Prescient Night rises up from the dust of Atrocities Pre-Dawn, something I was working on shortly after the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There’s not much resemblance between the two poems, only that both have a nighttime feel.

Prescient Night

There’s smoke on the cliff
up where space between houses
is vast like countries, continents
that drift apart yet
come together

the way LA and San Francisco
will be neighbors one day,
ten-thousand years later
the Dodgers and Giants
are crosstown rivals again.

By then
we’ll be buried under ice,
ground into ash
or however the world ends
next time.

These thoughts squirm
among rooftop stars
into a long fall game
at twilight, rows of cigar smoke
popcorn and some kid
reaches in vain
to squeeze a foul pop
falling, falling

toward bare hands,
spilt beer and cheers
rain down like so much dust
to dream and hold.

Atrocities Pre-Dawn

While the world sleeps
because victims never know
and anyone who cares
is dreaming.

Killers can eat breakfast that way,
actions don’t count at night.

Consciences forget these things
and good is saved
when God is looking.

No one knows what’s coming
then air raids make their music
in the dark.

Once word spreads
it’s already last night

to the benefit of news,
the story suddenly old,
cameras off, fiction
has room to unfold.

Some Nights comes from a poem called Sleeping Brainwaves, which was something I worked on a few years ago to help make sense of the occasional pre-dream, non-English chatter that would “play” in my head while I was trying to fall asleep. It wasn’t every night, but there was a spell where it happened more often than I would have liked. The only “rational” explanation I could come up with was that our brains are transmitters, each picking up distinct signals across timezones, meridians, continents, etc. Different episodes would tune in and out; eventually I’d latch onto one and drift straight into a dream. I decided to return to Sleeping Brainwaves after Courtney found the the first version while she was setting up her new home office. Neither feels done to me.

Some Nights

Some nights, static fuzz in my head
buzzes like shortwave,
nonstop Spanish talk,
Russians argue drunk,
a Latin priest at mass.

How these dregs of dream arrive
I can’t say, only soon
sounds form a tunnel
back to my father
dressing for work.

He explains how the knot in his tie
lines up with buttons
from collar to belt
where the buckle shines
for whomever signs off

on the raise due two years now
for looking sharp,
always punctual, quick -
a gift of sleep
he says some nights

while others
he’s as washed out as me,
dresses under too bright a light,
wonders back to something
he heard but didn’t catch.

Sleeping Brainwaves

I hear voices of old loves
at night, friends
some dead, family the same.

Ghosts that walk me over
to sleep, talk
from behind ears.
They open doors into dreams,
guide me to the bottom

as my own voice rushes past,
muffled in the din of the rest,
off to haunt friends
far off,

our brains
twisting at their stems,
affairs our bodies
never know.

If you’re not already familiar with Four and Twenty poetry, you should be. Four and Twenty is an online poetry journal that publishes the shortest of short form poetry. They seek to promote the publication of artful poetry through an online medium, and are specifically looking for fresh and emerging voices to include in their journal, published by Declaration Editing.

Check out their latest, and submit your short good work.

Cross Over is the child of a poem I was working on a couple of years ago called Found Cat. The trigger came when Jacko, who belonged to our friends Scott and Kelly, was hit by a car as he was either resting in or crossing the street. They called us as soon as it happened because Scott was literally on his way to the airport for a work-related flight out of town. We went to their house and helped Kelly bury Jacko in the back yard. A night or two later, Kelly related a dream in which Jacko came in the house from the backyard, all cleaned up and new and ready for another life. In both versions below, the “I” narrator stumbles upon the dead cat and tries to help him on his way.

Cross Over

I’d like to be a hand for you,
a heart, mouth
for a world of words
or just tongue
for wounds you can’t lick.
Stranded as you are, a dead cat
in the road – fresh killed,
an eye-ball gone, blood
and skull exposed
from the hit that did you in.

I have a shirt – I’ll cover you.
You like this, how could you not?
A collar but no name,
someone’s long gone friend -
let’s skirt the streets,
go door to door
to find your bed, food bowl,
scratched up couch
where you honed your claws.

