FROM THE ANTHOLOGY OF DREAMS OF DEATH:
DREAM THAT ENDS WITH AN AXE IN A GARAGE WALL

Of all the somnambulists
trolling the floors of the town
that was nearly a ghost
after the mines had dried up,
your feet on the floorboards
creak high above the harmony
that if you could use the crystal tuner
on your father’s outdated radio
to tune it to Collective Sounds
of the Floorboards of Very Old Houses
you’d be able to hear
like a dream from after
the grave and the service
and after the family’s return
to their planes, after the eventual leaving
and your education in the finer
arts of loneliness, your courses
in sleeping solo in a California King
that you so easily passed. When you
were younger and were less aware
of the body’s (sometimes faulty)
architecture and you’d drink as much
as you could then walk as far as you could
in the heft of the summer,
you saw a quote about Jesus
painted on a garage’s side,
and an axe by the adjoining pool.
You knew you’d come back
with a tub of red paint: a splash
for the wall and a mark for the axe
and the sky’s store of stars
and a line in the paper tomorrow.

This poem is for Leonard, and after a poem by Stuart Dischell.

Collective Sounds of the Floorboards of Very Old Houses is an actual—and spectacular—radio show. It is probably still on somewhere.

Stuart Dischell is the name of a fictional poet with real books that are good.

Leonard is my friend, not to be confused with My Friend Leonard, by James Frey, which is a probably fictional memoir (I haven't read it, but you know Frey). If you have a friend Leonard, this poem will mean a lot more to you.

Instead of Leonard, you might read Icarus or maybe Orpheus, as in the Jean Cocteau film. Actually, you should definitely read Orpheus from the Cocteau film as the you in the poem.

If you have not seen the Cocteau film, now's the time to remedy that.