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I don’t want to be an outdated poet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

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

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

1st Love

I was on the bridge on a Winter’s frozen night
Standing on the four inch rail
My chest pressed forth
Arms wide and welcoming
Eyes closed with my nose high
With a passionate inhale
Of the cool
Fresh
and reaching sky
The abrasive wailing wind on my back
The ghost stampede
Thrusting me from my footing

There was silence here
A free fall dream
The stars spiraling
The clouds and lights
Like comforting blankets
And bedside candles
The involuntary sigh of peace and hope
Just before the crash

I’m gasping now
Every effort for air
Comes with a painful gulp
Of brackish water
My muscles have buckled
My legs won’t move
The cold cuts into my ribs
And I feel an extra ton to me
My eyes recess into my face
My jaw is forcibly clenched
I keep reaching frantically
Craning my neck
For something to hold
For a landmass to aim for
But my sight is hindered
With the sloshing water
Of my panicked struggling frenzy

As I start to really sink
When my efforts prove my strength a farce
As the light above abandons me
I collect myself and know
That this is what I came here for

-Joshua Fink

Total Recall

Tjw new generation looks healthier ;
We are being.phased out
Like the troops before us
We fight on the front line
a battle inside
pushing against time
Some day we'll make rank
and fall
someday we will be nothing at all
But shadows in the memories
Of all these brand new human beings
encapsulated like a snow globe
In a friend (or foes) anterior lobe

Tjw new generation looks healthier ;
We are being.phased out
Like the troops before us
We fight on the front line
a battle inside
pushing against time
Some day we'll make rank
and fall
someday we will be nothing at all
But shadows in the memories
Of all these brand new human beings
encapsulated like a snow globe
In a friend (or foes) anterior lobe

At the Cabaret on Christmas Eve

The main hall was smokey
and sadly quiet
Tony sat at the piano on the stage
his head hung low
as though he might pass out
and end the tune with his forehead

Elaine behind the bar
was biting off her press-on nails
from boredom
while the bus boy rattled at her
deploying the unwarranted energy
from the speed he sniffed out back
before his shift

Eddie Main was at his table
wearing a porkpie hat
that looked like he'd sat on it
at some point in the night
he asked the waitress to leave his empty glasses
at the table
so he could measure his degradation

Chauncey leaned on the stage
Like a gambler pleading to a horse
vicing his dark brown fingers together
as he tried to whistle along
with the keys

There was Mona the psychic
in the back by the bathrooms
shuffling her tarot cards
waiting for a weak wary rube
Luis sat with his 'sister'
his wife, not in attendance
Arlen sat center stage
up in front
three lit cigarettes in his ashtray
scribbling on a napkin
with a broken fountain pen
Willy the Pistol tried to keep the beat
with his fist on the table
the only man who didn't seem alone this night

the young disheveled girl
sat so close to him
her right hand wrapped under his arm
wrested on his dead wrist
she asked why
why did they call him the Pistol
he bit his cigar hard and said
'I always have Six shots
and I'll put anyone on the floor'

The Cabaret on Christmas Eve
was a brutal rueful tell
on a booming Friday night
all these people seemed so tuned in
they all looked like
Moguls and sharks and wise street deities

but with the crowd gone
and the lights fixed and dim
You could see it all
you could see the tears in the blazers
you could see the creases on their eyes
you could spot all the cheap jewelry

The Cabaret on Christmas Eve
put a spotlight on loneliness
every ballad played
was a story for every scarred set of knuckles
it gave a microphone to the damned
while they whispered to themselves
while they ran down the timeline
of every dark mistake
While Willy the Pistol
looked intently at this ragged girl
and said
'I don't remember the last time
I looked back to check
to see if what I'm running from
is still chasing me.'

Untitled 07/31/2012 00:21:31

So the sun sets
Left me on the shore
Underneath the sky I sit
She changes from blue to black
Like a bruise getting out of hand
On the other side of the horizon
Is another way to live
through this and through them
I guess maybe I just can't win

So the sun sets
Left me on the shore
Underneath the sky I sit
She changes from blue to black
Like a bruise getting out of hand
On the other side of the horizon
Is another way to live
through this and through them
I guess maybe I just can't win