The Name I want

The Name I Want (In homage to Richard Blanco's poem The Name I Wanted)

The name I want is Love
something that is nearly unpronounceable
in the choice of language it was spoken in
rolling off the tongue in drips like rain-
the captured sweat drops on the dancer’s golden hips
Leather fringe shimmering beneath the heat of a tropical sun
with slippery moist mango smashed into a glass
where family value meant respect- and honesty.

Love, not this simple thing with duel meanings
that shares an ancestral blood of ignorance and mistakes
and a last name tinged with my mother’s guilt
and my father’s shame
without understanding that the color of my skin
exempted me from the ability to know pain and struggle
or that .01 was too much to have a helping hand
to a woman trying to stay above water.

Love is something that has real meaning,
That makes you stop and think – maybe that this “person”
Isn’t the sum of the biological parts that are smiling back
in the sepia toned portrait cracked and worn from ages of being tucked into
a back jean pocket, over and over again
That suggests that it doesn’t know hardship
or the stain of doubt and shame swirling down a drain
That holds no real sexuality, religion, or social stigma
And speaks universally to the heart

I want the name Love because it means
that my darkest fear will never to come to light
because with a name, an indiscriminate name
Like, Love, would capture the light and life and experience
That was blessed to simply know those people whose untold stories
could paint a picture more beautiful than Picasso
with broken smiles and weathered souls
Like a tree that reaches for the sun
Fingered branches who never forgets how it started before the storm

Love, Love that is never questioned
for its unaccepting ability to stop staring at the flesh
And looks into that indescribable phantom of “self”
Love that never shakes or quivers with anxiety
That held breath on the battlefield
of friends
Where a single curled tail of smoke deigns the only sign
of slow death that night
And the cries of family only by the howl of laughter

Love, a good name,
Without defined limitations of sex and culture
Love, the strength of the weak – the quivering boy who stands to speak his truth
The heel of the proudest Achilles lion laying in the sun
Love, my name, no surname
To name what lies within
so it can shine.