Second Assignment for English 206 Poetry. "Speech"

                                                               Speech.

I read books that teach, that entertain,

to distract, and escape from

Schools that introduced them to me,

tried to teach me to interpret

Sentences that carry me along a black river in white,

to another idea or imaginary place,

further down the page,

across and over a paper mountain,

and dive into an ocean of

Words my teachers said were

nouns,

verbs,

adjectives,

adverbs,

pronouns

formed out of

Syllables I seem to create arbitrarily out of the

Letters A through Z,

the confusing jumble in between,

to a child told “no”,

a parent thinks

“to someone you will always get it wrong”. It

Sounds like beasts, calling for companionship,

warning and challenging competitors,

expressing some redundant mood or feeling.

What does it matter?

Learning this language of

Misunderstanding?

Translating it all into Understandable

Noises carried in the air,

on the wind going nowhere,

disappearing somehow,

like myself in the world,

my words

misinterpreted,

ignored,

maligned,

mocked,

absorbed

People talking without saying anything

I have been talking my whole life but

Am I understood?

Do I know what I mean?

Does what I say matter,

or do I make noise to comfort others,

as I comfort myself before the blackness comes,

the same blackness of words that sit upon this page?