You look fine, a little scared,
a fang hanging out
so death knew what you thought
when it bore down
from the grill of that car. I know -

you were robbed, didn’t get
the ninth life. No one does.
Let’s reflect tonight.
I’ll bury you in the yard,
warm like mother’s rest.

When you’re ready,
clean up for a final pounce.
Scratch at the door.
I’ll fix dinner, scruff your neck
before you head to the road
you must cross.

Found Cat

I carry the dead cat
door to door to horrified looks.
Whatever did him in
knocked an eyeball out, a blotch
of blood where an ear was.
One fang hangs from his lip,
shows death what he thinks.

No one claims the fat
warm thing. I take him home
without name, dig a grave
through my yard’s hard earth.

I have no prayer,
just a stranger over his plot.
I trickle dirt back in,
lay stone and nod.

At night he scratches
through the door. Cleaned, his parts
repaired, he heads back to the road
he never crossed.

Light started as something called The House at Night. The trigger came when Courtney and I were house shopping at the end of 2003; we’d looked at a house earlier in the day that felt haunted. In the evening we were in the same neighborhood and decided to check out the house again. There was a single light burning away in the basement, and I wasn’t sure if one of us had left it on when we saw the house, or if the “ghost” had. We didn’t take the house, but I did get a poem out of it.

The new version shifted to New Year’s Eve for some reason. Not sure why. Enjoy both versions below.

Light

No sooner gone then lost,
I turn back on the wrong street
to the house
where disco lights burn,
music on every floor, friends
and plenty I didn’t know
there for New Year’s Eve,
the long wait
for a falling ball
to announce rebirth
into a screaming world.

I want to go back in,
stand by a plant
unnoticed in the middle of things
like a ghost,
not weep about sorry life
but be lost
for the few seconds
between hours and years.

Instead I walk to the empty yard,
sit and stare
at a single blue basement bulb
just above the sink,
nothing but air
between emptiness and less.

I stay for an hour, longer,
well after sunrise
and moon again.
Days in fact, until
I’m a snowman in the lawn.

I wait for the light to go out,
something to change,
hope it never does.

The House at Night

I didn’t remember leaving the light on,
but there it is, casting the basement
in sink cleanser blue.

I’ve come back
to rethink plans, classify the roof
unscalable, not fit for stars
and a nicotine veil.

Besides, the garage needs work
and the cradle where the bath would go
spooked me from the start.

I imagine the type of crime
that starts a bad movie, everything
cut in shadows and screams,
a grisly death
coming back to haunt new owners
years later.

I didn’t want that or the porch,
fine for a dog, but no room
to lay my own bones beneath.
And the moon – would she always
suck the gutters so?

Then there’s the shoe-level bulb
burning away the resting hours -
who left it on? What keeps it fed?

Holiday food becomes holiday leftovers, and after a few days of turkey (or duck, or whatever), you gotta make the old taste new. In that spirit I’ll be sharing some leftovers every day this week, somewhat drastic revisions of old work pulled from the archive. In so doing, the Guest Writer and Interview Series features will take a week off for the holiday, and I’ll actually make myself work on getting some words on the Creative page.

Keep an eye out – and feel free to comment or send some of your own.

Bars and breaks
are most common. A fork
at midpoint.
Everyone has chains.

Once, long ago but not long

when you consider life,
there was a house
on the cliff,

beach below where you stood straight
with misty sighs, considered gray
in your hair

the same as that day’s sky -
remember?
You said

it would all be mine and then,
like the heart,
gone.

Not just the beat between words,
quick steps from thought
to thought -

you warned all life’s a pulsing pounce,
this one, the next.
I argued,

said something out-longs the way
we live. Sand on the shore
metaphors.

You rolled your eyes,
mentioned castles,
tides,

night with its cold wind on bone,
we headed in
to the fire,

watched worlds begin and end.

