A Pocketful of Poesy was and is again a Poem-a-Day(-on-Average) Blog! For 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and now for 2017 and going forward, you may expect to see 365 poems every year, 366 for leap years.

but aren't they all random?

Friday, May 01, 2009

I speak a hundred languages

I speak a hundred languages
not well
not as a cultured native, and
not even as a well-studied visitor, no
but more like a thug
Like one who spoke
his own language,
but with contempt
with a twist in his face
at home with it, yes
- but like one at home
with squalor. To whom bitterness
made truths of lies
I know not why.
The words come to me
like strangers,
and I use them. Full-knowing
how to use them, but not knowing
what they should have meant
if better used.

my gift is a curse,
not as in some great cosmic burden, no
I mean simply that profanity
has a peculiar
fluency.
From my tongue,
spring tongues of others
as if I - a medium, by they possessed
- am entered into, by spirits
not foul, but certainly uncouth
I know not why, or who, all
they leave me is their tongues
and the words to swear by
they died, perhaps,
without cursing the world enough

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