Joseph Fulkerson's Blog

My horror novel Brood of Vipers has been picked up for publication by Translucent Eyes Press! Many thanks to editors for believing in the potential for this book.

Think Midnight Mass mixed with Frailty meets The Book of Enoch, all set in the hills of western Kentucky.

Logline:

A former addict looking for a fresh start, a small town preacher reeling from loss and tragedy, and a rogue angel square off in a supernatural tale of miracles, murder, and blood sacrifices that threatens to unleash Armageddon.

I cannot wait to get this out into the the world and into your hands! I've always been a huge fan of all things horror, and to be able to delve into this genre has always been an aspiration of mine.

Look for it to hit shelves later this year!

In the meantime, check out my novella East Jesus Nowhere, available here.

Don't forget to add yourself to the mailing list to stay up to date.

Joseph

Hunting Grounds

I saw you today & froze
with that-deer in the headlights
of a speeding car-stare.

You didn’t see me, so it wasn’t
permanent, although the scars
threatened to reopen & fester
at the mere thought of you.

I look at you & want to play
a game of hopscotch in oncoming traffic.
I’m hoping to change that soon.
I hear freeze tag is a better alternative.

It hurts less when you’re sent careening
through the air smashing into things
like speed limit signs or mile markers
than the reality that you’ve moved
on & we’re through.

I want to terraform the landscape
of your heart, which as of yet remains
unsuitable for any long-term growth.

I know the future makes the past
seem vaguely familiar, but
I don’t want to be a carcinogen
to your pulmonary functions any longer.

We lost quite a bit in the last one
it still feels like today’s news,
but that’s just me reading too much
into the situation again.

Feelings always were optional for you
while mine were free for the taking.

I don’t know how to try anymore.
It ends up being a ten-car pileup
during a blinding snowstorm.

Won’t it be the same as last time?

Remember calling me an asshole
in front of that bar full of strangers?

They believed everything you told
them, although I must admit you
did put on quite the performance.

I wish it had gone differently.

I would’ve conceded that you were right
-I was being an asshole-
that you were justified
in all your anger
& we would’ve gone on
with the night still believing
we were meant for each other.

It went differently as you know
& I’m left with the tapestry
of what was left unsaid, undone
by our silence.

We never cleared the air between us
the only oxygen in the room turning toxic
poisoning any future civilizations that may
have come from all those sleepless nights
& endless conversations into the wee
hours of the morning.

You needed more, I offered less.
Then you gave me less when I needed more.

You sat on the kitchen floor crying
head in hands, our unwillingness
to change an apparition that haunts
us both to this day.

What was so important that we
undressed each other so completely,
dismantling the very fabric of what
brought us together in the first place?

I would’ve crossed continents to see you
weathering different time zones,
you being the one truth left to die in me.

In the end, we were left with knuckles
scraped clean to the bone
and us both worse for the wear.

You & I,
both predator & prey
drawn to the same body of water
on the Saharan plains

an unlikely alliance
a shaky truce
but for a moment
then
incisor to throat muscle
arterial tears geyser red
separating sinew from bone.

You can’t blame the lioness
for being a lioness.

Her nature cannot be denied.
She must hunt.
She must feed.
She must mate.
Hunt. Feed. Mate. Repeat.

Modern Absurdity, the newest collection of poetry by Joseph Fulkerson, is comprised of previously unpublished poetry, selections from out of print small press chapbooks, and a new and revised edition of Snout Chasing Tail.

Joseph Fulkerson runs Laughing Ronin Press and is the author of sixteen books and chapbooks. East Jesus Nowhere was released by Anxiety Press.

I get that I should be discreet.
I understand the gravity of the situation at hand.
I understand how delicate a situation this has become.
One must handle things like these with kid gloves if one wants to maintain one’s integrity.

Yet a part of me just doesn’t care.
A part of me wants to throw caution to the wind, let the chips fall where they may. Screw it.

I’m tired of being aware of how things might be perceived.
How I might be perceived.

I’ve been judged my whole life anyway.
If I made the wrong choice, I was condemned for it.
If I made the right choice, I didn’t make it fast enough.
I’m tired of not being who I really am.
I’m sick to death of putting on this mask everyday.
I dread it. Loathe it.
Why can’t I just be myself? Would it scare them that much for me to genuine?

