Say it – “Mikhail!”, say it “Lover,” “son,” or “dad.”

Give me a robe, a title, anything,

let me to be,

yet call me “Person.”

(same as you).

Just like with all our difference.

Generic sets.

And without cease.

What’s inexhaustible

and finite.

Here We Be.

Call us “Person(s)”

In order to get by, to get along, to carry on, I invade your body as if planned.  Swapping breath and sounds and fluids.  Making more.  A “he” a “she.” A “husband,” “wife.”  A “muse” and “lover.”  We pretend in our pretense and we become.

Call us Person(s).

We raise the dead and name it “memory,” name it “history,” name it “god.”

We start to drown, but we’ve become, and name it “family,” name it “nation,” name it “state” or “land” or “friendship.”

We disperse.

We send out tracts: “PLEASE CALL US PERSON(S)!”

No response.

And we become what we will be.

 **************************************************

I scream your name for I am helpless, “I” am hopeless without you.  And so I grasp and shape your body, your behavior, your aplomb.  I demand answer for my question is the telling and I need to be an I: “Call me Person!”

It begins.

And it is reckless, it is violent and warm. 

I am coddled, moisty, fragile.  I need purchase(d).  I need won.

You are one, and there are many.

We begin.

“Mother.”  “Lover.”  “Child.”

Call me Person.

Call me something.

We grow limbs and we grow hair.  We swap shapes and alter presence.  We emerge and we invade.

I am Ishmael, I am

Allah, I am Sam.

You are giant, you are troll, you are fairy.

I can’t tell but for the asking (as if same, as if identical) – simple call.

Call me Person.

We begin.

 **********************************************************************

 In some ways our job [for survival] is simply to affirm one another.

To provide response (which is a call) to a call (a form of response).

I affirm you (which affirms I) by telling you (asking back) when you ask (telling me you are – where?).

Co-respondence is affirmation – positive or negative (each a both/and) [as with most things living].

You there –where?—ask me, I will acknowledge – thereby telling “you” –

both of us thereby affirmed, established…

…Being…

Thusly, there are Varieties of Presence.

I am Stephen K. Plato, Laurell H. Hardy, John

Quincy Locke,

call me “Person.”

“We” will therefore become via our calling, our response,

-mutually constituted identities

-for the moment.

Johann Sebastian Souza strikes a note

Federico Garcia Chopin hears that tone,

thereby constituting,

no, co-constituting…

…sound.

Sound, press of fingerpads on forearm, shoulder, buttocks, calf,

breast, or clay,

each,

each each,

resonance, difference, identification,

-a becoming, become-

Affirmation.

Compliance.

What might seem

passive, active, passing to-and-fro, creating “We,” “Us,” “People,” “Person(s)”

Trolls beneath the bridge.

Knocking, knocking.

We.  Are.  There.

(Which is “Here” for NOW).

 *******************************************************************

Being.  and Time.

                                 (one might say)

Call me Friedrich, Ortega, Alfred.

or:  Being + Event.

                                 Address me Giorgio, Alain, Ricky G.

Actor, actant, the motion of bodies.

Ludwig Joycenstein;

                                   rejoice in time;

Osip, Anna, the noise of time.

Being.                                    Event.

kairos

“it is Time”

fullness.

redolent.

predilective.  propicient.  promising.  proclamative.

 

NOW.

In the Beginning, the wormy End.

Every Ending a Begin.

Transference.  Transmission.  Translation.

It is love.

Call.                                               Response.

Affirm

Telling                                           Asking

Achieve.

Archive.

WE ARE

You/I         a          He/She

(not long before combine, breed, be/have)

–BE-COME–

 

WE.

 

“I” was lost, until you found me…

…in other words…

…varieties of presence.

bumping into brambles,

slipping into sea,

hearkening to shriek,

Ask                                                Tell

yay/nay,

                  no matter,

                                          what matters?

                                                                  too much, too little?

near enough

 

Begin.

Become.

just BE.

 

Be.  Be.  Bee.

1. B. 2. C. D.

Dee Harvey Osmont.

Olivia Newton jaunt.

Wolfgang Adolf Heisman.

Prince Albert Nobel.

 

Call “me” “Person.”

 

Julio W. G. Sebold.

Sign on page,

                              raised to the eye,

                                                                  digited “touch,”

BECOME.

 

Vocable.  Insignia.  Etching.  Stroke.  Motion.

 

WE.

 

Call us Person(s).

*********************************************

“The pen asks / much more than it can answer /

one word at a time”

-Philip Levine-