3 A.M. it’s always 3 A.M.
when night wakes and creeps,
slides its black fingers
through bamboo gardens,
where green stalks sigh,
lean beneath the winds,
and they rattle rain warnings
through home and dream.
White phone on the table shouts and screams,
it wants to talk, it sounds a lot
like Death’s own love call.
And then a tape machine clicks on,
whirs, clicks off,
and the quiet comes home and it feels so fine.
Wake and light the room...the cat and the bug:
Red scorpion rears back on an incense burner,
drunk on musk and dried
rose petals it snaps and stings
its own underbelly,
and the cat slaps the bug down,
rolls it over in the ashes, purrs triumphant.
He curls around the metal tray
and waits for recognition, a voice, a name,
maybe even praise, but what he really waits
for is forever gone, I call, he sits and purrs...
and what I wait for no one knows,
not even me...not even the rains,
not at this time, not at 3 A.M.
And yet it seems that Roscoe knows,
he sits and purrs and rules the dark room.
