What’s in a name

He had been at every party, but no one knew his name. He decided to wear a name tag like at a tacky business convention or church fellowship.
But even that caused people to shy away from him.
One friend whispered to me: “Anyone who needs to wear a name tag never heard their name in the first place.” There was something too that.
His father had actually named him Convictus after some old Roman war book he was reading at the time of his son’s death.
Of course, with a name like that, he had to shorten it to not be bullied in school. He chose a sort of rap version—Con Man, which he later shortened to Conny. People seemed to relate to the name Conny better, but as few had ever met a Conny, few could remember his name.
One day in high school, a beautiful girl came over to him, and said, “I really like how unique your name is Conny.” He blushed and couldn’t speak to girls for years.
In those years, he started going to church with his grandmother.
On one bright yellow orange Sunday morning, the minister was preaching on Jesus’ baptism. All he heard of the whole sermon, was the part where Jesus’ “Heavenly Father” was speaking his son’s name so that everyone could hear him.
“So The Father liked pronouncing his son’s name out loud! He wasn’t a secret agent but a named son.” After that, he always like Jesus.
That sermon stuck with him for life, and when he died, he instructed them to write: “Here lies the beloved Conny Convictus. Loved son of a Father of all our names.”

Grieve like a man the stoic rock cries
But I’m a waiting to release bent dandelion myself
I will cry at will if necessary despite what the rocks say.
I am
Another part of the story
Something easily toppled by wind
Or maybe on good days, like a desert reed-hoping,
Praying woodwinds are God’s favorites.

Working on this very short story about grief. Enjoy:

It was twilight again and I was cleaning out my parents house.
In the dark garage was my father’s old convertible-an eggshell blue MG 1973-whose top was always down.
But I won’t clean that space today-too dusty I’m sure-not yet. I haven’t found the keys anyway.
I’ll play the records as I clean. I’ll catalogue which ones have scratches and exactly where in each song. That’s a good start.
My parents, at least they weren’t horders. That would be worse. Plus my boss said have the week off, until you feel success. Odd use of that word, I thought. How can one do this successfully anyway.
Well, there won’t be any alcohol, so I’ll have her bring some in the evening. Maybe we could sit on the porch and have a hot toddy, and listen to the least scratched albums…
But it’s probably all that big band crap or even tuba music. Still, I may find some jazz in the stacks somewhere, I pray.
What’s the right music to start the day? I’ll play mom’s favorite from that blind Italian jew. Yeah, that will set the tone. There’s implied hope at least in the fact that a blind man can sing like that!
The needle drops electric level releases the weight of the songs. And that tiny blue white gold light of glowing tubes glows again The old metal arm, with that glow play light illuminates the room. All those years, I never dared do anything but listen. Now I’m the DJ. It’s up to me to play these records, to see them through to the next generation or even eternity.
Twilight passes into that glow. And maybe we never know, what dust the sun must pass through to create such glory.
Maybe that’s why he always kept the top off that convertible . Fuck it, I think I’ll start in the garage after all.
Now, where are those keys.

We all
Have
Much deeper
Things to say
To one another
Than can be spoken
Today; still we pronounce
What can be said
Between us,
Until the whole
Sentence is
Eventually formed by faith
In that space
Of attempted
Silence
Which hourly
Passes between
Us.

//
In the dream
God would throw me objects
To juggle. Sometimes, they were
Just too much (kitchen sink, a puppy, a huge log), but
I kept catching them
And throwing them upwards.
Eventually He had Grace
And partially suspended gravity
So I could juggle
In slow motion
And experience the unbearable lightness of being…that is,
Until I felt
Accomplished enough
To at least
Entertain my own angels.

//
I made barbecue sauce today
The honey made it happier
That is, glad to be itself
Finally and shared with the world.

I’m sure God feels the same!

//
I wear lots of wrist watches
Started when I was young
I’m not trying to escape time
Just want to keep an eye on it
As I pass through. I mean my
Friends are all over the world
So having different moments than me.
I like to think of what part of day they are inside of
Encountering, as I meet our Father Time in mine.

//
Paris bridge
Man going to jump
Only art supplies
And a bible
In my pockets.
That, strangely
Seemed to have been
Enough. We exchanged names
And are friends to this day.

//
Meeting famous people-
Easy, if you see all people
As already immortal. Stardom here,
Is just a redundancy.

//
A Rhine of orange peel
In my honey today
Taught me Awe of zest again.

//
Why people chose
To mow in the heat of afternoon
Is a mystery of suffering to me.
But so is, the fact that it bothers me
So much.

//
As a kid in church:
Church steeples, how
A woman’s body moves when listening to heaven in prayer,
A wafer
A quake
And candy
During visitor’s welcome;
Not to mention rolling under pews
To try to get towards whatever
The preacher was really saying
To us all.
The sound of turning pages
And clinking of communion glasses
And the thought of lunch
Kept me seeking
And rolling on.

Wisdom

How deeply to engage
How much to know
Which doors to knock on softly
And which to break down with force
(Especially in people’s hearts). And, of course,
How to do both
In Love.
“A butterfly can break through
A window
At the right angle
And with precise timing.
I’m sure it’s the same
With doors,” she whispers
To me, gently.

