Politics Of Grooming

I know the you when you are getting dressed

Is not the you I've really come to know

She speaks in shorter phrases, and she often can't remember

Which impulsive words were emitted as response

But it's not a selfish, shorter-spanned attention

Rather, preference for the politics of grooming

Hell, I'd paint my face and fingers and my toes and lips and eyelids

If it meant tonight, I didn't have to think about the future

Just to fixate my attention on a wooden powder pencil

Not a single thought devoted to whatever's on outside the house

Or even past the door of your mother's bathroom, where we're sitting

And surviving on the steadiness of passing time

So when the lines are drawn and all the powders matted

You'll be standing there and blinking at your image

And you'll wish that it would turn around and do what it's supposed to

But reflections do not turn themselves away

When you were younger and your mother started drinking

She would tuck you in and close your bedroom door

Then, one night, you sprung awake inside a turning, twisted dream

And you ran downstairs to find her laying out across the floor

She did not hear you softly crying near

Or feel your mouth all hot against her ear

So you kissed her like she taught you, and for the first time on a head

You got up and tucked your own self into bed

So when the lines are drawn and all the powders matted

You'll be standing there and blinking at your image

And you'll wish that it would turn around and do what it's supposed to

But reflections do not turn themselves away

Yeah, you'll wish that you would turn around and do what you're supposed to

But it's easier to blink and stare and stay