Ben Passikoff
 

The Shelter
 
 
 
 
 

We are the unsolved sons of chaos.   The wrinkle of our underwear is worn   outside the noise of skin.  Elbows   brothertouch in pace of falling night.       Arranged in arithmetic enmity   the bodybags of bedreat row the room   lit by dead sun of single bulb   illuming lairs of cockroaches.       Bonebending corner winds rain hurry   of limbs wrapped in once-far sleep.  Insided,   we kneel bed-hungry and wrong-bellied   while busgrunt and old ice outside destroy.       North of us is nothing.  A thousand beds   wall-squared in symmetry of woe remember   individual zeros, remnanted from the race   of human tumble to unmuttering rest.       Night listens to our difference,   our odd and even hearts in solo bongo   bodying bed in memory of babywail   and mothereyes and fingersink of father.       When morning comes, older than we were,   pulsing old streets we resume shadow;   the single time we own is houred   by uncorrected clock of error.

  (c)Ben Passikoff 2003