As I lay me down to sleep

This I pray
for the person I've passed
the past two weeks
on my way home from work
stretched out at midnight
on a cardboard bed
that gets tucked away come morning
come police
who bring with them laws
about where a person can sleep

This I pray
that their aversion to cardboard
doesn't equal my own
acquired after a month
in a repackaging plant
where I shucked off the shells
they've fashioned into slumber
till my hands chapped
and my mind
became just as dry

This I pray
because prayer absolves guilt
and compared to them
I've got it good
I've got this street corner
all staked out
where all the things I never wanted
sit around in cardboard boxes
that I'm afraid to get rid of
lest I lose my real home

Haimoon

Moon must be lonesome

orbiting round about earth

kissed only by the sun

Long Haired Freaky People

I'd just as soon

forget my roots

but the tips

continue to grow

to remind me

that caution

must be exercised

lest I end up

a follicle

a craterous creature
clinging to hair
like memory to time
a mobius strip
I can't shake
despite dancing
as the moon pulls
my hips
to and fro
and from this motion
my hair recedes
the tides recede
as these roots
drink in the sea

Dreadielocks

You reminded me of me
the way you kicked one foot
out over the curb
when you saw it was safe to cross
and let it dangle
till the stoplight agreed

You smiled when I caught you
when you caught me
smiling at catching you
in an honest moment
almost glib
in its honesty

I've taken to telling people
that my mustache
is an altruist
and my beard
a selfish bastard
lazily creeping cross my face

Like any story
told too many times
a part of it has become true
so when I smiled
it was because I recognized
your hair was similarly unselfish

And like Goldilocks
we work our way through stories
told to us as children
till we find one that suits us
that we get lost in telling
when it sounds just right

Phenomenological Photography

I can trace the course of us
in mental images
shuttered from larger landscapes
where we posed
where we reposed
where we found ourselves
referring to ourselves
as we

I met someone today
who wasn't you
who smiled at the world
at the right times
and I wondered if they
if she
belonged somewhere on my wall
somewhere down the line

It's not fair
to think these thoughts reach you
but they were never for you
they were for we
for the composite compositions
an element added
to time-lapsed lifetimes
trying not to blink