to know how slow I am and about my annoying word issues.

But if I'm writing something somewhere else, I can't automatically process what I'm reading, I can't automatically understand what they're asking, I can't dash things out fast, I can't remember stuff like the names of my various doctors (and I sure as hell can't spell them), the name/dosage of my pill, the time frames of other health issues, or doctor appointments, etc.. Anything to do with numbers and time is hard for me to remember. The only numbers that come naturally to this brain or my birth date and my age.

So what this means is that since the doctor's office didn't bother to send me any advance paperwork, I have to spend a few hours GUESSING what their paperwork will ask me and writing notes to take with me - and hoping I don't forget something important and hoping I don't lose my own notes. The thing is, I'm sure I've written these kinds of notes before, but I don't remember where I put them, even though I probably put them somewhere that I thought was a well organized place to put them. Heck, maybe I even scanned and stored them on my computer, but I don't know, because I CAN'T REMEMBER.

I'm stressed out, part of me would rather cancel the appointment then try to handle this stress, and when I get all stressed out and somebody tells me to relax, I feel like punching them.

The other issue about being stressed out at a doctor's appointment and having to spend a lot of my time and mental energy transferring paperwork I wrote at home onto paperwork they hand me in the office, shortly before the appointment, is that my brain will get so stress-focused on that stuff, I won't even be able to focus on the details of the actual appointment.

Another Bad Dream

Last night's bad dream involved insects. A small group of us were in a room together and there were small but unusual looking insects on the walls. Part of us thought they were harmless, but part of us somehow new otherwise. I was standing by the door and was able to get out in time when the insects attacked. The insects were hideous torture devices. The doors locked shut and there was no escape as the insects ripped apart the faces of those who hadn't made it out in time.

A Rape Dream, Inspired by Our New president

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

I have a new poem up at The Plot!

"Whose fault is it, if I get raped in my dreams
and then when I’m awake, I destroy men
and don’t even realize what I’m doing or why
my mind is diverging them into torn and broken

rubble stuffed in one sandwich bag after another?
It’s not like they’re all just pieces of meat and

it’s not like we’re nothing but holes but
in one dream scene, I stand up for myself
and tell a guy to shut his mouth and the next thing I know
there’s a dick in every one of my holes to show me

what my mouth is good for..."

from my poem "DISPOSAL" at The Plot (An online literary journal by Villainess Press)
read more here https://villainessplot.wordpress.com/2015/07/20/disposal-by-juliet-cook/

Adam Tedesco's ConverseχInverse Featuring Juliet Cook

"We all have mental fluctuations and quirks

Other than that

Things that are real are

Human body parts

Ghostly body parts floating by the ceiling fan"

from Adam Tedesco's "ConverseχInverse Featuring Juliet Cook", in which he interviewed me via verse for Drunk in a Midnight Choir 

Partake of more here - http://drunkinamidnightchoir.com/2015/05/25/converse%CF%87inverse-featuring-juliet-cook/

smile emoticon

Another Motherfucking Gross Awful Bad Dream

I had an awful bad dream last night, worst dream I’ve had in a long time. Women were treated like they weren’t worthy of respect or even life.

It’s been suggested to me that I watch too many horror movies and maybe that’s bad on my brain. I disagree.  Horror movie blood and guts and broken bones and other torn off oozing misfit smithereens is like quirky violent art blood bath amalgamations for me.  Sure some content creeps me out, but I don’t mind being creeped out and scared in a violent red violet art fling. It’s real life violence that I find far more disturbing. 

A movie that had a scene that has disturbingly popped out of my head for years is American History X.  I don’t remember all the details of the movie. I remember thinking it was a good film and that Edward Norton’s acting was extremely powerful and lots of other really good acting too. I saw it years ago and don’t remember the details. I think it was brimming with real life based racist violence, but the one violent scene that repeatedly pops out my head, I don’t desire to describe it in detail, but for those who have seen the film, probably all I have to say is that it’s a head and a foot crushing down. 

After last night’s bad dream, my mind popped that seen out again – AND then seemed to suddenly replay another seen from that movie (or from another movie or from my own brain I am not even sure), that I’ve never remembered before. A store (grocery or convenience) being broken into by a group of men and the women workers being held down and tied up and having more and more food and liquid just poured all over their bodies and faces and into their mouths.  The reason that seen suddenly entered my head after my dream was based on my dream involving females being treated with no respect, like they were just bodies with mouth heads that needed to be shut. 

Body parts and mouths to be filled and then stepped on stomped on pried open pored into choked gagged dragged stabbed shot left for dead who cares they’re just objects with holes.

