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.

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?