nickname Q Nickname, Nickname Nickname, nickname: probing, bouncing, longing, still the dusty same, after another, more than whole lifetime; under dress, through skin, now wondering to vibrations too, drawing to the dusty room in an aged, hard dreamer wavering there; warm, excitable, non-painted red with rug, chair, desk, world aflame, and dusty bed, it seems now to matter not to avoid; if the key be slipped to be actually found, hunger, thirst, gasping for clear light intensify, with lust for hallowed dusty ground, so soon the world'll be all that's left to save; nickname, nickname, still the constantly, dusty same. 021112 ... Cicero Do you think nicknames are amiable? I mean, what if you don't want the one you have? I think it'd be miserable to have an unwanted nickname that you couldn't shake. Like "Spiff" or something. 021113 ... Fido Yeah, that's a good point. I hate it when people call me, "Frank." Who the hell is Frank? What is the DEAL? WHAT IS THE DEAL? 040922 ... ovenbird I have resisted nicknames most of my life, insisting that people use my first name, as it appears on my birth certificate. No short forms or variations. No alternate pronunciations. Exceptions have been few, and they have been allowed only because they come from places of genuine affection and have arisen organically in the context of real connection. The best ones have reminded me of my animal heart. Some names evoke a sense of continuity with the more than human world and remind me that I’m not so far removed from the furred bodies that slowly evolved the ability to stand. So I will allow this: a name that calls me back to prelapsarian paradise, a name that sheds its clothes and grows a tail and presses its ear to the heartbeat of the earth. A name that is code for a wild soul passed down from a mammalian ancestor I split off from millions upon millions of years ago. I will allow this. And I will let you know the parts of me it names. 260627 what's it to you? who go blather from