The dream was awful because it involved a man from my past who I don’t think about all that much anymore and my mom who never liked him.  I don’t have the time to try to specify where the dream came from or what the dream meant (anyway I already sort of did based on those movie memories and how real life violence disturbs me a lot more than horror movies), but below is more of my description of the bad dream.

Dirty yogurt licked up and spit into my mouth and all over the outside of the kitchen cabinets I had just taken the time to clean.  Dirty yogurt spit all over the newly cleaned room while I stood there and couldn’t do anything to stop his gross spit-taking attack. Then as soon as my mom made fun of his behavior, he left the room.

Then he re-entered with a gun directed at my mom.  I started crying and screaming please no, thinking he was going to shoot her.  He let me take the gun, but he directed her outside and she went.  I knew what was going to happen and it was too late for me to do anything about it. Even though I had the gun I didn’t know how to use it. It was too late.

She was going to have her face stomped on and be gone.

She was going to be crushed by the man I had chosen.

***

In other news, unrelated to bad dreams, see my post below about adding a poem line to win a prize.  I don't have anywhere near enough poem lines yet.

EMPTY BLACK HOLES

Another creepy dream from which I couldn’t awaken myself took place on Xmas.

I’d had a headache for most of the day, thus popped more ibuprofen than usual, since I didn’t want to feel too badly to be a part of my families holiday festivities. Heck, despite being prone to weird Xmas overloads to the point of too much stress, I got all my holiday shopping done for both kids and adults; I had even baked a special treat to add to the celebration; AND I had even started calling the day Artmas, in order to have more fun with the whole odd affair and how I might or might not fit into it. My over the top goth necklace and Dahlia eye shadow made me feel pretty creative that day.

Unfortunately though, my headache had gotten so bad by late evening, that as soon as I got back to my house from our families Xmas time celebrations, I had to lie down. Soon I was in the midst of a bad dream from which I attempted to awaken myself and thought I HAD awakened myself, but even though I thought I was awake, I couldn’t seem to open my eyes all the way. I walked up to my bedroom mirror and looked at myself and saw that my eyes were gone; I just had empty black holes.

After realizing I was still asleep, I tried to force myself up AGAIN, thought I had done so AGAIN, but still couldn’t open my eyes all the way, and still felt off kilter, oddly tired, and weirdly zoned out. I tried walking around in my bedroom, forcefully stomping my feet upon the floor to wake myself up better.

After realizing I was STILL asleep and not really walking/stomping, but still trapped shut eyed upon my own bed, I started to feel more stuck and scared; so I started to try calling my parents to help wake me up; but how could I use my phone or make them hear me when I was still in bed with my non-eyes closed?

When I FINALLY managed to wake up (STILL with a slight headache), I found myself wondering if I had possibly consumed too much nutmeg. Then I called my mom who suggested I’ve watched too many horror movies in my life and that’s why this is happening to me now. But my empty black eye holes weren’t even blood red. That might have made the dream more interesting. Instead they were eyeless black holes and I felt scared of being zoned out/trapped/stuck and unable to emerge from that dark mode.

NEW DREAM SEQUENCE – Death & Glimmering Glitter

When I was younger, I used to wish I looked more pale and ghostly.
Now I don't want to become a ghost - I'm scared of falling asleep -
of falling into dreams - of falling down falling down falling down...

***

1. My grandpa called me. I didn’t hear anyone on the phone at first, but part of me knew it was him, even though he never calls me. Then he started to speak in a soft and powerless voice, telling me that he was dying.

2. My ex-husband and I got together. We seemed to be getting along well, feeling good about each other, and having a fun and enjoyable time together. We started kissing. Almost as soon as we lay on the bed together, he turned too strong, purposely trying to overpower me. He told me that he was going to crush me, make me bleed inside, and slowly but surely kill me.

3. Usually, when I decide to make myself wake up, it is easy. This time, I couldn’t do it. I felt like I was jerking around and screaming, “oh my god oh my god oh my god”!. I was trying to scream, but felt like it was barely emerging as a tiny whisper. I was trying to scream loud enough so that someone else would hear me and then help me wake up. At some point, my brain realized that I was by myself; there was nobody here to help me.

4. I finally managed to wake myself up, even though I still felt uncertain for a while as to whether or not I was really awake. I was laying still feeling scared; the insides of my body were making weird little clicking sounds. Even when I realized that I really was awake, my body kept clicking. I thought about how my insides have been feeling odd on and off for over a week now; not painful, but uncomfortable in an unusual way that I am not sure how to describe. Bodily clicking sounds? Moving my neck down and making my stomach and legs tingle? What the heck? (After my bad dream, I was lying there in bed, feeling scared, and thinking, “Please don’t let me have another stroke. Please don’t let me have another seizure. Please don’t let me be on the brink of dying.”)

