Are names telling of something?
When you were young, you were taught to name shapes,
count figures with your tiny, slender fingers,
read text like creed, memorize facts like incantations
so that when it is time that you are already raw
and machinated into the fullness of your body,
you are ready. Ready like the gull darting
into the deep blue to filch the marine.
Ready like artillery to fray.
Ready like genuflected children
in contrition – left the peccadillo aloft, canopied
by a thumbed down word of prayer;
Are names telling of something?
What do they delineate? A sense of ownership?
A demystification? What machine does
it pledge allegiance to? Sage of old?
A frantic fretting of sensibilities? Erudition, or at the very least, obscurantism?
If we leave a thing without a name, what will
that thing be?
It cannot be held – to what extent?
It cannot be owned – for what reason?
It cannot be classified – for what? to saturate it with comprehension
to ensure a fate underneath a conceptualized bent
of attestation and abomination?
If I left you without a name and only held you in my hands like
a thing waiting to be used, to be fondled,
what will you make out of it? Will you darkle and then dissipate
in the thinnest air? Or will you remain? Are names exacted so that
when a thing leaves the body, when an abstraction leaves a moment,
there is a device we can use to drone it into coming back? So that we know
that in addressing it, there is a sure claim that it will move back
and retrace tractable errors? So that in the aftermath,
we are certain of the weight it casts upon our sorry and aching
bodies that refuse to make love? So that there will be words to be written
and voices to be launched in form of song
with identities assured to match the thirst?
Why does this deserve a name? Why are these hands undeserving
of territories? Why is there dissent when there is desire?
The answer lies in the silence of every passing day famished by
evidence: this thing that has no name will remain
as punishment for being – so that when it is time to
prosecute, there will be no
firm basis for eulogies.
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 11:11 AM UTC
Are names telling of something?
When you were young, you were taught to name shapes,
count figures with your tiny, slender fingers,
read text like creed, memorize facts like incantations
so that when it is time that you are already raw
and machinated into the fullness of your body,
you are ready. Ready like the gull darting
into the deep blue to filch the marine.
Ready like artillery to fray.
Ready like genuflected children
in contrition – left the peccadillo aloft, canopied
by a thumbed down word of prayer;
Are names telling of something?
What do they delineate? A sense of ownership?
A demystification? What machine does
it pledge allegiance to? Sage of old?
A frantic fretting of sensibilities? Erudition, or at the very least, obscurantism?
If we leave a thing without a name, what will
that thing be?
It cannot be held – to what extent?
It cannot be owned – for what reason?
It cannot be classified – for what? to saturate it with comprehension
to ensure a fate underneath a conceptualized bent
of attestation and abomination?
If I left you without a name and only held you in my hands like
a thing waiting to be used, to be fondled,
what will you make out of it? Will you darkle and then dissipate
in the thinnest air? Or will you remain? Are names exacted so that
when a thing leaves the body, when an abstraction leaves a moment,
there is a device we can use to drone it into coming back? So that we know
that in addressing it, there is a sure claim that it will move back
and retrace tractable errors? So that in the aftermath,
we are certain of the weight it casts upon our sorry and aching
bodies that refuse to make love? So that there will be words to be written
and voices to be launched in form of song
with identities assured to match the thirst?
Why does this deserve a name? Why are these hands undeserving
of territories? Why is there dissent when there is desire?
The answer lies in the silence of every passing day famished by
evidence: this thing that has no name will remain
as punishment for being – so that when it is time to
prosecute, there will be no
firm basis for eulogies.
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