I am crude in the daylight,

a sepulchral figure

cloaked in khaki dust,

my mouth swilling

city grit as dirt pinwheels

through the ribs

of an iron bedframe.

By afternoon,

my shadow falls

twice as long.

At night,

vampiric in the moonlight,

my jaundiced skin glistens.

Headlights crisscross

each shellacked follicle

& the puckered sheen

of my brain.

//

Rain dribbles into the crater

where my left eye

once nested & gutters out,

rinses the grubby indent of my navel

& gravel-dented calves.

Looted by the elements,

sometimes a body fits

amid the bric-a-brac

but nowhere else.