The Witch Doctor (REVISED)

For love
I offer you the smallest seeds that sprout into faith
In the orange sunlight.
For sorrow
I give you thunder crashes and the wolf's howl
To guide you through the darkness.

For lust
I grant you fragile glass scultpures,
So pretty and so empty.
For ecstasy
I blind you with manic flashes of blue light,
And lead you toward heartbreak.

You come, hands cupped and hungry.
I cannot feed you.
My medicine will rot you from the inside.
You come, seeking refuge from specters,
I cannot exorcise them.
I am the witch doctor,
I only shine the faintest light
On the monsters who hide behind mirrors,
So you know they are there.

What I Saw Through The Window

It doesn't sound the way you'd think
When an aluminum baseball bat hits a man's spine.
It's a dull thud, so quiet you could miss it.
And you don't scream out when it hits.
You just fall to the grass,
Maybe you pray.

The fight began over a woman,
Or money,
Or maybe they just wanted out of this place
In a cop car,
Or a stretcher.

He crawls across the lawn
Towards a rust-stained pickup truck.
Thud,
Thud,
Thud.

Grandma's on the porch,
She's gonna call the police.
But she never does,
And I can't understand why.
I turn away from the window,
Can't stop crying.
My family doesn't understand why.

What happened here?
It wasn't always this way.
I used to chase foul balls on the sidewalk
Where there's a fresh red palm print.
As he reaches the driver's side door and drives,
I catch my reflection in the window and realize
That nothing's changed.

Hills

Grandpa's house sat on top of a hill,
which poured into a valley,
which flowed out into more hills.
Chaotic terrain.
Up and down the same street:
Ranch houses with yellow lawns.
Up and down, up and down
Then spit out into the Oakland hills.
Never green, too dry.
Smoke rolls off the cigarette in Grandpa's hand,
dangling from his fingertips.
He coughs, then spits out the window.
The smell of cigarette smoke is a comfort
when we pass the cattle farms and trout hatcheries
that dot the miles of yellow hills.
We wind back and forth, up and down
in Grandpa's blue Chevy pickup,
I stick my arm out the window
and I am certain
there is no where else to be.

For Brennan, My Once and Never

From the deck
The ocean stretched
So far
So far
Our time was short
So we didn’t sleep ‘til dawn
In the sunlight
Your pupils were points of black
In a sea of pale green
Where I got lost
So long
So long

In blackest night
The sirens screamed
So loud
So loud
The whipping wind
Fed the fire ‘til dawn
In the flashing lights
The alarm’s glow
Illuminated fear
I remembered that look
So long
So long

From the shore
The ship was burnt
So dark
So dark
The sea was calm
The ash dimmed the sun
In the pale light
I found no fire in your eyes
Strangers now
And the miles between seem
So long
So long

I Can't Say Why

I can't say why
I never came to visit
your house,
the hospital,
your grave.

Where Were You (REVISED)

The lights burned out long ago, she said
But it's alright.
We've got some candles and a little red wine.
You'd never question my integrity,
Though I'm certainly a fool
For you.

It would've been so nice
If we had met when I was seventeen,
My eyes were full of wild.
I was thin and I would grin
At every girl who passed me by.
I would've made a scene
Just to get you to notice me.

The pain died down long ago, I know
But it lingers,
Just like my hand against your waist
As you breathe slowly in and out.
I'd never question your divinity
I am faithfully yours.

Slam Poem

Jesus Christ is Not President

Graffiti buildings:
God is love
Children picket:
God hates fags
Apartheid 2.0
Beck, Romney, Bunning, Bahner
Blood on your hands
Vaccine poison, ban on stem cells, lazy unemployed
A new red scare
Santorum, Hannity, Palin, King
Blood on your hands
Death panels, reverse racism, close the border
A nation still wetting the bed
Playing with imaginary friends

Jesus Christ is not President

Placard on the American Dream:
Bigots only
Tolerance causes earthquakes
Healthcare conspiracy
O'Reilly, Delay, Coulter, Limbaugh
Blood on your hands
Fear like a virus
Filibuster on reason
Birthers, Blackwater, Teabaggers, Vatican City
Blood on your hands
No condoms for Africa
Empathy a dirty word
A nation standing on the porch with a shotgun
Take aim at the rescue planes

Jesus Christ is not President

Thoughts from the Road Ike Built (REVISED)

My brain tries to escape my eye sockets.
I’ve driven this road for hours, days, decades.

I was born out here,
between the orange pylons and overpasses.

On the road, it seems, you're always almost home.
Headlights are a skyline of a lonely city.

Think I’ll stop counting the miles now, think I’ll sing,
If this five hundred mile migraine ever subsides.

