Rough Sleepers

Our dreams are ragged
Sold by the rag trade
Sweated over like a brown-edged book
Gilded with bodily imaginings

My fever dream under this shadowed roof
Is of a home I ate to pieces like a caterpillar eating its carapace
For we are not snails

And the angel stands with his flaming sword
Between dream and truth
A line thin as a needle
Parting my hair

Sleeping curs chase rabbits on their chains
But the greyhounds run after the machine
I understand nothing
Except that my rest is snatched
And the metal jaws close

Like the men at the end of a world
We were born far from our home
We are in exile at the beginning
Like the forgetful Christian soul
Wrapped in our flesh like bacon round the bones of Saint Mark

My dreams rip apart my fingertips
Until I recognize myself only fleetingly in mirrors

I am a rough sleeper now
For I have grown out of my home
For it is arid as summer now I have bowed my head