Glossolalia

I drink French brandy, and can hardly

Speak a word of the language.

 

I am the same about Norse sagas;

I can’t order a beer in Icelandic.

 

I would like to go to the Black Forest,

Even if it is full of white people.

I am not prejudiced;  they are German-speaking,

When they are not Turkish.

 

I bought mexi-fries from Latin Americans,

But they spoke Spanish to each other.

Why would they not speak Latin?

Is it because it is a dead language?

 

Is there a special place in the bardo

For dead languages, a place full

Of obscure phonemes and glottal stops,

Where the languages converse in Tibetan,

(Not itself dead, but much beset)

While they wait for rebirth among speakers.

 

Is Manx waiting there?

Cornish?

Beothuk?

Hittite?

 

My brain hurts from this linguistic cogitation;

I find languages stupefying.

 

I am, however, deliriously happy

That despite all this, I can drink French brandy.

I have even learned a word of gratitude:

Merde.

Isn’t that nice!

Jabbering Foreigners.

Dear me, I can be unkind, sometimes.  However, if one does not indulge one’s negative side, it tends to fester.  And, oh, how I cannot abide festering.  except in cheese.

Jabbering Foreigners

When I sit in semi-somnambulent gazing

Over a too-hot coffee on a sunny patio,

Or stand in a store and the racks of inedibles,

Or ride a bus on a sticky afternoon,

I have only one small irritation, well,

Shrieking brats and loud teenagers excepted,

The meaningless jabbering of foreigners,

Foreign by nature of their babbling.

 

I get so sick of signs in many tongues;

I no longer find it exotic, I am not enthralled.

My language bears my culture, it proclaims my race,

It is our only meeting place.

 

I’m not colour-blind, I do see you.  But,

When we talk, we might become brothers,

Or hate each other’s guts.  Ha Ha.  But, what the hell!

We are family,  And in the end, together.  Why?

We can talk.

 

The jabbering foreigners make my skin crawl.

They are alien to me.  I wish them no harm,

Nor do I bless them.  Just go away!  Learn English!

Your jabbering is a mask, walling you apart.

Unkind words?

Indeed.

 

However,

You in the streets of Bangkok,

You by the canals of Venice, the dikes of Holland,

You in the gasthauses in Munich.  And of course,

How could I forget.  You in the bistros of Paris,

Think of me in the same bitter way, as I

Jabber incomprehensibly  on in English.