Of Monsters and Men in PDX tonight

"Because nothing grows when it is dark ..."

Too Beautiful ... Omar Faruk Tekbilek

The Loneliness of the Bilingual Poet

I cannot justify
why a single poem
speaks to me in
one language over another
but it does
choosing the flat American narrative
against the metaphysical French wave
a story of shock and awe
or those philosophical ponderings

All I know is when I'm done
the words sit on a fence like
crows against a landscape
until they heckle and jeckle me
into reading them aloud
and I read them as they are writ
in that godforsaken foreign language
droning on and on and on and on
until the whole room is numb

Then try to sweep it back to life
with rapid-fire translation
but it always fails flat because
there is none
and my heart is hit
with that hollow dart
and I again become
the dreaded stranger
of my lonely youth