Thursday, September 27, 2012

For a Moment

Into the rain I stomp
Hard and passionate
Skipping three steps off the stoop as I depart
My boots clomp and slosh in the puddles
The rain runs off my fists with blood
Second hand leather coat
Gleams against the street lights
I’m off of hoping
I’m running INTO the problem
Not running from it
Anymore
I see the lines they’ve all been reading
I see the stage they all practice on
The dichotomy
Of my several selves
I hear the pop trick nuisance of modern radio
The clash of burning cold wind
Against the open finger wounds
From a lost temper and a window too close
I don’t wannabe a rocker
I don’t wannabe a martyr
A bullshit local role model for the frustrated youth
I don’t want to be an outdated poet
But I am
Am I a romantic myth?
Am I a loose cannon wrought with social dysentery?
Do I plug the dream into myself?
Or is it hardwired into my American patience?
All I can be sure of is that I’m done
Done with biting into the bread
Only to abruptly grind into the sand inside
Done reaching
And crying
And screaming
Punching phone booths
And vitriol
And bar urinals
And diner tables
And urban sarcastic apathy

Spit my knuckle-scabs from your teeth
And know I loved you
While I smoked on the fire escape tonight
And remembered you
As you have always been there
When I needed you for a moment

- Joshua Fink

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

did the rairoad, the greyhound,
the open highway
seem
mystical
or did you carve it that way

was mexico
as romantic as you built it
that one time
headed south

or is that why
you got remembered
and taught
and reprinted
and canonized

(one more at the moon)

i caught you tonight
chasing me up the parkway
just before
you drifted lazily out of the rear view mirror

you were laughing
heartily
and half-heartedly
at frailness
at finitude
at flesh and all its soft ways

i thought of all the poems i wrote
about you
to you
(and this is just one more)
i though of all the things you've been

but tonight you were unbearable
you were a weight
a yellow fist shaking

because you were all those things
and i was only one


know things about birds
i do not

when it is right though
i think i feel
the way they bank
perfectly
in a head wind

it is not right now
and i do not know
things about birds

the road
the love affair
of the automobile
each of its hot metal parts
the way it
associates
so well with rock and roll

two bearded poets
to young in the eyes
and young to
in the words and
rhythym

out their
in america
the older woman

the east coast heaves
in a tectonic
jealousy

the rain
is wordless
only the hard things
of earth
echo sounds

her hood up
the street shining
in the wet of it

the hard things
echoing sounds

he kept speaking
of luck
and grace
interchangeably

always
saying
they got handed out
haphazardly

miracles
as sporadic
summer afternoon
raindrops
falling

they discovered
their love
in the rough patch

the world is rain
the big slow kind
the fast sideways type
all the sorts
of water falling

they found
their love,
unexpectadly
inside the umbrella

he thought the ocean's
tides moved with
the day, consistently
rolling in with the sun
rolling out with the sun

but the moon
is a less intuitive body
rhythmic still
but secretive

as it pulls all the waters
seductively

3 parts of a story

8.
mindlessly
in the diner over pancakes
her fingers
agitate the blister on her palm

5.
she falls asleep
holding this fiery spirit
minutes earlier their tongues
flickering
in the wet alien parts
of each others mouths

2.
on the phone
she forgets what she is doing
and pulls on the one hitter
more times than she
realizes

in the remake
the wings will be to heavy
for the boy
the sea, to largs
and the father again
will watch his
bright shining star
plummet
from unimaginable
heights
into the cold and
the wet sea
always the sea
always the placid
all swallowing
sea
forever
in all directions
feathers dancing on
the fat bulges
gravity and the circumstance
of the world
pulling
at all of him
his hair catching
the winds
until he is only a mass
the vigor gone
to where
it always ultimately goes
but to soon
always the sea

words
never as good
as gods breath
and the things
it becomes

van gogh
spent four years
in the noises of asylums
in france
the wheat fields rolling out
from under the calm
blue walls

each brushstroke
wrestling the tensions

the skies azure and calm
forced high up
or gone all together

the earth swelling
in greys and yellows
bigger and bigger

people, dancing hay bails
the quirks of circumstance,
accidents

hard angry lines
cut the land into
fields

two awkward lovers
in the underbrush

a moth,
large grotesque

and then the weeds the flowers
soft and infinite, throbbing
another sky uncut, unconquered

caitlin always calls
in the american night
from states
on the pacific ocean
or mississippi river
with simple words

this time a love
for the Nikes
in that Wes
Anderson film

and the wind
 is blowing
where she is
and she is cooking

their bellies exposed
brilliant white flashes
between the wing
beats of black
topped birds
escorting the
spanish ferry
in the so dark night
of Necoya Bay
with the irregular
rhythyms
of morse code
the varying updrafts
turbulence and
smooth air

Monday, September 10, 2012

Shopping List

Tommy Chong's brownie mix
Store brand home x-ray kit
Crab meat cookies
Voyeur Vince's self mammogram instructional booklet
Whipped cream flavored aerosol
Yo-Yo Ma's signature Yo-gurt
Grandpa Whitey's Original graham crackers
(best with aged white chocolate)
Edible suspenders
mustard flavored licorice
Nick Nolte's (80 proof) Vodka sauce
Oreo's(with new Vaseline filling)
Elmo Park 'drinkable' spring water
Dirty Dixie's two pack pregnancy test(s)
Rice paper air planes
1 Gallon bleach(with free syringe)
Michael J. Fox brand martini shaker
Waffle flavored pancake mix
Pancake flavored personal lubricant
Sour cream Popsicles
Captain Morgan brand juice boxes
Oral B semen flush
Hershey's Diabetic vinegar bars
Pac-Man fever reducer