Absolutely.
It would force them to look into the mirror at their own false pretenses. Notice I didn’t say their faults? It’s not their faults I take exception with, it’s their disingenuous nature. It’s the requirement for all those around them to take part in this masquerade, so as to not remind them of their own ruse.

What a spectacle this life has become.

I wonder how different I would view and in turn live my life, with the realization that most problems, situations, and circumstances that afflict me are temporary.

Most of my thoughts and energy in any given day are devoted to worrying about or trying to come up with a solution to these issues.

If I were to view these issues through the lens of eternity instead of right now, would that warrant a sigh of relief on my part?
Would I actually be able to live my life, free of the stress and fear that go hand in hand with my problems? We’ve all heard the phrase “live in the now.”

Dare I dream?

For me personally, that phrase always invoked a sense of shirking responsibility, of procrastination. Why put off until tomorrow, what you
can worry about today and tomorrow. I didn’t grasp the real meaning behind it. I felt that to not worry about these issues meant a lack of concern.

That’s not the case.

Despite trying, there are things that we can change, and those which we cannot.

We must make our peace with those things that are out of our control.
Our perceived control anyways.

We must trust the ebb and flow of life and love. For every wave of the ocean that crashes against the shore, there is an equally powerful wave that recedes back into the abyss.

There’s no worse feeling than pulling into work to toil
at a job that you get no fulfillment out of.

Bone grating, soul sapping,
mind-melting work that utilizes
very little if any of my inclinations or talents.

The sense of dread that possesses me on my daily commute is palpable.

Defeat is in my eyes as I march in unison with the other worker drones.
Heads down, arms to the side we file onto the jobsite without so much as a word between us.

Surely I’m not the only one that feels the despondency of a full day wasted on someone else’s dream. Am I the only one looking around, questioning why we do this day in and day out?

I can’t be the only self-aware worker drone.

I hate my job.
Let me rephrase that: I loathe my job.
Every time I go to work I die a little. I can feel the marrow being sucked from my bones.

But it’s a good job. It pays how much? You can work all the overtime you want? You’ll never see your kids?

Who cares about those other things, this job will give you money, and with that money you can buy things you don’t need, and do things that don’t really interest you. Don’t worry about the desires you have for other things, desires ignored will eventually leave you alone.

Your life can revolve around work, and you can become a zombie like the rest of us. They’ll get fainter and fainter and over time you won’t even hear them anymore.

Then you can live vicariously through others. You can project all your shortcomings and disappointments onto your children, making them as insecure and frightened to follow their dreams as you were. Become a zombie, infect your children and they will grow up and infect their children, who will in turn grow up and infect theirs.

The daily routines of the dead.

Zombies ARE real and they’ve taken over.
I am a self-aware zombie. Does that make me alive?

I’ve been infected with nothingness.
I feast on the flesh of my hopes and dreams, choking on the aspirations of my youth, each step takes me closer to the emptiness of Oblivion.

Death is my muse.

What is death but the culmination of every wrong decision you’ve made
finally catching up with you. You didn’t exercise enough; you didn’t eat healthy, drank and smoke too much…lived too little.

Life is a leisurely stroll through a minefield. One wrong step will take you there faster than a thousand right ones.

You want to know what resignation is?

When one knows he or she can’t do anything to change their circumstances.
How do these people do it? Years of wasted talent and dreams. Resignation. Not knowing what to do yet convinced what you’re doing isn’t the right thing.

I am a square peg in a galaxy full of round holes.
Make no mistake, I can fit in, but each corner and edge of who I am must be ground off. “No edges,” they say. “no extreme angles, just smooth curves, that’s what’s nice and proper.”
All that’s left is the hollow core of who I could have been.

Someone needs to break this cycle. I say enough is enough.
There’s been enough infection spread. I say we don’t let our dreams die.
I say we guard them from death and stand up to the infection of conformity.
I say we have settled too long for the “status quo.”

I’ve become alive again, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to settle
for anything less than life.

I say no to conformity, no to what the hordes of zombies expect from me. I say yes to absolution from the sin of complacency.

I choose life.