1) Consider what it is you want to be in the world and for the world.
2) Avoid words like change.
3) Why change the world when the word itself leads one down the path that something is wrong with the world and only you can change it.
4) To change the world is purely speculative and is, itself, the result of narrow perspective.
5) Change what?
6) We only know so much.
7) Instead of changing the world for the better, allow the world to flow through you such that you flow through it.
8) Re-purpose your purpose, not toward change, especially when the word becomes too wrapped in egoism and desires, but toward being.
9) Just as there is darkness, there is a light that flows through all things.
10) Be light and life in the world.
11) Be an open vessel, channel, receptacle of this light – allow it to flow through and guide you.
12) Don’t confuse this message as dogma or religiosity, especially when you consider energy.
13) There is an energy to all things.
14) Scientists, gurus, priests, atheists all agree that there is energy to all things.
15) Allow energy in.
16) Conduct energy out.
17) Be energy through life.
18) Let energy be the base and basis of your thoughts, words, actions and interactions.
19) If change is your desired outcome, be the energy that leads toward it without ego, attachment and expectation.
20) Know this above all things: What you deem possible, and the results you dream, pale in comparison to what the universe can conjure.
21) Forcing your way toward a desired outcome will actually inhibit what is potential.
22) Be open to what comes.

You can’t take pride any more. You remember when a guy could point to a house he built, how many logs he stacked. He built it and he was proud of it. I don’t really think I could be proud if a contractor built a home for me. I would be tempted to get it there and kick the carpenter in the ass (laughs), and take the saw away from him. ‘Cause I would have to be a part of it, you know. (From Working by Studs Terkel)

I was angry for no good reason back in 1997. At the time I’m sure there was a reason, but in reflecting, I can’t figure what it was. Life probably. I was a janitor and a student, a 21-year-old kid with a head that wouldn’t shut off. I wanted to be a writer. At work I used to chain smoke with a woman named Holly. She was in her 50s and was similarly pissed off at the world. Her anger seemed more justified. She’d been working —wirkin’, as she liked to put it—her entire life, or at least for the past 30 years after what she described as partying days spent riding around on the backs of Harleys. She had a son and a daughter and didn’t have too many good things to say about either of them. More than anything she liked when I talked, wanted me to tell her stories and liked to brag on my behalf that I’d wind up being a writer at some point as long as I stayed at it. I didn’t see how that was going to happen, but I kept up with telling her stories during breaks or while I pushed the mop along and she ran a dust rag over something.

One day she asked why I was pissed. I said, “Because people don’t care about workers,” or something like that. She asked what I wanted to write. I told her I didn’t know, but that I enjoyed interviewing people and wanted to write about people at work. The next day she showed up with a beaten back-pocket copy of Working by Studs Terkel. “Read this,” she said. “It’s what you should do.”

Her point was that there are millions of stories out there just waiting to be accessed, waiting to be told. I didn’t have to “make stuff up” to be a writer; I just had to listen. Over the next dozen or so years, between trying to write the next On the Road or create the next Holden Caulfield—token dilemmas that plague plenty of young anglo janitor writers—I would drift back to the role of listener, of observer, of recorder, always nodding, if you will, to Studs Terkel.

Back in 2000, Terkel read at Harry Schwartz bookshop in Milwaukee. Mostly he told jokes and made people shake their heads. I stood in the back of the room and listened, then waited in line to get my back pocket copy of Working signed. The anger I carried around back in ’97 had transformed into a blend of uncertainty, disillusion and anxiety. I was working as a janitor someplace new, smoking my breaks away with new coworkers who’d been working as long as Holly or longer. After work I went home and tried to wedge the next Holden Caulfield into the next On the Road.

I kept rehearsing something to say while I waited in line. I wanted Studs Terkel to write some bit of wisdom or guidance, to tell me to keep plugging away, keep sitting down, keep going after it. When I finally got up to him he smiled and asked my name. I choked and had to mutter “Dave” twice before he heard me. I walked away with “To Dave” on the cover page.

I haven’t looked at the book in years, but pulled it out this morning when I heard Terkel died last night. The sub-head beneath the title reads as follows: “People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.” I’m lucky to be writing all day, but I’m most fortunate when I get to sit and talk with someone else about what they do and how they feel about it. In the back of my mind I’d hoped to interview Studs one day, but I guess I’ll have to wait for our next pass through. In the meantime I’ll keep my recorder at the ready and do my best to capture the few stories he didn’t get to.