I Imagine my Friends Sleeping
1. The 40-acre Man
Existing smoke to smoke
he falls into a yellow sleep,
fetal, fragile,
limbs an exhausted toss
of overlong pickup sticks,
his dreams small neon cities
of occasional outages –
gunfire, ships, protracted or quick deaths
stopovers for crack and snatch
welts of a childhood unseen unheard
the rude wound of an only child
swiped when six by the
crazed and drunken mother
and sometimes, the grave oasis
of marriage to a good woman
who slowly wasted
whose care consumed all seconds
though this too was love
red and glowing like the fires
beneath the arcs beneath his eyes,
inhaled strongly, deeply
like the drowning must and do.
He sleeps like a prairie sleeps
monarch of moonlight and stars
but with coyotes pricking the night
with their screams,
surging, insomniac, starved.