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Fynta Sidime Apr 2021
As far as I know
Words have always landed heavy on my tongue
as a child there were
Some things I couldn’t
Enunciate well
Like soap in my native language
Though English was my first first
Language
I lost it very early on
I must say picking it back up
Learning to relearn this language
That is spoken in many places
Wasn’t as easy
As finessing my safina (soap)pronunciation
In manikaka (Mandingo)
It’s not about saying the words
But how it is spoken
How I struggle with that
English is my primary language
And yet I get asked which
Language I think in
Native speakers tries to over simplify things
Break down so I could better understand them
I mean I don’t know every big grammar that exists in the English dictionary
But golly gee you don’t have to ask me
If I know what the words mean after each sentence
But you know
I can never quite get it right
When I am told that I have accent speaking
My own native language
Words
My tongue
Why does it feel like nothing seems to fit perfectly
Words, languages
Is this the price I have to pay for being
multi lingual
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
( either thrown beneath the trodding gods' apathy
and higher, rising, contempt -
or having to squalor in man's pyramids -
myriad grain on a heap -
consort or meander in the dung heap -
the mouthful of maggots -
      in this flesh eat flesh and the ******* of
bone-marrow of a couldron of human intrigue...
either...
          mad-riddled among the gods...
or castrated and shamed among fellow men...
in my cusp: a tenderness of beauty -
an imitation bowl or at least 10 volumes worth
of tablespoons - as that:
a ferocious gulping down of water...
               and at what point is death merely
a translator of the three factions...
                        of the harvest: a perpetual presence
as one would say: one born every minute...
what personification what mythology
      when... one is always oh so busy... ) a lovecraftian
                                                       pre-scriptum...
                                  
   interlude: thomas and timothy take to dancing
in limbo... thomas wears the stilletos...
timothy dons the straitjacket...

          and for lack of a better word...
when the jazz comes on there's no one wearing
corsets - or anyone who has any stoicism
leftovers... no wise-up maxims no other
in-depth and later let's call it life...

       some call it lazy - some call it lounging -
some even dare call it
an ottoman safina in a harem -
because... that better things to kneel on
when there's a required: height difference...
i can't imagine it otherwise...
the jazz comes on and these words
become: a blob of custard imitating bubbles
as it bubbles away...

                      a stoic striptease of language...
some have it in them...
the raw edible parts that become
a steak tartar...
                          red garland anywhere
but here... a miles davis quintet
playing ascenseur pour l'échafaud...
lift to the gallows...

        it has become a terrible, a most terrible
regret of mine:
to be somewhat easy on the eyes
and having a firm belief in education...
too bad this ambitions doesn't
translate into mandarin and back...

not gifted with an a priori outsider status...
i have to compete for...
what my father didn't beat me...
but i do remember that one time
my mother taught my a thing or two
about leather and belt...
but that's a non-contest memory...
you need to be the christ
and the father is asking for you to be crucified
thus becoming the
greenwich mean-time for over 2000 years...

shove a lovecraftian god into the affair...
although i haven't read any of it,
what's the worst that could come out of...
language that will not end up
being scribbled onto a postcard...
or made into a conversation over beer...
it either has to bloat and bamboozle my ergo-ergo
into a pop:
stray bullets... clinging into unwashed
dog hairs dragging along...
sweeping the cemented tiles...

the smell of a wet dog...
    the minor affairs of washing cats...
the screetching and scratches...
biscuit for a moon - a bite into the scythe...
crumbling and slowly melting chocolate...

two engineers came to my house today...
i greeted them with:
i'm sorry... i forgot how to speak...
i can write this: can you take this umbrella
and braille?
         the t.v. was sorted: somewhat...
i'll still have to phone up and deal with
the nitty-gritty woodcrawlers...

              a testament to: how to writer an,
autobiography, any alternative to this...

           i'm going through my jazz phase...
i've had my blues phase...
                   even by my current standards of
laconic - i didn't write anything better...
i just imagine all those autobiographies
that manage to shorten the passing of a year
into a single paragraph...
then allow the ghost, and writer...
to swoon in and scoop up some other
minor detail to throw back into the juggling act
of... a passing of a minute...

chip-on-my-shoulder! that's what "they" call it!
being educated is probably my single most
biggie of a regret...
            should have learned **** outside of school...
it's almost a sin to have loved learning...
but i never learned to be a terrible person...
a con- and that suffix -artist...
which is bad from the get-go...

               here's to drinking and interludes
with a lazy bladder!
   or not drinking and pretending that hours don't
double when everyone else is alseep...
and quadruple when the cats are sleeping...

because these words could somehow become
an event - an informal get-together when
the suits and skeletons are where they should
be: closet bound... but no, again: but no...

some variation of diatribe ensues -
and whenever you get a chance to exfoliate...
to don language like peacock feathers...
like some second to Konrad von Wallenrode -
not the right history...
or not...         tare here: a tier above becoming
better tailored...
improv. sequentials...

