Her late arrivals make you bless your luck.
        Her early exits make you want to cry.
        One night before she leaves for work you pluck
        A sleepseed from the corner of her eye.

        You lay it like a lozenge on your tongue
        Then lean back on your bed and wait for sleep.
        Soonafter you're descending rung by rung
        A ladder leading down a passage deep

        Beneath the sidewalk of your neighborhood.
        Fat rats at rest in nests begin to coo.
        You try to concentrate but then the wood
        Disintegrates beneath your pawing shoe

        And sends you flailing down the dark to land
        Within a room awash in reddish haze.
        You squint. You listen. Finally you stand.
        A blast of Mariachi music plays.

        You pinch yourself like dreamers do. Instead
        You find you have no flesh to pinch. Hard bone
        Is all you are: a horror film undead,
        Obscenely ivory and all alone

        Onstage before this green-eyed audience.
        "Now touch yourself," your woman's voice commands.
        You feel your nether capillaries tense
        And watch in wonder as your fleshless hands

        Begin to stroke the only thing that's left.
        "Now dance around," she says. "I want to see!"
        And suddenly you're thankful for this theft
        Of silly packaging, a man set free

        To do the shimmy-shake for once, to heave
        Your hips and fling your flimsy armature
        Around that peepshow stage 'til you receive
        Applause from underneath the theater:

        Cockroaches whap their wings, a weave of worms
        Whip down their tails, two rats approach, ask you
        To work for them, they'll figure out the terms
        Next week, they say you'll get your own revue...

Copyright © Mark Wasserman, 2002 All Rights Reserved.