Thich Nhat Hanh’s most compelling poem is Please Call Me by My True Names. That link will take you to the text, a recording of him reading it, and a song written to convey it. The poem arose from Thay’s grief after reading a letter in 1976 about a 12-year-old girl on a boat escaping from Vietnam who was raped by a Thai sea pirate and then threw herself into the sea. Here’s what Thay said about writing it:

When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we can’t do that. In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I would now be the pirate.

After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people: the 12-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The title of the poem is ‘Please Call Me by My True Names,’ because I have so many names.

I am not a poet, and certainly not as eloquent as Thay. But I’ve been groping for a way to express my grief over what seems like an eruption of painful news over the past week. For personal reasons, the killing of Rob and Michelle Reiner and arrest of their son Nick was the trigger for the pain I feel over all of it.

Please Call Me Meathead

Please call me Meathead, A caricature of my generation's idealism, And please call me Archie, Clinging to the remnants of life as I knew it.

Please call me Michelle and Rob, Spending my senior years in what appeared to be opulence, And please call me Nick, Likely to escape my addictions only by being imprisoned.

Please call me Barack, Praising Rob for seeing "the goodness of people, "And please call me Donald, So trapped in my ego that I make Rob's death about me.

Please call me Uncle Eddie and Aunt Margaret, Spending my senior years in what appeared to be comfort, And please call me Cousin Barry, Unable to overcome the voices telling me to kill them.

I am the Hamas leader Blinded by ideology, And I am the Gazan Living through a homeless winter.

I am the religious right in Israel, Willing to murder innocents to inhabit all of Palestine, And I am the West Bank resident Needing to choose between losing my home and losing my life.

I celebrated Hanukah in Bondi Beach, And I was radicalized by the Islamic State.

I studied at Brown, And I am a fugitive on the run.

I am Ahmed al-Ahmed.

I am Buddha.

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