Always Sleeping

Always Sleeping

Did I ever tell you,

About

That woman,

Addicted to downers,

Always sleeping...

We all had to tiptoe around the house.

She made wax paintings and wax candles

Using illustrious purple and shiny red.

She sang folk songs with her abnormally high,

Girlish voice-

The type of voice that never grew up

One day, she left her husband for a boy

Seventeen years her junior

The favorite son

He felt pressured into taking on an adult's role

Which was beyond him

He foundered and engendered hatred from everyone

That woman, of course, came down with cancer,

But she staved it off for eleven years

Just before her death,

She had fifty thousand dollars worth of

Plastic surgery

Done on her face

To her face

I suppose she thought she'd live forever

I often think about her death

As I reflect on my own "little deaths"

From which I recover with

Tremendous hangovers,

And I wonder if

Our fingers have ever touched

In that

Nether World-

A world I can't remember