We were thirty-eight at seventeen

Here,
We live from cigarette to cigarette.

Elsewhere,
Some of us are fighting wars.
Some of us are jarring bells.
Some of us are collecting shells.
The rest of us are sleeping,
dreaming about everything.

We would get up,
We would cry help
But our pillows are scented
With bedspreads of one-million-thread-count Egyptian cotton.

My God
We are almost rotten.

It's so hard to see the top from the bottom.

We could cry help.
We would get up.
But we are already forty-something.
and I think we've forgotten.