These words are not mine.
This language is a foreign tongue.
The day that I was born
it wrapped me
in its soft netting
and spoke my name.
So, who orders
these words?
Who receives them
against their
strange lexical body,
unraveling meanings,
translated almost
without thought?
Heirs to these codices
from parents, relations,
books, television, movies, friends,
teachers, siblings,
crowds,
what determines the filter
through which words slip,
or retain?
Through what agency
does it persist and change,
this bequest,
this legacy of tongues,
this borderless proliferating sea
of sound and perceived
intent?
Nothing is outside language,
the territory
of humankind in common.
Breaking no laws,
we steal every day.
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