lingua franca

Poem no. 2 incoming!! I've been away for a bit (my apologies); but, I've got a couple articles out now w/ Boston Art Review and the Boston Compass! and I'll have another essay here next month 👀 (iA)

(included here is an audio file of me speaking a draft of this poem aloud! feel free to listen or continue reading for the final cut)

How do you share your linguistic treacles?

How does your phrasing linger; does it rub off on people?

What I mean to say is simple, I keep tripping on my ego: 

what larks will your words travel when heard in hearts? 

(Is it that deep, though?)

Are there hallmarks that your patterns in my ears impart?

My teeth’s holes 

tend to hold onto words that are mine own quite feeble.

Will you have me talking like I’m from Philly?

Will my tongue stutter-step till consonants bleed whole? 

My lips popping p’s with the emphasis of hard needles.

Appropriate your bombast, my words change like beat flows

A stretching of my verbiage to trust in the strange glee hopes

My birthplace taught me gender-neutered ‘shortie’, I been hip to the lingo 

since I heard that shit redux as a young boy on long Fort Greene strolls

New words run my palate’s grounds, 

catching up but I’m smooth with the linguals

a friend with heart of gold and the hands of a young Deebo

Our minds melded by cadence and tempo of glued phrase, 

words a free flow

Taught me validity as is, in a bevy of new ways 

(and speech quotes)

Our roots create syntaxes of joy out of anguish,

peep yo.

My mans ‘nem are my language 

You can hear them in the timbre of my key notes.

much love and appreciation to many many many of my friends, acquaintances, and passersby for shaping how I speak (and really, how I interact with the world). Also, big shout-out to CJ and Noir, especially, for allowing me to read a working version of this to them!!

Many thanks also to my father; I think in a lot of roundabout ways, I try to be him. I don’t think I’d be a writer if I wasn’t trying to emulate the way he tells, shares, and treasures stories, and the way he puts a sentence together. Happy belated Father’s day to you, Dad!!!