Recorded Ourselves

It was laying in a box waiting.
All the memory recorded on a tape.
Disposable.
Or priceless if you listened.

"Hey that was me," the words of youth.

What form now wraps around my heart
like rope, squeezing under
the bulging weight of feelings without words,
of all the loss
and the sound of not knowing in your voice.

Something of existence that lives on,
some leave behind of us
so the world knows the story,
so it cares that we had names.
Such is the deep living pain,
to leave nothing.
So human the sadness
and the hope.
Such is a hollow, hollowness
all round and quivering with fear.
To die alone.
To die out.
To be nothing but dust and
memory, briefly
before you fade from Earth.

Fall Your Rain O’er My Desert Mountain, Dear

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Each surrounding peak slopes sharply upward 

spilling black talus down its ribs

through fields of pale green prickly pear 

clinging to the mountainous terrain. 

Occasionally, as in a rhythm, the hills cleft near their precipice

and rise again in two discrete masses, 

revealing remote canyons unreachable but for birds and wild unknown animals. 

Local rumors speak of hidden prehistoric ecologies 

harboring giant and tropical flora never seen by human eyes, 

of secret grottoes where sweetwater spills from split-rock faces 

and tumbles into dark pools that lay in permanent shadow, 

Of jaguar that hunt there, 

enormous cats somehow strayed off course on their journey from distant southern regions, 

drinking from remote, perennial water tanks, to come down the mountain 

only for the occasional range cow.

Life After Death

In the physics and math library of a university I don’t attend,

waiting in the quiet, pretending, I fit in here too.

We thought I should get out, get some air

look for work from in here

or someplace similar.

And there are long lengths of books that smell as books should

but say something new and not fiction.

I’d get lost inside tangents and cotangents

Greek symbols meaning actions, meaning

do something.

Analytic geometry and calculus.

I have that book on my shelf.

on my desk next to html and German and French

and other things I should learn but haven’t yet.

Inside are problem sets and explanations.

And in the margins, on occasion,

a small pencil mark, a circle round a question,

A scrap of paper with a calculation.

These are yours and Mom’s too, according to the two names

scrawled on the inside cover.

You were good at this

space in which I’m an imposter.

Where I sit hands open to equations with proofs.

And what do I do?

The proof of life after death is an equation about energy,

where life is energy and death

And the symbols are actions unknown yet.

You were good at this too.

Imagine the day
when your name is spoken
for the last time
ever

Back Home

At night, my headaches,
and I still don't know
good living
from social routine.
But I do know now
the way the sun lays across the grape fields
and the way the bubbles are small
when the stuff is good.
And where to sleep in
and when to wake early.
And how risotto and gnocchi
should feel in my teeth.
And if I'm good,
and quiet,
I can hear the good living
breathing in you
and smell the sweet life
in us going on with the day.

Closing Down the Market

I want to wear the wares of people

who made them with their hands
Give the paper money I earn a shape,

a new color, a reason

made meaningful by an exchange of

hand to soiled hand. 

When the market closes, the tents

at half mast, metal poles

collapsed for packing, old suitcases,

colored bins of plastic, copper

earrings, bruised sweet apples, folded

tapestries with rough

patterns asleep, prints finger-browsed

sorted and left behind in a

Sunday hunger satisfied only

when your design is her desire.

For him to survive it must be

paid for, not merely

admired.