Ahas at Tao
Ano? Kamandag?
Masamang ninanais,
nalaman ko na!—
Changes; language
By jfarrell
“Where’s your rubbish bin?”
“My what?”
“Your rubbish bin; to throw out the rubbish…”
“Oh, you mean waste management”
What??????
What was wrong with rubbish bin?
Waste management?
I spent months looking through job adverts,
Looking for till operator, or checkout person;
Or cinema usher, team member…
Still haven’t learnt what those roles are now called.
Non-binary; snowflake; remoaner; brexiteer;
Cultural disapropriation; fake news;
Maybe it’s my age and my absence from the world;
But, woah! Language has changed.
When I went into childcare, I was trained,
‘keep your language simple’, so everyone can understand;
Doctors, psychiatrists, courts, parents, you and me;
Everyone can understand; multidisciplinary team.
Language today is like a minefield;
Tiptoeing on the eggshells of people,
Trying to avoid the cracks of what is now ‘politically incorrect’;
And huge money to be made at every misstep.
Please explain to me something…
How could George Orwell, who died so long ago,
Still foretell, with such accuracy,
How we would live today?
Words
By jfarrell
Four words created the universe and everything in it;
“Let there be light”;
Three words ended my last friendship;
“You’re so negative”.
With words we can build great things;
But we can also use words to wrought the most terrible destruction
We can encourage each other
Or tear one another down
Our most tender, treasured kiss we describe with words
As we do our most agonising pain
Whether bringing people together in love and unity
Or turning everyone against each other
When you hit me, you hit one person
When I write, dozens read my empty ramblings
The pen is mightier than the sword
Someone once said
My words will and are building
Reshaping a better world;
To everyone who ever hurt me…
I’m still here; stronger; and changing your world
With my words.
I heard a word
on TV:
one Latina called another a coconut,
un coco,
because she couldn't speak Spanish:
"brown on the outside,
white on the inside."
I couldn't help but laugh
at the imagery.
It made me realize
that I must be a marshmallow,
un malvavisco:
white all around,
but hoping to walk through the fire of language
just long enough to brown around the edges,
a tostarme un poco,
to distance myself from the hegemony, and
excuse myself from the party
that's headed for the same token American bar
as last week.
Snow White, naïve Blancanieve
Looking to blend in more than to stand out.
To disappear, a desaparecerme, somewhere.
In Lisbon someone asked if I was Spanish.
In Madrid, Portuguese.
Both times I said no, but thank you so much.
Still forgetting words left and right,
asking to repeat.
Years later I'm out of practice.
Always minding the difference between
mente & menta
entre menta y mente
una mente de menta mentirosa y sabrosa...
The masochistic pursuit of
sideways elevator glances,
supermarket suspicion,
and accusations of having a fondness for underdogs.
America says, “Speak English!”
Everyone else says, “America, try speaking anything but.”
We've got the net
so we can connect:
fiber optic
cables intersect.
Fast cars and highways,
we've got flash mobs and
we've got the bomb.
We view immigrants
---the newer ones, not us---
as software that's outdated
and needs to be upgraded.
This is not my land and this is not your land.
Imaginary lines tend to cost a lot of lives.
Keeping up appearances:
take French in high school.
The state says you should;
it makes your transcript look good...
nothing to do with any actual aspirations of
global citizenship.
Everyone's all up in arms over
Por favor, marque dos para español.
Don't like it? Then don't marque dos, asshole.
Meanwhile, we sell steaks and beer using Australians,
perfume and bras with Italians,
and your GPS comes out of the box speaking British English so you're more likely to trust it.
But anything we don't understand at home
is perceived as a threat:
una amenaza.
I had to look that word up,
cuz it's one I forget.
Much of what we call inclusion
is an illusion:
do we really want to reach out,
or continue in seclusion
con esta confusion que nos separa?
con esta realidad que nunca para?
I heard a word
on TV,
because that's where we hear things.
I can pour a cup of tea in the dark, by sound.
Exact facts and stacks of stats reverberate within earshot
and I know when you’re around.
I know when you have something to say
because you take a few quick breaths in,
allowing your lungs just enough air to support the words you want to get out,
but not so much that there’s a risk of any getting stuck in there,
left behind.
Just syllables,
prefixes,
and consonant clusters
dissolving into the mucosal lining of your lungs,
little bits left to fester, ferment, and cause infection.
Unwritten words that don’t become airborne are left
to decay and fossilize as dead weight.
A phoneme is defined as the smallest indivisible unit of sound in a language,
like sh in sharing, t in time bomb, and r in la radio.
These are the single bump Lego bricks in our castles of conversation
and the stray bits of thread in our spoken tapestries.
These sounds are no more significant than fizzes or pops
until we allow them to assemble
starting in the lungs, then in the larynx, then in the mouth.
We synthesize words that sting, bite, seduce, create, and destroy.
Words are the cherry stems we tongue-tie or spit out.
You take a few quick breaths in and all your
phonemes,
syllables,
prefixes,
and consonant clusters
come falling out at varying speeds.
This is the moment when you decide if you’re building a castle around us
or a wall between us.
Choose wisely.
Either way, be sure your words are bricks and not straw,
or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow them back into your ears, and into your eyes
with a deafening roar and a blinding fog.
Before your words become bullets, remember that I listen at close range.
I can pour a cup of tea in the dark, by sound.
HUMANKIND
I want to speak one more Language
That everybody can easily speak
Same as our food or as beverage
If not, it means, we are weak
I wish I could deal with people
In everywhere, whatever they are
I hope I can once be able
To become a friend to those are aware
Serious or peaceful situations
Should not affect our hearts
The poverty or luxury nations
Are only our world' parts
Hey Post Poems, how are you today?
I have this idea, and I'd love to do it,
But at sixty hours a week,
My back told me, "Oh, screw it!"
Wanna hear what it is?
Ok, here goes,
I woke up today, and found this on the tip of my nose,
As you see, we love to use words here a lot,
But so many words, it seems that I need, I forgot,
So I was thinking to open up a section of this site,
To write "Dear Letters" to words so we can write them right,
It could help to enhance one's expression of beauty,
Or even help some with a new language,
At dictionary visits of hundreds a day,
I bet that website's portals could use a bandage.
I am starting it off with a letter to "Vague",
He's been stalking since I was "Blunt"
I keep telling his sorry ass to get away,
Oh, you'd never believe this little runt!
Dear Vague,
I have had it with you! You never give me the whole story, you're like half of a shoe. What good are you? You walk around like you're astute, but you're lazy, you never explain anything, and why I'm giving you the boot!
Sincerely,
Blunt
3:17 PM 4/17/2013 ©