Collins Poem #1

Crafting

The poem rattles me awake
in the small hours of the night,
an insistent pang in my ribs
and behind my lungs.

It presses against my temples
and tries to bleed out through pores too small.
The poem knows not of physical law,
and cares not for my desire to just sleep.

'Confess!' it screams.
'Exalt!' is urges.
It tears the worst of me from my memories
and strips the best intentions from what I suppose to be.

The poem is heavy on my back
and it sets me free.

2 stanza poem

Loma Prieta

I. Rambling down the Embarcadero,
Past the years-old roadwork signs,
Francis slides across the hot leather bench seat
Of our copper-toned Catalina.
He kisses my cheek. I push him away, pull him back.
When he asks me how I feel about children and old age,
The pavement begins to pulse in waves
And the last thing I remember
Is the brown plastic dashboard shaking as if to explode.
The rupture felt like rapture,
A 7.0 at least.

II. The road was never finished,
They paved over the crumbled concrete, erected strip malls.
Papa buried me in the vineyard.
I converse with the grapes now.
Francis still walks down King Street,
Still climbs the dark hill.
He calls my name to the seagulls
When the bourbon gets the best of him,
Remembering how Loma Prieta stole everything we had.

Sestina

The Lucky One

June night, fever’s about to break.
Wouldn’t say that it’s a habit,
but it always seems to grow
from the dimly lit corners where I used to stand
thirty eight minutes before the crash.
The bane of all existence.

Never contemplated my existence
until I heard the glass break
on the same day of the stock market crash.
What, again? Starting to look like a habit.
Tripped over the night stand,
as the vein in my temple began to grow.

On the highway, entropy begins to grow.
Might just blink out of existence,
might finally understand
where we go when it’s done. Or what it means to break
away from my old habits.
Cold sweat wakes me like a lightning crash.

Over the wave’s crash
the thud in my chest begins to grow.
She is just a habit,
but not the worst in all existence.
The sweat of pensiveness is about to break,
I’m making my stand.

This surely will not stand,
my better angel’s sure to crash.
Almost time to make my break
before the grass grows
back, and revives all existence.
Salvation is such a nasty habit.

This space that I inhabit,
where the scales of justice stand,
I’m thankful for existence.
Thankful for my crash
course in applied physics. But still this restlessness grows,
and I won’t look through the cracked rearview to see the dawn break.

Looks like I finally caught a break,
or maybe it’s the hundredth time. Though the pain will grow,
I got to walk away from the crash.

Erotic poem

I Think Her Name is Something With a 'K'

New Year’s Eve and it’s cold
In my hollow chest cavity.
Helen says she misses me
From a thousand miles away.
But the brunette at the long table with the
Wild eyes and razor blade heels
Is about to make a dishonest man out of me.

When the lights come on
We scurry like cockroaches
To the door, to the backseat, to a couch I've never met.
Her breath is warm like whiskey, sour with deceit.
Primal, yet sweet.
I drink it 'til I suffocate
Then beg for more.
She slowly slides down my abdomen
And envelops me.

In this nowhere place we are not alone.
The silence could shatter like the broken bottles we danced upon,
Conscience may burst through the door.
But Propriety doesn't live here,
And her screams would scare him away
If he came for a visit.

I am only visiting
The inn between her thighs.
In her salty ocean I am safe
Until the sunrise.

How odd
That she means so much.

How strange
That she means so little.

Soto Poem #2

Mourning in Bay City

“She said that she was lonely
When I wasn’t around. I said people feel
Like that because they don’t know themselves.”
-Home Course in Religion by Gary Soto




Stay, she says
A while longer,
Jesus don't mind.
Worship each other
With knees to the earth
Before the Sun
Sees what we've done.

He stands faster
Than legs desire.
Falls back into softness
And lies.
Palm to her reddened chest
He says,
I am your lightning god.

A short walk
through the fog-drenched hills,
where the sting of salt-water spray
reminds the two: you are impermanent.
And the wind is sharper now.
Where the paths diverged
She sits alone,
On those hills, on that shore,
In the bedroom off the kitchen.
She is sharper now.

Minutes are in the habit
of tripping into fortnights.
Days are shorter,
the air is bitter cold.
He is lost out there,
between here and never.
As ever the sun traces
A loop in the sky.
Some days she looks up and ponders
The nature of deities
And contemplates a new faith.

Soto poem

“The Reason We Never Change”

I was born falling
From the tree on a hill.
Surrounded by concrete,
Ghosts and television news reporters.
A city full of never-coulds and never-dids,
Down that hill I tumbled
On an angry desert wind.

