When he arrived home, he found the door to the basement was open. With his heart thudding in his ears, he quickly went down the stairs and found the cage he had kept her in was empty, the door hanging wide open. How she had escaped he had no idea. He went back upstairs. Already it was dark and quiet outside. She could be anywhere by now. He sat down on a couch and waited for the inevitable. Soon there was the sound of many sirens approaching. They wouldn’t understand that with her free, the world would soon end.
Joanne Fisher
This was written with the prompt to write a story about an open door provided by the Carrot Ranch August 5 Flash Fiction Challenge.
Always Waiting...
I'm always waiting
for you
but you never
arrive
just as well
you see
I don't deserve
love
certainly not
from you
I'll sabotage
anything
left between
us, so
you're better
to stay away
the damaged and
the broken
are loners by
choice, yet
often wishing
we weren't
Joanne Fisher
Dark Blood
what a way to die -
seizures on the sidewalk
on a dark Halloween night
you wanted to escape
the tinsel people
the sick and the hungry
to fill the emptiness:
heroin, LSD, cocaine,
marijuana, valium...
whatever you need
within arms reach,
who could save you
when your insides
are like a dead crab
picked over by gulls
and there is not
enough
substance
Joanne Fisher
Originally published in JAAM 12
I haven’t had much time to write lately so I’m falling back on an old poem. When I put my first collection together I didn’t include this poem as I felt it was too weak. Revisiting (and giving it a rewrite) makes me wonder it was better than I thought at the time.
When I wrote this I had just read a biography of the actor River Phoenix who died on October 31, 1993. At the time he was working on the film Dark Blood. They had just shot the exterior parts of the film in the desert and then come back to Hollywood to shoot the interior scenes in a studio. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Phoenix went on a drugs binge that led to his death and the film was never completed. The director George Sluizer ended up releasing the film in 2012. He narrated the parts that never got shot, and having seen it recently, you do get a sense of what was lost. It would have been a very intriguing film had it been shot in it’s entirety and it touches on some very dark themes, which probably didn’t help Phoenix at the time. The list of drugs in the poem is what was found in Phoenix’s bloodstream after his death. I find it sad when obviously talented people throw away their lives needlessly.
On an unrelated note my blood is a rather dark colour similar to the colour above, just so you know…
The Vampires
after all
they do exist
always coming for you
in the dark
standing in Stygian doorways
grasping for the ones
filled with light
like a hand smothers
a candle
they whisper
flattery, their
words hissing
through their
white perfect
teeth
waiting
to puncture
your fragile skin
and blood-gorge
on the spirit
leaving you
hollow and broken
and diminished
Joanne Fisher
This is another older poem., though I gave it a rather severe edit.
Not literally about vampires, but people who drain your energy, or use you for their own purposes….
“I deeply wish the killer comes to know what he took away from me. The love I shared with her. I want him to know the wonderful person she was and the light she brought into other people’s lives. I want him to know that; to finally understand what he took away from us all as he rots away in the darkness of a cell. That’s what I want.”
“I understand. Consider it done, though you have paid a great price.” the voice said. I stared at the pale reflection in the mirror.
She Said...
She said I don't care about most people
but I like you
she said I want to be with you
forever
she said I love you
*
she said I don't want to come around
anymore
she said I thought I loved you once
but now I'm not so sure
she said I'm sick of you
and I was pushed under
the dark waves
Joanne Fisher
This was previously published on my blog in June 2018.
"Daddy" bySylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
12 October, 1962
Sylvia Plath died this day in 1963. This is one of her more well-known poems.
I had plans to do my 2020 review, but I’m not in any state to do that right now. Maybe tomorrow…
As WordPress chooses to publish my poetry with no stanza breaks, no matter what I try, here are were the breaks are: the second stanza begins with “friend, most”, the third stanza begins with “they love, yet”, the fourth stanza begins with “me demons”, and the last stanza begins “to myself”. Every three lines basically…
