wake without a corpse
Silvia A. Brandon-Perez

And most of the taxis and the whores
are only taking calls for cash.
                       -from Your Latest Trick, Dire Straits

on the journey back
the errant soul having been catalogued
(weighed, found wanting)

branded with that special indelible ink
so popular in stratospheric regions
wrapped in strains

of discordant music
it was left to the seventeeth clerk
of the regional convocation to decide

the language of inscription
whether once again urdu
brazilian portuguese

or simple ug, spoken at the turn
of some millenium by macewielders
from a distant planet, pre ice-age,

the strivings, sweats, bananaraisin
breads, multiple parturitions,
appeals to higher laws and honors

well subsumed within Astrud Gilberto's
twenty-first song, with muted drums,
a plaint of tenor saxophone

in farewell blare