English Language Learner - A poem

English Language Learner


in the snapping twig mind,
getting lost in the forest
of the present tense.

how do you say it? put it? together,
a sentence about
the deer over there in the cemetery.

it is difficult, sometimes, to remember
the correct placement of
nouns, verbs, articles and adjectives.

oh, how i long for a simple life,
where the rhythm of our sounds
isn’t forced by a grammar

so stiff it squeezes the lips
into stutter, stumble, and finally
fall, as if on bent knees,

made to give praise and offerings
to some gods of the past,
and future, heavy bodies both

lording over every last inch of land,
waiting to smite down anyone
who fails to pay to them, homage.