Future Names

In Detroit we all have future names,
Mine was scrawled like pigeon scratch on a picture of a split eye, brown and blue, stored under a winter eave.
I held a hand and threw fairy tale words into the empty vessel attached, like you were an old roman jar,
Don’t worry, my love, one day your worn old ceramic will be life and those fairy tales, written by some ancient hand,
Will be yours as well...
In some bright future name

I don’t think I will know your name and my skin feels like pottery when I consider that.
For all the teks and trons and bits and bytes that passed through our cerebral wires,
I could read some radiance, some distant explosion like the birth of celestial life, the opposite of imagining the universe
Backward to a pinpoint and disappearing
the unwritable rush of newborn matter, an un-wordable tempest
And I would gladly bathe in that storm
And I would lovingly let you go as you ask me to stay

We all have future names and you’ve dubbed me "never"
I would cry that name like a gunshot, break it like a bottle
But I would hear it in every gunshot and see it in every broken bottle
And I would lovingly let you go as you ask me to stay

We all have future names and you can always rename me
I would sing the new name like a hymnal, tattoo it on my hand
And that storefront church would give birth to celestial life,
A myriad of names