The living sleep by the dead
in staccato houses
that are really just walls
and sometimes roofs
and wooden doors
inscribed with God's verses
because there is not enough
money
or space
or humanity
in a city
full of medicated men and women
high on hash, cigarettes, and heavy food
so that one meal
can last an entire day
and a numbed mind
won't notice
hunger, or pain, or the fear
of laying in bed
at night
in a graveyard
near the body of a man
you never knew
alive
but have come to know well,
dead.