You spent your youth
Extracting
And then
We took the loveliest parts of you
Distilled them
Built machines
Won wars
And left military-grade boot-prints on your face
We spat out your name
Acid on our tongues
But now
Now we sing it
While your body decomposes
Through chemical processes
You could have explained better than I
But your chemistry was banned
Your gravitational attraction, illegal
Your math, a game of zeros
And yet your name became
Synonymous with a test of
Humanity
Now we sing it
And all I can think, Alan,
Is how you are forever embedded in my memory circuits
In the same way that life will no longer be distinguishable from silicon
You can't die if you still exist in the neural circuits of others
You can live here with me
And those who remember you
We will still speak your name
We will sing it