***

Side note 1: Could this bad dream and my bodily tremors have been partially caused by watching horror movies - thinking back upon grandpa watching old-fashioned vampire flicks when I was visiting my grandparents as a little kid – my semi-recent liking of/dancing too much to techno-cheesy music (dancing by myself but often imagining myself dancing in the middle of two gay men; although I’m not trying to refer to my gay men dancing here, so much as my little head jerkings)?

Side note 2: My mom has repeatedly suggested I watch too many horror movies and maybe that’s what causes my bad dreams, BUT I also had plenty of scary bad dreams when I was a little kid who was not allowed to watch those kinds of movies. Maybe then it was related to my mom telling me too many late night tales that started based on the subject matter of ‘don’t talk to strangers’ and then delved into scary subject matter of people slashing legs, peeling off skin, and stabbing hideous liquids into necks.

At least one good thing about my bad dreams is that they can lead to interesting writings, including poetry.

I can creatively pretend that the strange tingling sensations in my neck/stomach/legs are glimmering glitter.

what is this, a pie eating contest for anorexics?

I'm very pleased that I've almost completed a new designer vagina!

I had kind've thought I had lost the impetus or inspiration for that series, but now it's back and I'm pretty happy about that. The latest piece includes the line, 'What is this, a pie eating contest for anorexics?'

Speaking of force feeding, I've been experiencing more than usual weird bad dreams lately. I don't feel like talking about all of them, but here's a small synopsis of sorts of two.

1. My dog and I had been kidnapped and were in the midst of some kind of strange interrogation situation. We weren't cooperating with revealing the information. My dog can't talk and I didn't know what to say. Our kidnapper/interrogator was growing impatient. He looked like a scrawny high school kid, but was pretty much terrifying anyway, due to his lack of compassion and twisted sadism. He threatened us with a torture that involved being force fed these hideous live bugs until we couldn't possibly consume any more, before moving on to the next torture. These insects were grotesque. They resembled large scorpions except the main thorax areas of their bodies were shaped more like those of extra-plump spiders. They were black with mottled white markings and very ominous indeed. By far, the worst part of the whole dream was me imagining poor Sockeye being force fed these awful creatures. As a dog, he wouldn't understand what was happening and most certainly would not eat them willingly, no matter what threats were flung at him--so his mouth would have to be yanked open and he'd be whimpering, shaking, and cowering, and it would just be a terribly disturbing scene. I'd offer to eat his bugs for him, but my offer would not be accepted, because the sadist would sense that it would be even more tortuous for me to watch my dog being tortured.

2. I wanted to buy a second dog, but not a "real" dog. I didn't think I could handle another real dog, so I had my heart set on this new hybrid creature that wasn't alive per se, but still exhibited certain traits of living creatures. For example, it made these little breathing sounds and motions, almost like some kind of pulsating. It looked kind of like a stuffed animal version of a black poodle fused with a rather bedraggled version of a real toy poodle, minus the fancy hair cut. Everyone else seemd to think I was weird, maybe even perverse for wanting this thing, but I wanted it all the same. Everyone else thought these hybrid creatures were creepy and ugly, but I found them adorable. I would name it Dagmar.

Then the scene changed and I didn't look like me anymore. I looked like some girl from the late 80s or early 90s, with long straight hairsprayed hair and acid-washed jeans. I was in some kind of holding room, maybe even inside a prison, and a burly male security guard started frisking me for contraband and weaponry, and he was being very rough and convoluted with his frisking process. I mean it was clearly obvious that I had a large knife strapped to my thigh inside a holster; I wasn't even trying to hide it; it was fastened to the outside of my jeans. So why didn't he just confiscate my knife and be done with it? No, something more insidious seemed to be afoot here. He saw my knife, but didn't seem to care about that.

He started getting even rougher with his frisking process and I think he was trying to teach me a lesson for wanting that perverted poodle-like creature. I started to struggle with him, even though he was brawny. He turned me around so my backside was facing him, forced my hands down onto a chair, and started tugging at my shirt. I thought he was going to rape me.

Instead, he pulled up my shirt, exposing my lower back, and then used a special device to pierce a hole into the flesh. A dog leash would be attached to the hole in my skin and I would have to walk my new fake dog using this leash that was attached to my own body. Although not very pleased about this procedure, it did cross my mind that at least it would have made for more convenient dog walking if he had pierced that hole in the front of my body rather than the back.

