Juliet Cook and j/j hastain

Otherworldly Force Field


At least I don't force myself upon others
and act as if my brain is in total control
of everyone and everything 
even though we have our own bodies and brains
and nobody knows everything about everyone else.

For example, you don't know how many fangs I have 
hiding behind my left eye. And I don't know
exactly what my own fangs might do if
we died tomorrow and in the afterlife
only ate peanut brittle made from
memories of broken bridges. 
  
What if the afterlife is a slightly rotating never ending 
shuffleboard display? What if the winners receive nothing
other than stale, old-fashioned candy?
Or monopoly boards with subcutaneous missiles.
Who is in charge of this game?
 
Who am I when I am in charge
of a rototiller. Will I use it as weaponry
against the flowers that don't like me?
What if I'm paranoid about every flower on earth? 
 
Should I buy a roto-rooter and go to town,
trying my best to repair every drain in order
to find the underworld?
Or should I use my imbalances as
explosions to force my way in to a new world?
A mental metropolis 
where somatic exercises help us learn and grow
into beasts if we want to stay alive.
 
Read a book.
Masturbate between pages
until stink bugs crawl out of your mouth,
hoping to grow new brains,
because we all need them with this vacuum.
 
A herd of deer across the street stare at me, as if
trying to determine if I'm friend or foe
but I don't know the answer. What if I'm rabid?
All I know is I want my hair to be the color of a fawn,
but it just keeps turning white.
 
We all scream for eye candy,
brain waves stuck inside volatizing spray paint tubes 
and as Halloween nears the weeds in our lawn will
cheer and gallivant and fly into red costumes.
 
Finally freed of their status
quo response of cowering
to the lawn mower


Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

j/j hastain is a collaborator, writer and maker of things. j/j performs ceremonial gore. Chasing and courting the animate and potentially enlivening decay that exists between seer and singer, j/j hopes to make the god/dess of stone moan and nod deeply through the waxing and waning seasons of the moon.