the missing accents (in a poem composed in French)

~for Elisa Maria Agiro~

are neither missed nor lost,
are neither essential nor essences,
for the heart of the poem dazzles!
for the life well dreamed, dazzles!
the simplest truth needs no spices,
life, it is glorious, the glorious spark
of god, living and breathing within us,
no matter the language, no matter
the accent, that is our mission!

It ain’t like ahm a teacher ner nuthin.
Ahm jess a regular person, nothin spayshul
Ah ain’t no docterr of rocket science
Ahm jess a working guy, and kinda playful.
Ah half tah admit, ah do get things wrong
And sometahms ah can make a big mess
But ah do have minny, minny good points
And ahm a rilly good person, irregardless.

But things like writin’ readin’ and
Readin’ writin’ and sech lack that stuff
Ah stopped carin’ ‘bout at twelve
‘Cause ah found it more than kinda tuff.
Ah mean, it ain’t lack ah ain’t never
Gunna need to know reedickaluss stuff lie cat.
Ahm jess gunna graduate and then
Ah’ll go to work with Dad and drahve a bobcat.

Ain’t nobuddy needs algebra for that
Er fer workin’ at the factory line ever day either.
And it sher ain’t like ahm a teacher ner nuthin.
Ahm jess a regular person, nothin spayshul
Ah ain’t no docterr of rocket science
Ahm jess a working guy, and kinda playful.
Ah half tah admit, ah do get things wrong
And sometahms ah can make a big mess
But ah do have minny, minny good points
And ahm a rilly good person, irregardless.

But things like writin’ readin’ and
Grammer and other sech borin’ stuff
Ah stopped carin’ ‘bout at twelve
‘Cause ah found it more than kinda tuff.
Ah mean, it ain’t lack ah ain’t never
Gunna need to know reedickaluss stuff lie cat.
Ahm jess gunna graduate and then
Ah’ll go to work with Dad and drahve a bobcat.

Ain’t nobuddy needs algebra for that
Er fer workin’ on a factory line ever day either.
Ah sherr don’t need it to work digging
Er runnin’ sewer lahns er plummin’ pipes neither.
So, folks can jess give up on tryin’
To turn me into some kinda egghead scholar.
After all, it was good enough for my dad
To go to work, and work hard to earn a dollar.

Eu Te Amo
it means I love you in Portuguese

Your voice was like velvet
It danced in my ears
To a tune so sweet and so kind
They were words that I knew
but the rhythm was new  
So soon that your soul danced with mine
We twirled through the tables
And the lines oh so long
We tapped by the ice cream and cones
We swung past the dishes and the forks and the spoons
We could not stop us we flew through the air
And one point at lunch
I looked up and you
It was then that I knew
My soul had found
The one whom it loved
Somewhere between accents and lunch tables.

A friend asked if my mother had a brogue.
She was forty when she landed here,
She probably did. She must have.
What does a child hear?
I was accustomed to it.
I only heard her voice.
Others no doubt did. Liked the lilt.
I  heard the voice,
Not the accent.

Kaincha tok normal, ever sangle wunnaya?
Omina tellya diss. Nuthin lie kat is good.
Alla us oiz tok English good allatime
Ever day uhda world in mah neighborhood.

Us is sum, y’know, good tokken people.
Yeah, ain’t nobuddy speaks good lie cuss.
Lessen there from round here, ah mean.
We got eddycated good, no muss, no fuss.

We don’t need no college, no way Jose.
We gunna do jess lock are parents did.
We go to school every day till eitghteen
Jess lock dey did win dey was a kid.

Ever now and then, you can get ahold
Of sum buddy whose totally iggnent.
They stick there noses up in thuh air.
They think there better, sumthin differnt.

But really, it’s just a mute point, I mean
Irregardless of whut they bin sayin’
They jess turn stuff round 360 degrees.
It’s jess a nother word game there playin’.

Thuh important thang is to be understood
Not that thuh  people say everthang rite.
The important stuff to tok about is
To know whut is wrong and whut is rite.

a woman who stands
between day and night
with sunset hair,
and eyes the color of leaves
that will never know autumn
sees me standing in the slowly
dimming light of life,
words in the shape of a man.

your voice
like that of an angel
calling me to prophecy or worse, prayer
uses words that redefine me
like the lyrics of a memorable song
i can't even hum when you ask.
your slight accent
is faded by years
of wearing it in a foreign tongue,
like the colors of your favorite clothes
worn too often,
as i am all too often
worn too thin
by the heavy accent of your body in my thoughts.

you see me standing alone
between night and day,
an unabridged dictionary
of hope and despair,
being methodically abridged
by the great condenser of time
and his imitators,
as i am slowly reduced
to a man in the shape of words
like loved and remembered,
and later still
missed and forgotten.