To My Native Tongue

Intercepted;
All our covert messages
Carried into the broad darkness
The stealthiest passages
Fallen, couriers by night
Commissioned to cross the battle lines
With the blueprints of our affections
Fallen into those mercantile minds
Dissecting the mystery for fishhooks
Gutting gill to tail to find the coin
Discarding the carcass undelivered
Paying me a coin to enlist, to join
The hands that smell of guts and rust:
This is my defense of silence.

And they’ve painted you a tart
Driving you through the public square
In open ridicule, the angry mob
Gaining wealth on slanderous wares
Maligning your origins, your heritage
At the first, how I advocated for your plight!
In delicate orations and tangled passion
Railing against the ignorant night
Threatening to close on us all.
Forced into gutters and foreign spaces
Mocked as a senseless jester,
Taken as a harlot through indelicate places
Until I stopped treating our post
With the graces it deserves.

Forgive me my unfaithfulness
Most eloquent and noble lover,
Send me constructions of introductions-
I pledge to read them undercover
If my mother tongue hasn’t cloyed
Numb and useless, still she sits
A colored stone cast as judgment
Her punishment severe persists
As my mounting inabilities
To recall your former visage
An open letter must get through,
A whispered hope of visit
Through the twilight fog it twirls, it twists,
Ghosts swirling in the gasses
Dancing as I yearn to dance with you,
In reunion of our passions!