"Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up"
-Richard III, Shakespeare


The sky is a bland face of gray linen,
a faded shroud-scrap, a broken nail
of moon lost in the bedsheets.

My friends live in the black skin
of the phone. They are lost gloss.
Golden windows swell and crack

with light in the early May eve.
Lager, sherry, scotch: dogs sniff
the dead things in the street.

I am a tenth of a soul. Unfinished
in this breathing scar, this scorn,
scarce half made. I am a tenth,

or less. I am sunken, buried
in the broad ash water.
My brown eye is custard.

I sink into my chair. What happened?
The night has slipped away.
The moon is lost in the sheets.