Xenoglossy

Day 12: Bonus poem--another one that I think somewhat fits today's prompt:

Xenoglossy

I woke this morning knowing French,

And now as I drive the freeway

Listening to a book on tape,

I feel Dutch enter through my left ear,

Tagalog inching its way up my right calf.

German makes a beeline up my spine,

While Arabic traces along my fingers.

By the time I get to work,

My stomach is the Rosetta stone,

And I cannot keep down my coffee.

I Google for answers

As Urdu tickles my ribs

And Italian caresses my collarbone.

I find a case or two

Of language coming

Unbidden

Into a mind.

But nothing like this,

This invasion of the body

by conjugated verbs,

Accents and inflections,

Formal and familiar.

Yiddish taps insistently on my temples,

While Pig Latin sidles up a nostril,

Eskimo’s 32 words for snow

Filling my eyes like tears.

I fumble for the phone but it’s too late,

A thousand tribal tongues are beating in my heart,

Cherokee, Pygmy, Mohican, Semai,

I try to scream

But all that comes out is a garbled mess of

Swedish and Gujarati,

Swahili and Portuguese.

My coworkers speak to me,

But their words are like triangles

In a symphony.

And all at once it’s over.

It’s all inside me,

Every human language, living or dead.

I know thousands of words for love.

I know words for things I have never seen,

Ideas I will never understand.

I break into gestures,

Turning to an officemate

I know has a deaf son.

They rush me to the hospital

But there is no cure.

Doctors and psychologists

visit from far and wide

To examine me.

Reporters try to discredit me.

Pilgrims from all over the world

Come to hear me speak their language.

But at night I am always alone,

So I sing to myself in Japanese,

Chant prayers in Sanskrit,

Tell myself jokes in Moroccan,

And write the most beautiful poetry

No one can understand.