My Name (CP II)

Here is my "My Name" piece that I wrote in college...as you can see, I chose to write mine in poem form:

Matt

I.

Mine is a name not worth naming.

It dies before it leaves your mouth,

Lips clapping like flapping shutters and

Tongue tchk-ing against teeth

Like the click of a key in a lock

Yet I’m stuck wearing this name like a badge of boredom,

A monument to all that is routine and mundane. 

And I beg for a trade.

 

II.

“But think of what it means!” you plead,

“A gift of God…our gift from God!”

Well thanks, mom, no pressure there…

Jesus was a gift of God too, and look what it got him,

Thirty-three years and back home he went.

(If I did that, you’d charge me rent)

No thank you, madam, I’ll have none of that.

But I’ll do anything else to escape the sinuous syllable

I state for self-identification.

 

III.

Oh how I begged them to let me change it…

Something different, something alive, something else!

Theodore, Balthazar, Tyler, Byron,

Or my personal favorite, Coyote Jones,

(The one I called myself when I was alone)

Even spoon out some alphabet soup and see what comes up!

It couldn’t be worse than my title at present

The tragically vapid,

And wholly depressing,

Matt.