For God While Sleeping

Sleeping in fever, I am unfair to know just who you are: hung up like a pig on exhibit, the delicate wrists, the beard drooling blood and vinegar; hooked to your own weight, jolting toward death under your nameplate. Everyone in this crowd needs a bath. I am dressed in rags. The mother wears blue. You grind your teeth and with each new breath your jaws gape and your diaper sags. I am not to blame for all this. I do not know your name. Skinny man, you are somebody's fault. You ride on dark poles -- a wooden bird that a trader built for some fool who felt that he could make the flight. Now you roll in your sleep, seasick on your own breathing, poor old convict.