//

We were in danger
Of becoming a thing
So, a few protested loudly
Vehemently against
The it-ing of human as machine.
While so,
On the other side
Of the world.
A Butterly lifted slowly
Off an orchid
Having drunk her
Fill of delight.

//

We are….

“The temple that can move and think and feel”

We are
Alive
Whether
We are born temples
Could be extraneous information
But that we
Are being built
Together as one
Seems
Overt
To me.
I pray today
To be
A doorknob
At least.

//
If all is immortal
Even before it was or is
Then this day
Should be unique.
At least your laughter
Should make us all
Glad, if even
Not fully aware
Of our happiness.

All real philosophies are best read
Through art.
All real artist are translators into the symbolic
Of what was already said in other words.

//
The problems of how to exist well
Have been with us for some time.
But that we exist and can consider it
Mutes non-being. Put in other words
The baby starts to speak after screaming.

//
Tiny cardinal bird
Fresh out and already alone
With one pink nearly red streak showing
On its tiny breast-
Chirps or rather beeps at me
As if I had always known his mother.

//
Wisdom

How deeply to engage
How much to know
Which doors to knock on softly
And which to break down with force
(Especially in people’s hearts). And, of course,
How to do both
In Love.
“A butterfly can break through
A window
At the right angle
And with precise timing.
I’m sure it’s the same
With doors,” she whispers
To me, gently.

Three I wrote today:

//

To make life burn,
You have to throw yourself in.
It will not meet you halfway—you leap
It catches. Only One
Comes knocking on your door at night
And that to say,
Tomorrow leap son
Leap as far and deep as you can see.
I’m here now, and I’ll be
Your landing soon enough!

//
Had a dream
I saw a hot air balloon trapped in telephone wires
As I could fly, I went up to help
The kids inside had been drinking and not even noticed
They were stuck in the electrical wires above.
Like tinker bell I slipped between wires
And pushed the balloon free.
The kids didn’t see me, but started applauding the sky
On the way back down I singed my leg on one of the wires.
Still have the scar of helping those kids get untangled.

//

“Just get drunk and mow the lawn”
My friend told me. “Makes it more sacred”.
As a kid I mowed lawns for a living
I sill have a method developed then.
It did not involve drinking, but thinking
Of the person I was mowing for
Like a mantra the whole time. I’ll stick with that way for now.

Not down
To the hot bar
Today
Even to play,
I’ve decided,
It’s simply too hot to live today or
To talk to friends
In the right way.
So I’ll write poems instead
And wait for the dread
Of forgetting everyone’s
Birthdays.
Maybe clean the barn
Or spin a yarn
Or something which doesn’t
Require the consequences
Of our mutual glories.

To my professors above, shrouded in love by now:

The cloud, now in glory, of witnesses-

You guys all still talk to me daily
As if you are still working from above–what’s up friends. Tell me what i need to know!

To mend it all into Glow!
Writing your books with more love now, I’m sure
To us who are still strangers in this land. Thanks for that. And more
That you want to keep guiding us while here, wherever we all are.
Just so you know, when you died,
I never felt an interruption in
Our talks together.
And what ongoing chatter and texts
You guys send!
I hear it within. And your humor

has gotten better and more needed now (whenever now is)

What a great rattle and joke you guys keep telling!

Keeping us alive, as you converse with us. And thanks

for letting us overhear your chatter! Like

old St John overheard His prayer rant-just before He went-

which must’ve saved us all

I’m sure.

You guys and gals are cool-

thanks for talking shit with me today,

as i’m sure we are all fools.

(In honor of all the writers who got judged after they died. To judge is to evaluate another’s worth…..may you evaluate as you would wish to be!)

Did something a little different today
Actually wrote, actually played, and noticed
Three new types of birds I did not know
In my neighborhood.
And the old lady tryin’ to get to her car next door.
Finally, got her name! At the same time,
Thought about old Flannery O’Connor dying so young
After barely starting to say what she was saying
(“Our most promising writer”, they said when she was alive)
To hum what she was humming under her breath
And choosing to bring it to light and speak it without fright.
That is to write.
And how, after death, everyone critiques you more-
How we presume to re-write another’s tombstone so blitely-
Because they couldn’t to your face. Thought of her face
The birds, death and writing, and all the stories we all really are inside.
Made me sigh with the baby cardinals, owls and these new strangers, and those others I don’t rightly
Know yet, but prayerfully will one day. Made me think of Robert Bly, Galway Kinnell, and the other writers
I met who were, or turned out to be, what they seemed to be. At least to me.
Made me want to live on a peacock farm and take the risk of words, with
The prophet Amos, who wrote exactly what he saw, even, if later, others
saw it differently-or in his case, you might get killed by people who imagine themselves to be priest. That is, it made me want to be me.
And for that, I thank the Day-light on our words and writers- and those who shed light in play,
In dark times through words which keep causing trouble
For us all.
It’s easy to criticize the dead, and hard to love the living,
I suppose, but what if the judgement was just to take the risk
Of saying so. Be careful how you evaluate, your neighbor,
She might say. Even if they are just writing and staring at new birds all Day.
In the alleyways of the dead.
She was a priest and perhaps a prophet.
Be careful how you bury the prophets
Especially those who took the time to write it down for us.