Where a naked man, asleep, is strapped
to the lower bunk of a bed.
The bed-pan is so tantalizingly out of reach
we may assume he has trouble
with his bowels.
He will have been beaten by an orderly,
a bar of soap wrapped
in a towel.

His head, when we come to examine the head
we would never allow ourselves to touch,
is a fish bowl
in which two black fish, or mauve,
take it in turns to make eyes and mouths
or grapple with one bright idea.

Yet the neon-lit, plastic dream-bubble
he borrowed from a comic strip---
and which you and I might stretch
to include Hope, Idaho---
here takes in only the upper bunk of the bed
where a naked man, asleep, is strapped.