WHERE IS THE NAME

Where is the Name we ask after weeping stone tears all night, Where is the Name we ask after drowning in iron song, Where is the Name each morning as the children fall from the ledge, Where is the Name as every arrogance shouts its presence and its shredded red-throated manifesto, Where is the Name among the grocery aisles and the neurotic nylons and the bless yous, Where is the Name in the ancient closet, in the fishes mouths, Don’t give me the house or the overturned ship or the sacrificial lamb – Give me the Name…

where is the Name we cry out after solemnizing the stars for all these many thousands of years, Where is the Name we ask under the dark stairs of material espionage and out in the Lover’s ecstatic Gardens, Where is the Name that caresses your ears with velvet oratorios, and brings down the tyrant’s anesthetic tirades, and his pathetic monogrammed shorts, Where is the Name in those used car lots, in the broken sarcastic muskets and in those flamboyant, central air, autographed holy books, Don’t give me your mouth with its neon lips, or your Artificial Man – Give me the Name…

Where is the Name we must cross-examine in the algebraic shadows nailed to your brain, Where is the Name the Argonauts hissed or those wise Masai threw over the wall, Where is the Name that those Little Women moaned, that Gene Autrey failed to bind up in Essene rodeo ropes down in Tinsel Town, Where is the Name among the Conscious Poseys for miles, and those protonic pythons and the manufactured “News”, Where is the Name – in your pocket, in the shoemaker’s spouse, in the hurricane everybody just can’t wait to name, Listen, don’t give me your dollars and sense, don’t give me what’s left of your penitence – Give me the Name…

Where is the Name we have to ask of those whose beloved children are their assault rifles, their guns, Where is the Name we ask of the Moon whose surface nightly crashes, coyly, lovingly into your household name’s famous bones, Where is the Name in that old Chinese form, in what metallic alley will we find it spoken, I have lit candles for four endless centuries that the Name might glisten in those city streets, Where is the Name, somewhere in your melodious brassiere, somewhere in that mountain of snow that laughs at your earnest plans and your love of old groaning movies, is it hiding out in the back of your jeweled throat – that Unspoken Name, Don’t give me your arrogance, your unrequited opulence, your much admired incompetence, your empty nun’s sarcophagus, your hippopotamus loss of Consciousness, or your monotonous hypothesis – Just give me the Name, Just give me the Name, Just give me the Name, Just give me the Name, Just give me the Name… Give me, Give me, Give me, Give me… Give… Give… me… Give…….. Give…….

…In all your adamant rules of law, in your crucifix malaise, in all you proclaim and exclaim, if you can’t show us the way to the Nameless Name, you might as well sell your meaningless autographs to the blind and the sightless… you might as well go down to the River and sell life insurance to the dead.