i lie
watching the sunlight
shine on my skin
intermittently
through the tree's
slow sway

Weapon of Choice

You've always looked
to the moon
for target practice,
looking to shoot
straight through its
cast white face

man invented gunpowder
two thousand years ago
in China
looking to fire
rockets
to puncture the waiting
insistent
moon

the sky arches rhythmically
and we gotta want to blow
a damn hole it in,
pierce through from
this world in to the next
somewhere in our DNA
there's instructions
to fire wildly at the sky
and hope you can tear right
through it
and you were always more gunpowder
than nicotine and damn I think I felt the blood rush to my head again and it looks like I'm outta whiskey so I wonder if I can't draw this drunk out till sunrise

This was the ending of some other poem but now its a new one

In the future, the results
on Google will determine
how famous you are.
How many hits you get
will determine how much
you get paid and a holiday
bonus is given
for the amount of images
people can see of you.
Wikipedia pages are ads
for everyone in the world.
And everyone will know
everything about everyone.
It'll be great.

Googling Someone's Name is Perhaps the Most Romantic Thing to do as Shown Through a Poem by Joe McCall

When I Google your name
a twitter from
you to me comes up
to meet at the diner
at 5:45

I don't know where
we were going
to Philadelphia
for some cheesesteaks,
a beach to see
constellations, have
a casual conversation
over coffee
but I was probably late
as you waited
in your car
and our conversation
was awkward because my
"getting to know you"
phase of a relationship
takes a lot longer
than most.

The Catholic in Me, Loves the Sacrifice in you

The Catholic in me
loves the sacrifice in you
all the rides you give your cousin
in a car that can't
travel in warm weather
the fries you give away
at diners bought with
change used for toll booths
and expensive video games
for your brother which
may or may not have
zombies.

I give my stuff away too
and eventually I see
us both in an empty room
with nothing left to give
to anyone and we're not bored
and we're not meditating
and people don't come looking
for us or needing anything else.
We won't know what to do
with ourselves. We'll be anxious
and out of place and though
we claim to be absurd now
will really know what its like then.

wild ride in the hyundai-
high on caffeine
and nicotine
long scenic drive
wanderin' west side

the way a body
feels
under the strain
and demand
and demons
weary without
the warm caress
of sleep
eyes burn red
as if angry
or drunk
or both in coitus
the slow ache of lactic acid
runnin hard in muscles
is all

a human translation
of a rigid object
in prairie wind

i always want a cigarette
when i ride the subway
the r uptown
violent as war
i imagine its noises
as the sound
of empty space
screaming
to its lonliness
the torque
of gravity
on the vacuum
in the subway
the r uptown
at this depth
cosmic rays as lines
of singular quarks
still pass through
your body without
resistance and
i always want a cigarette

the way to do this
is slowly
to force all the shit out of my brain veins
because everythings got to be somewhere
and anything
can only exist
in one place

so these bad word lines
poor ideas
if they're on the page
they can't
be in my head

that is the devil's logic

and i can be left
to go on
about sunset love
the zen
of death
smokestacks
and twisting metal in a certain slant of light

little little
observation and existances
that hint in train break whisper and hiss
at some sort of human condition
make us all whole again
in starlight

something something something
about the headphoned black man
dancin with yellow staten island ferry
singin along
to the latest album to save hip hop
this month
his little girl
twisting a pig tail

and how all this happens
in the same eyes
i use
to watch death
occur
again and again

and nicholas cage's voice
monotoan and tired
talkin about
"bearing witness"

and tom waits
always right
and its sadder each time
in starlight
but damp now

in my head
i see beutiful
blood
always well lit running and pooling on black asphalt

and every new yorker
stares straight ahead
like it was
a religious practice
cuz mecca is up there
cuz getting through
to a holy light
up ahead
is a singular point
cuz every footstep until then
is tediou
or empty
or polyester
or a chore

and when i force
all this shit out
with the burn of time
and ink
then i'll be able to talk
about you and me
and eternity spilling out of eyes
and lamposts
in a way
that always seems to reverberate
and never feels
overworked

maybe a fragment
here can come out
resurrect later
a kernal
in the starlight

Sometimes I think I'm just
possibility

a hypothetical scenario
played out by the universe

and her eyes
are theoretical

not really seen, just
postulated

and this madness is really
a thought experiment


Sometimes I think
this all played out

over and over, in an
infinite film

tiny variables changing
various permutations

the sand on the beach
rearranging

long branch (an old twitter post)

I'm gonna need
more than the ocean breeze
to stir
this stagnation.

I post more on things on twitter than I do on Walking English.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this.
Man, this even sounds like a tweet.
Fuck.

America is a mixed sand

Which amounts to

Earth

This isn't a poem

Just something Jasmine said

Hooded, over Maker's Mark, by a brick wall

In a city

We both forgot

Years ago

after New York,
painted fingertips of a hand raised, hesitant, at my window,

after wet streets,
fast traffic of souls in heavy coats,

after lights on bridges,
honeyed fruits strung from impossible branches,

after scalding daylight on trains,
mornings slow between darknesses,

after oils, waxes, acids, plasters,
strange faces in frames, relentless laughter and plastic glasses,

after dances,
ah, after dances

after voices of men with little to say
and women who were so much to remember –


here is life, reduced to rice
and one white line, a lovely nothing to either side, at last.

New York put her hands back in her lap,
her secrets untouched in the pockets of her dress

she never knew what to do with our poetry

The Devil in Joshua Fink

the devil found my note book
and wrote some awful things
he did some damage
he made some problems
and made me unforgivable
he found your weaknesses
he found my insecurities
he scratched at pages with impunity
and used swear words to describe religions
the devil found my heart today
and made everything a problem
he made you hate me
he promised me I'd never die
and it was the worst thing ever said
he told me I was beautiful
and no one could be worth as much
and that is why you hate me
the devil stole my mind today
he made all my ideas the greatest
he made all my clothing perfect
every step and movement sexy
every menthol drag precise
he told me I was clever
in the thoughts I found in books
he told me all I needed
was to worship what I am
and to gather those
who needed something to worship

blame cherry tree season,
all that immaculate being afflicted by light

once, we were pink and complete

something shaking in me

sometimes
the hardest part
is realizing
how much life hurts

but the easy part
comes so naturally

and it's all ok
with an artistic fingerprint

with a new lease
on falling apart

sunrise full of needles
i've invited too much light -
i can't see.

and the enormous peace i'm building
isn't mine, at least -
it's not for me.

I don't want to say anything really.
I just want you guys to look up every once in a while
Maybe on a Tuesday, I don't know

Because there's so much Tuesday,
And there are so many of them
And we forget,

And who can blame us
Because there's so much to forget
And there are so many Tuesdays to be forgotten.

I don't want to speak,
Not really
I just want you guys to remember a day

Every now and then.

today my books fail me.
i find a line of birds,

text upon a borrowed sky
between one winter and another.

ancient and foreign,
avid and frantic,

illegible.
i find a line of birds and wait with them

speech comes to my hands and feet first.