All of me is not me

All of me is not me. These hands are not me,
these eyes. This crinkling, whitening hair,
the teeth crowding closer together,
laughter slipping from between my lips
are not me

because if they were, I knew you,
but since I don't anymore, and they did
they can't be me.
That me, that memory me made up
of fingers and skin knew you.
Not this me.

I used to know your name.
Hafiz whispered it between stanzas
he picked out for me
to read to you.

I used to know how your back rippled.
Your bones and muscles and supple skin
reached for my hands, asking
if we wanted to know, and we did
both without hesitation.

My fingerprints say it's the same.
They claim that, by typing, I'm the same
person as the neurons firing in my brain
that remember the you-ness
who you once were

but I know better. That was once-you,
not now-you, that I now know.
Now-you is a recorded voice.
Now-you has lips
that don't reach my ears.  Now you
know that all of me is not me
not anymore
than you are a photograph

or I am a memory.

You would

If I couldn't see
you would
you still be beautiful?

Imagine blind

Imagine dark the size of your eye
scaled to forever

Now, subtract sound
if I couldn't hear
you would
you still be beautiful?

A cup over each ear, not even the ocean
sounds like silence.

Take away scent. It's gone
anyways until you pass an open door
and perfume or fresh bread reminds you
so plug cotton in your nostrils
like you're not breathing

Touch left long ago, hand in hand with taste
Tweedle Dum Tweedle Dee

All that remains is feeling
if I couldn't feel
you would
know by the absence

memory is a scar

memory is a scar
on the pale skin of hope
it ripples and crinkles each
time we act

a grainy crunch, sand in the waistband,
waves in the air
that we can no longer see
yet we still see

If each morning I waken blank
unbidden my page fills
like a player piano melody
before I rise into the day
all that happened before
this moment rings
into the space behind

Alzheimer's is another word
for having no past

is that what we want?

I've laid down every day
like a ripped page, scrawled,
sprawled like wrinkles across my bedsheet
grateful for the texture,
fingers grazing the welts
your words
and then your silence left behind

Last

My father died 3 years ago, last week.

 

Last          3/10/2009

I picked Dad up at the discount
crematorium next to the ersatz Taco Bell
across from the lumber yard and going out
of business furniture store almost
kitty corner from the brake shop

Why pay more? asked the flyer on the counter
before the black dress girl wearing pierce blue
eyes came out and asked my license and two
signatures I guess to make sure I could drive him home

Outside the door the shaggy hedge last
trimmed from the look of it last
fall sprouts pink and white blossoms
guards the glass door from the park lot
while inside choice pendants urns and little memento boxes can
peek meek from cases

what’s it like to work with death every day
what do you go home to
what do you do to unwind
punk rock
blood red walls
any flowers, do you like flowers
still if you see them every day?

The black dress smiled in
clutching a white bag
the kind you bring to a birthday party when you’re too lazy to wrap
and a memento, cap screwed tight,
it’s been paid for, she said, pierce blue staring kind of light
for 77 years I commented 3 pounds?
more like 6 she said, passing
Dad to me

I put him in the front seat where he always sat
called Sue got the machine
told her about hedge brake shop
remembered picking up my daughter
writing her eulogy
writing all those eulogies
who knew it’d be something I’m good at

she was lighter
maybe that’s why I was sadder
maybe that’s the ladder
you climb several eulogies further up
from the tears that flood the earth

Sky Current

Here, it rains.I won't make it sad:
it feeds the soil so the earthworms can do
what they do and not dry out
until later, after the rain stops
the sun comes out
to bake the sidewalk but the worms
didn't get the memo
and try to sneak, little squiggly ninjas
until I find them like pieces of shoelace
or blackened onion slivers that slipped out
of the frypan when I stir too vigorously.
But for now it rains
I won't make it sad
I imagine my face there, upturned,
welcoming this version of a dried-out me
basking in the sky current
like heaven's love
before the inevitable
drought

Love Dog

I carried him, black hairs furring my white shirt, into the back yard and sat him down on the grass between the Meyer lemon tree, redolent, and the red delicious apple tree now busting out a hundred pippins, and together in the dark we surveyed his domain. Over there behind the prickly bush he used to spirit plastic bags, until we finally (large brains and all) figured out where all the bread was going: he was stealing it from high off the counter and sneaking it to gingerly devour in his private dining room, hidden from view, until the detritus of perhaps 40 bags (we're slow learners) leaked out from behind the bushes and his secret was revealed. Heads together, we looked at the blackberry brambles now filling the blank spaces between the black fence bars, the slender blueberry stems straining for fall, the tall but not yet productive pear tree. We looked at the bits of birch cones that always found their way onto his fur and into the house. This was his yard, and he sagged into my arms.

