My Alcoholic Friend part 2
He hasn’t started questioning.
At sixty-five he clings
To daily wine and cigarettes -
Something I refuse to ‘get’ (as in ‘I get it!’).
Dreams, unseemly worries,
Appetite-less –
Hunger that he doesn’t miss –
The pleasing, pleasured luxuries of taste
Not there, he’s not aware
That they’re not there.
He doesn’t care.
If acceptance is a virtue,
Does his have a use?
Passivity, or more a vice
Around his head, heart, lungs and liver?
I prefer
To think he’s still asleep and that
He hasn’t started questioning as yet,
And that a time will come –
‘Fore he’s found dead upon his mattress –
That essential matters start to matter.
Stranger things have happened.
© My Alcoholic Friend 5.18.2009
Special People, Special Occasions; Definitely Didactic; Small Stories Book;
Arlene Corwin
