Monday, October 4, 2010

name

something stopped me walking
today
it was a voice calling my
name
and turning I expected to see
a human face
attached to the human sound
but there was no one there
no one I knew
crowded streets full
of nameless faces
and none of them viewed me
differently
so I took it to mean
that a familiar friend
was somewhere close by
in the crowd
hidden from my view must be
the source of the sound
I raced the current of moving
bodies
through voices of hundreds
warranting looks of confusion
distrust disdain
until I met my name

a name is just a word
a name is not identity
a name is but a nothing-speech
and the name I heard
and the person I saw
Had nothing to do with me

2 comments:

  1. By far my favorite so far... what is a name? Why do we attach so much of ourselves to it, a nothingness... Interesting.

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  2. Natural Language Theory By spawned by Wittgenstein and Russel, you might find interesting, that's American 20th century philosophy in a nut shell.

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