I choose to live and reject merely existing.
Are you satisfied with your existence? Will you come with me?

Come with me if you want to live.

So, here I am yet again at the crossroads of life.
There are multiple paths in front of me, each one holding its own mysterious outcome.
Which way to go?

I still feel like a child in some respects.
That is, I don’t feel like I am qualified to make these decisions on my own.
I feel like some random adult should walk up to me and say,
“Now Joe, you don’t want to go down that way. That way is a dead end. Don’t even think about taking the path on the right. You need to take
that path on the left.’’

Then I’ll smile and thank them, and with a sigh of relief I’ll go on my way.

It doesn’t work that way, however.

It appears the tale of madness that is my life refuses to define itself by anything other than confusion.
Uneasiness.
A mystery wrapped in a riddle and dipped in a vat of steamy hot self-doubt.

I live within the confines of I don’t know and who am I?
My days are so filled with searching for answers, I’m not sure how I’ll spend my time if I ever do figure it out.
Sixty percent of my waking hours are devoted to searching for answers, while work, family, personal cleanliness, and household chores comprise the other forty percent.

Regret and depression have become close companions of mine, while melancholy and defeatism talk jealously amongst themselves.

I sometimes feel like I’ve discovered the answers I’ve so earnestly searched for, only for them to be revealed as apparitions of the truth.

I seek truth. Truth of one’s self.
I seek enlightenment of the body, soul, and spirit.
I seek freedom from the confines of mediocrity.

As Columbus did all those years ago, I search for a new world to which I can stake my claim. A place I can stake my future and my calling and my hope. A place where I can live among the Braves and the roaming buffalo, running from border to border proclaiming my freedom from the tyranny of mediocrity.

The tyranny of mediocrity.

That’d make a pretty good title. It sums up the first thirty-two years of my life.

I’ve lived on the corner of Mediocre Drive and Compromise Loop my entire adult life. I own a decent three-bedroom, single bath brick home there.

I think it’s time for me to put a For Sale sign out in the front yard.
Or better yet, burn it to the ground and never look back.

You should write this down.

Actually, you should write
everything down
from here on out.

On Oct 12th, 2017
at approximately 5:30pm
when you get to Jimmy John’s,
order the “Beach Club” instead
of the “Totally Tuna.” You’ll be
glad you did.

Don’t stop by the bank to withdraw
cash out of the ATM.
It will eat your card and force you
to use your MasterCard
the rest of the week.

Instead of meeting Matt
to have a drink, stay home.

If you absolutely insist on going,
don’t stay out too late.
10:30–11pm the latest.

When you get to the pub,
sit at the fifth bar-stool from the door.
The one directly in front of the taps.

At exactly 8:35pm, order an old-fashioned
with Jameson and sip until gone,
ignoring the girl with the nose ring
who is new to town.

You’ll thank me later.

Just enjoy the karaoke
and have another drink
or two, if you like.

Now whatever you do, do not
make eye contact with the woman
directly behind you
at your 5 o’clock.

Don’t watch as she takes a drink
and laughs with that blonde friend
of hers, all the while making sure
you’re paying attention
out of your peripherals.

DO NOT engage in small talk.
As a matter of fact, don’t talk
to anyone all.

If you do, you will find her
witty & funny & sexy as hell.
Resist.

You will know her voice
like the melody to a song
you can’t quite remember,
but that you’ll never want to forget.

Please, please don’t give her your number.

Resist looking into her hazel colored eyes,
try not to fall in love
with the way she bites her bottom lip
while thinking of an excuse
to come back up to the bar.

She’ll find one, and make her way
back to where you sit.

She will be everything we’ve been
looking for; everything we need.

We will fall in love with her instantly.
We will propose quickly,
get married quicker
and live a happy life
for a long time,
until the cancer takes her from us.
It will be the hardest thing
we will ever encounter.

We will think death to be easier,
and I’m not so sure it wasn’t
-Isn’t-
which is the very reason
for this highly irregular correspondence.

So, do us both a favor-
don’t go to karaoke night on
Thursday October 12th, 2017.

It’s too much of a loss.

Stay home and watch Broad City.
(this week’s episode is quite funny)

You will thank me later.

Sincerely,
Future Iteration of Us