Where did those seven years go? Eight nearly, in people years, so for this sweetest black lab, was it fifty? It was a life lived at breakneck speed and long, lounging sleeps on the couch or bed, happily resting his jaw on the sofa arm, or especially as he lay down on his green checked dog bed, he moved his paw and arm over mine while I scratched his chest, and sighed that doggy sigh, heavy enough to flap his lips and make that whinny. He struggled up, not making it, so I propped his haunches and he stuttered a step, two, resting again until I swept his old bones and blood dotted with something else and tuna-smelling breath and that curly black fur into my arms that can't hold him enough, and held him, not enough, back inside to his bed, leaving his darkened yard behind.

He won't be greeting me in the driveway, tearing from lawn to lawn and spinning like a dervish in love and devotion, and I won't be chasing him back and forth like a six year old, and it's too much for him to sneak a loaf from the table, he wouldn't eat the pesto, even, offered like to a gouty Roman senator. The chemo ended Friday and he was spry, Saturday he aged like clay in the oven, Sunday his right leg stopped working and his eyes sank, and Monday his rear haunches announced they no longer cared to walk. Last week he was sliding up onto the couch like old times, if no longer chasing to meet the neighbor dog at least he'd saunter. Time is leaking out of his life faster than a bee swarm. The yellow flowers from the pepper tree out front litter the driveway, those bees are relentless, they smile their secrets into the pepper and bring forth pungent and color and a brown stain on the concrete and those yellow florets dropped onto his fur and into the house, and soon there won't be any more spins of a dog on his lawn or on the brick living room floor and I'll have to lay down to gather those bee's lunch remains and pretend Jonnie will be sniffling up to lick my chin and ask for a scratch behind his ears, and these years and moments that swim before us like silvery minnows as we drink up, drink up, drink in the water of our days in the heartbeat of an old black dog.

Tanta Vive

This isn't the same, it's never the same.

It was someone quoting the Buddha who observed, you can't enter the same stream twice.

In 2008 the markets crashed, and the die was cast: save the rentier class, save the banks, too big to fail.

Meanwhile over at my favorite blog, Calculated Risk, the astute, brilliant, hilarious, wonderfully prescient and amazing blogger, Doris Dungey, under the nom de plume Tanta, was slowly dying of ovarian cancer.  She cut to the heart of the issues underlying the bubble and then the collapse, and in a cruel twist, was cut down, too young, too soon.

"Tanta Vive" became a rallying cry, a salute, a cyber call-to-arms.

Naturally no policies changed, though it came to light she was read and respected throughout industry, government, and the economics web.

What would she say now that the markets are plummeting again?

People much smarter than I say, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

So here we are again.

Fear spikes. The economy is on the brink. What of the poor? What of the nearly poor, those without insurance or pensions but with jobs they trudge to? What of the remains of the middle class - will they lean out, dropping ranks, or shoulder up to the gates of the well-heeled and demand entry? What of the large landlords, the CEO's, the board members?

The shortest sentence in the English language is, "Jesus wept." I doubt it was over a 600 point drop in the Dow Jones, but still, long sentences don't often contain that much emotional impact, or get to the heart of the matter.

We are up to no good, those of us who forget history.  We can cry about lost futures. We can bemoan the lack of enforced regulation, rail against the greedy, demand justice!  In the final wash, though, maybe we just need to remember something a good friend shared: all that matters is love.

It's not a cop out. It's not a descent into religiosity, either. It's just an observation: we can learn to observe, respect, and honor one another.

Or we can descend into hell, into the chaos of civil unrest, assassinations, institutionalized theft and the attendant further disparities between income classes.

It really is up to us, one heartbeat at a time.