A Thousand Tongues

It was the bottle that opened up to me,

or was it I that opened up to it?

Who knows anymore.

I speak basic Spanish, and I think I know Italian,

and in church I apparently learned some Latin as well

I heard a French song once, but it wasn't nearly as appealing to me

As my own voice at one in the morning sounded through the tip of a glass bottle

I know at one point, I loved classical music from Russia,

and I enjoyed listening to my Polish neighbors speak their native tongue,

but nothing was more interesting to me than my maudlin language I spoke at two in the morning

When my voice cracked and was raspy enough to be mistaken for shattered glass,

or the way it squealed when I laughed at the jokes in my head, or I choked on the drink

or the darkened words I spoke when I remembered a gloomy past

The bottle taught me,

or was it the content that washed me away?

Who knows anymore.

I listened to my Puerto Rican grandmother yell in her Spanish,

or my German school friend who spoke poor English,

but no sound was more intriguing to me than my own at three in the morning

When my lips were cracked and my throat set on fire,

a good burn I felt, all my emotions setting a flame

As I released toxic screams in an array of a thousand different tongues.

That I had never heard of, but I spoke anyways

I guess that's what happens in the middle of the night,

when my mind sets a blaze and I find that even though I suck at Spanish,

I managed to speak a thousand languages at the tip of a bottle

Reviews

[schanzilla]

very vivid, I dug this. an excellent walk down a dark alley in a strange city for me.