*

Update: The coding glitch has been fixed and you can now read my poem in Denver Syntax 18 (in case you couldn't before and still want to)--

http://www.denversyntax.com/issue18/poems/poems.html

I had another real/fake animal hybrid dream last night, but this one involved a small panda bear like creature, sliding down the stairs...

Also, just a little note that my new poetry chapbook manuscript, FONDANT PIG ANGST, is coming soon from Slash Pine Press (tentatively sleighted for this December, which is very festive indeed, eh?). I love this little article/update on the Slash Pine Press blog, which includes the statement, "Juliet puts the Slash in Slash Pine"! (P.S. The cover art is going to include a woman riding a giant pig!)

http://slashpinepress.blogspot.com/2009/10/into-basement.html

Yay! I'm a slasher!

ALSO, new reviews are up at Tarpaulin Sky Reviews, including mine of Michelle Detorie's really good dusie kollektiv 3 poetry chapbook, 'Ode to Industry':

http://tsky-reviews.blogspot.com/

*

Update: Another little dilemma of production versus creation:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2281067/the_ac_twitter_challengemixed_feelings.html?cat=15

magician assistant failure

Bad dreams this morning about uncomfortable dentistry with pokey wires in uneasy proximity to my gums and then it suddenly it shifted from dentist chair to inside a formidably spiked metal container. I was a magician's assistant and the trick failed; they couldn't figure out how to free me from this device. The magician was just standing in the aisle amidst the audience, on his cell phone, asking someone on the other end what course of action to try next, to get me out.

He asked, 'Should we just let her chew through it?'

*

In less dark news, I wrote a new article about my & D's Caribbean cruise last year:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1948114/notes_on_a_western_caribbean_cruise.html?cat=16

surgery

I had an awful little dream last night, in which I had to perform some sort of surgery upon my Boston Terrier. I had to use an implement that looked like a large pizza cutter to make an incision around the perimeter of his body, beginning at the white underside of his throat and then all the way around, along each of his sides towards the back and under his tail. I dreamed two consecutive variations of this same dream.

In both versions, Sockeye was not anesthetized, but neither was he squirming or squealing. I was just holding him in place as I cut and he was just looking at me with a fearful yet trusting, baleful expression, one of the most excruciating details of the dream. In the first variation, I performed the cutting procedure correctly.

In the second variation, I botched it, cutting into the wrong area of his body. I then proceeded to act casual, as if nothing amiss had happened, even though I was secretly aware that my bungled surgery might cost my dog his life. Even as he continued to balefully gaze at me, I failed to react swiftly to my own mistake, acting as if I pretended it hadn't happened, then this reality might not exist. It was disturbing and I wonder what this dream is saying about my real life.

I also wonder if this dream was at least partly catalyzed by my inexplicable failure to open a can of tuna fish correctly the other night. I spent at least five minutes and two can openers in my struggle with this can, thinking that my can opener was bent out of shape, then thinking that the can itself was somehow warped, before I solicited the assistance of my husband, who promptly informed me that my difficulty was due to the fact I had been trying to open the bottom of the can rather than the top. Then he asked me if I thougtht I should get a brain scan.

What do you think?

new poetry online

A couple of my poems (one of which is accompanied by a tantalizing Italian translation by Letizia Merello) are now up to their peculiar little tricks in the new issue of Turntable & Blue Light. See for yourself, if you please:

http://www.turntablebluelight.com/

These two pieces are part of my chapbook 'Tongue Like a Stinger', to be published soon, in free ebook format, by Wheelhouse Press.

*

In one of my dreams last night, I was part of a menacing knife fight. It was me, an adversary that resembled Uma Thurman's character from Kill Bill, and at least one other person who was on my side. The adversary had a huge knife almost the size of a machete and I had a matching knife; the difference was she seeemd to be some kind of knife fighting prodigy, whereas I had no experience or finesse with knife wielding whatsoever. At first, I faced off with her, but once I realized the discrepancy in our knife fighting skills, I panicked and ran out of the house, leaving my unarmed companion to contend with the merciless knife fighting expert. Unarmed and soon to be unlimbed, likely enough. I felt guilty and cowardly about fleeing the scene, but my own panic had superseded any other feelings. I woke from this dream still feeling very panicked, with my heart racing to the point of alarm; it took me quite a while to calm myself down.

*

Speaking of sharp knives and darkly fluttering feathers galore, I am planning to update the Thirteen Myna Birds flight formation tomorrow. Although submissions are always accepted, it is not too late to be a part of tomorrow's particular feeding frenzy if you send me your poetry today.