Alienating Vitalism

What if none of the dead can sleep?
What if sleep is nothing like death?
What if every life’s a puppet,
Sometimes sleeping when strings go slack,

But death is the slashing of strings,
And the puppeteer can’t reach in
From the puppeteer’s dimension,
And the puppet can’t move again?

You know that means the puppeteer
Was all the life there ever was
And all the lives there are at once,
And all this dancing and prancing

And sleeping of all living things
Is the art of the puppeteer,
Or maybe many puppeteers,
And when puppets slash puppets’ strings,

Nothing goes anywhere. The lives
That had been pretend in puppets
Go back to being puppeteers,
And there’s nothing a puppet means

That didn’t come from puppeteer,
That won’t return to puppeteer,
That isn’t wholly alien
To the molecules life’s made dance.