smoking  cigarette... feels less... less of anything...
esp. less of anything health related...
when listening to someone... healthily blow
out a tune from a sax or a hornet's needle: a trumpet...
the smoke is just the salt & pepper of
adding to the mystique of a listener...

imitation of writing and painting...
the nervous composition - tapping tapping tapping...
in any case not a frivolous amount
of "something"...

                jackson ******* met...
nikita the cossack... and.... cubism was left to
a fate akin to christine chubbuck -
that infamous myth of the immediacy of death...
when you shoot yourself in the head:
unlike Kafka who prescribed -
stabbing yourself in the heart...
too bad for the urban-myth of the cockroach
dying of starvation when decapitated...

the great injustice:
Kafka asked for his books to be printed
to enlarged scribbles...
they enlarged Bukowski's writing seeing just
how... oh but so little...
i call this: the statement of the nag...
the nagging daughter of a father-in-law
that would never allow...
            circus of words...
they still print books by Kafka by people
who are expected to read braille...
while they print Bukowski's books
expecting his oeuvre to become that of a Dumas...

i'm about this close to catching moths
and sneezing bookmarkrs made from
a dollop of dust... fingerprints and all...

a recurrent "theme"...
akin to: perhaps he's wondering why someone
would walk him into an empty prison
cell... and shooting him in the back of the head...
if he wasn't expecting him to lie
in that cell for a forthnight to come!

to better respect the bass...
whether in guitar form or: that sucker for
the plucker and:
no one was expecting to explain
a bow readied for a cello to him...
so... that's jazz...

                           i'm no better or: not exactly
worse... whatever this is...
i keep an immaculate list of affairs when
it comes to the confines of a living space...
i own two cats but my house doesn't
smell anything related to the scent of their furr...
or their **** or: god forbid the scent of
cat ****... it really doesn't take away from
cat's **** even if the male is castrated...
apparently the pungency of feline male ****
is not related to them owning a pair
of testicles...
i learned that... when i started to *******
by the tender, ripe, age... of being
unable to produce any *****...
so much for the dot dot clues...
                                        spasms of spam...

gregory corso had the voice...
but unlike a bukowski...
he wasn't doing a stoic striptease for:
the most basic forward of minimalism...
the lottery... and what's "better"...
before the mirror and how one would
begin to fashion beards and distinguish
them from a moustache...
the mullet from the comb-over...
and the focus came in the shadow
rather than... the pale ghost of the mirror...
or the lake... before the mirror started
to shine its sheen: snake shedding its skin...
no leftover boots to walk in...

beside the bedtime 20th century ref. -
that there are "too many poets"...
not right now there aren't...
well... there's enough of the rhyming kindred...
but what i'm looking at is...

                what if i had a fine peach ***
to go with the whole: golem affair?
thank god! there's "not enough" of us...
wording misers... but there's plenty of...
dissected body-parts clinging to the mirrors...
i'm content...

one more for the jazz fetish...
     and no more for the otherwise...
the "king" dons dawn as this crown...
and the night for his shawl...

                    in a language that only children
will understand... or borderline with...
the image...
                there are scratchings on
the wood... some believe them to be
the schematic of a future table, or chair...

the interpolation of:
soul as synonym of breath...
                         plato's reincarnation...
it was once upon deemed a lowering
of the "caste" should a man be reborn as a woman...
plato's take on gender dysphoria...
idle words thrown against the wind...

i almost wish i were about to striptease
into a stoic with a marcus "bukowski" aurelius...
but my tongue starts licking
the peacock and...            i have to forget whether
i'm moderately read...
or whether i have read at all...

           come to think of it...
for those that despise doubt...
       i much appreciate this plethora of feeling...
it's almost akin to being in love...
a darker, love...
how can one live with two certainties in life?
one being the impeding death of all mortal
itches... and the other: per se negatio - i.e. negation?

to be in love is to fall in love with
teasing and with doubting...
            to be reminded of it is... a labyrinth
of ecstasy!
             faith and negation are just
extreme certainties...
science the paradigm...
           but doubt... the plethora to
hercules' hydra...
                                      queen of thought
and the mind stuck to a pole...
peddle the wavering quivers of the winds
united...

then again: my words are not needed for the many...
or the better excuse:
insubordinate failure of a man...
reaching a grandfather status and a...
jolly ol' christmas to boot!

children: that one most prized asset of excuse...
to every other subsequent fancy of
events either being: to one's expectation...
or... lacklustre... sodden with grief
to sink into the depths of a watery grave...
of not having met expectations
to have given "it": the original investement in!

we could almost... unanimously ascribe
ourselves to a forgiveable wanton of:
raised in a nunnery... raised in an orphanage...
raised without psychoanalysis
or gender dysphoria to mind...
raised feral...
                            oh me... and my current concern
for a jazz fetish.

— The End —