If a man loses the hair on [the back of] his head,
he is bald. He is clean.
Leviticus 13:40

No one complains when babies are bald
but let a few decades go by and if the skin
of our heads becomes visible, it becomes a thing.

Industries have arisen to help us deal with
this affliction. Wigs, magic hair dust you can
sprinkle on the vacated areas, expensive surgeries

that will rearrange your hair like when you were young
and spread your broccoli to the far edges of your plate
to make it seem like you made a dent.

We start out as babies and end up looking like babies.
Our hair makes other arrangements
our skin folds over unto itself

The things inside our skin forget how to work.
We even start to behave like babies.
We get cranky, or at least I do.

And then, too soon, we are treated like them.
Our outside privileges are taken away.
Limits to what machinery we can operate

are put in place, and everything is proofed
so we can do no damage. This is,
despite our complaints, as it should be.

Our bald heads, beacons of normalcy –
hearkening our eventual return to dust.
Gather your brooms, my friends

There鈥檚 a cleanup on aisle your entire life.
There鈥檚 no way around this.
This has always been temporary.

聽(an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the聽Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He鈥檚 authored 25 collections of poetry, including 鈥溾��, 鈥溾�� (91传媒 themed poems) and 鈥溾�� (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently 鈥溾�� (Poems written in Japan 鈥� Ain鈥檛 Got No Press, August 2020) and edited the anthologies 鈥溾��, 鈥溾��, and 鈥�.鈥� He writes the daily web comic 鈥溾�� with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He鈥檚 widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.