Also Mutants

Native Tongue

7-11-17

My native language is disentanglement,
a form of peace as much as relief.
The shadows in my mouth could shout
but choose reclusiveness over what you
would enjoy to disprove. I assume
nothing, which makes me smart or something,
since I don't know what I don't know
from the shell of my soul to the aches below.
And my voice dreams of beauty and poise
but drinks the poison from pens chosen
to underestimate and/or miscalculate
adulation and critically glorified masturbation.
Feed and feel and read and reveal;
lungs ebb and flow and moan and grow
adding the bass pitch to words more stitched
than said. Quilted quotes from my head
form the vernacular, intact and extracted
in drops of syllables made malleable
by wrist flicks and scribbles;
lines between lines. Aligned but not confined.
I screech without a sound, like breath aloud
under an ear's microscope. An array of hope.
My native language is an account of vocal images
tinged with an accent naming everywhere I've been.