Neatly dressed in a pressed suit and
A yellow silk tie. The ocean roars, subsides.
Some man high on sugar shot the mayor in city hall,
An earthquake tore a hole in the ground a thousand miles wide.
I am red with October’s rebellious rage,
I am golden. I am saved.

It’s quiet now
But don’t trust the silence, the still.
Like a long fist kiss by the pool
It’s here and gone.
Press it in a book and keep it in your breast pocket.
While I was floating, I lost it
Between bed sheets and broken window panes.
Just a leaf
Floating toward the drain.

Family poem

“Red and White”

I watch the cold smoke rising
Twenty stories up,
Turns red with neon
Before the skyline breaks it up.
I’m grateful for the chance
To toast my loved ones, fallen friends
Before I’m laying flowers every other Sunday
Except for when it rains.
I’ll drink a glass of red with you instead.

Forgive my selfishness,
The walls that separated us were thin
But the hallways seemed so long.
I heard you cry, you heard me stumble in at 2 a.m.
So why’d we hide like stowaways
Ashamed of branching veins that cloud our eyes?
Thought we had to make it on our own.
My hands are clean, my eyes are white as snow.

Smith poems

“3:15 A.M., Wednesday, March 15th, 2006”

I hear
panicked words in foreign tongues
and stare
down a blaze ten stories high
and feel
the hot flare of purpose
and run
against the thrust of the crowd
and choke
on ash and adrenaline
and stop
only when I reach your door.







“Apparitions”

The fire left a stain
on the steel, on the shattered
glass twisting sideways, so
unnatural, such a bastardization
of the sun-drenched, shining, smiling
faces and tan bodies once dancing,
once screaming ecstasy, now
suddenly silent, nothing seems worth
saying, the stench of ash and confusion will not
leave my side, will not
be gone when I open my eyes,
so we roar on like a wounded mammal
swimming towards a foreign shore.

Readers Record
“Simile and Metaphor”

1) “One difference between good and not-so-good poets is that the good ones recognize when they’ve written stuff that deserves to be dumped, and load up the truck.” (p. 95)
2) “Coming closer, he turns out
to be you – or nearly.
Once you lose someone it is never exactly
The same person who comes back.” (p. 96)
3) “Michiko is dying in the house behind me,
the long windows open so I can hear
the faint sound she will make when she wants
watermelon to such or so I can take her
to a bucket in the corner of the high-ceilinged room
which is the best we can do for a chamber pot.” (p. 98)
4) “How many lives ago
Was that? How many choices?” (p. 100)
5) “Just have patience, and keep digging.” (p. 101)

Readers Record
“Images”

1) “Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implications outside themselves” (p. 85)
2) “And when they find him, his mouth, his throat, his lungs
Full of the gold that took him, he lies still, not seeing the world” (p. 87)
3) “I peeled my oranges
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from a distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making fire with my hands” (p. 90)
4) “Nothing. Not the small sound my sister makes, turning
Over, not the thump of the dog’s tail

When he opens one eye to see him stumbling back to bed
Still drunk, a little bewildered.” (p. 91)

5) “You cannot turn your back upon a dream, / for phantoms have their reasons when they come.” (p. 90)

“Zen & Violence”
Tiny bubbles multiply on the surface of my skin
Then wash away, winding down the drain.
The gentle back and forth of palm against palm
Leaves no trace. No mark
Save for the scars I’ve collected
In twenty-two years of Zen and violence.

Memory: the thief, the coward
Won’t let me forget, won’t let me remember.
Won’t draw a straight line for me to walk
So I wander, I stumble
From landmark to landmark.
And I find no reason
No reason at all.








“Like Animals Do”
She burrows down into the darkness of my sheets
Like a dung beetle clawing into the earth
She goes deep inside and dares me to follow
So I dig in deeply, warmth finding warmth
And breathe only when she lets me
Holding on for dear life

It was Independence Day when I saw her
Selling snake oil to the credulous
Bright green leaves wrapped in yellow tissue paper
Her face was a memory from my future
Though I didn’t know it then
We were soon-to-be, we were never-to-be
Insects in a web we could not see
So when the ground opened up and all the sinners fell through
We dug deep into each other
Holding on for dear life

Readers Record
“The Music of the Line”

1) “In other words, there is a momentary silence, and as musicians know, silence is an integral part of music.” (p. 105)
2) “We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.” (p. 107)
3) “through it all when I’d cling beside you sobbing
you’d shrug it off with the quietest I’m still
here” (p. 111)
4) “Be careful that you don’t become so enamored of what a line break can do that you begin using it as a clever trick, rather than a technique to serve your poem.” (p. 112)
5) “There are no real rules for line breaks.” (p. 105)