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.