Hemorrhaging of a Native Tongue

People who only know the Caribbean
as palm trees and turquoise seas
ask me what language
we speak in Trinidad and Tobago.
I answer, “English.”
“We speak English.”

But as soon as these words escape my lungs
as silent rage rushes out behind it
scorching my insides
releasing an aftertaste of fire
and charred history.

You see
our English is not the English
spoken in Buckingham places
and high afternoon teas.
Our English bears the remnants
of imperialistic invasions,
the pillaging of minds and bodies,
only to discard them in foreign fields for profit.

And so, to remember the language of that forgotten land
we began to re-member your English
infusing ritualistic rhythms in between
the pockets of your verse.

We spoke in macheted syllables
that bled blood
mangled and diluted
by your white diction.
We sang with thick tongues
that rebelled against anglicized pronunciations:
the dead arms of Africa
throwing ghostly spears at every word
mutilating sentences
like black backs in sugar cane fields,
disembodying its structure
restitching adjectives and verbs
making ordinary nouns objective
the body’s abortion
of the language of the Queen.

Some people tell me that some Trinis sound British
but no matter how true
I refuse to hear it.
Cause when the British hear music
they may dance
but when any Trini hears the pounding of a drum
we wine and grind to the beat.
The music is our exorcist
and we pray that with every bead of sweat
we drain every ounce of Europe
that linger beneath our skins.
Maybe the bending and twisting
of our hips and thighs
will divide the pain
of the contortion
of our lost mothers
whose native tongues
were hemorrhaged in the hull
of a shackled ship.

People say that my accent has escaped me
after being immersed in New York City streets
but they’re not really listening
because if they peeled back my words
like the flesh of the master burned
in plantations by men
who refused to be emasculated,
the stench of rebellion
would invade their lungs,
robbing them of the opportunity
to say otherwise.

Unlike my great-great grandfather
who was branded with the name Joko,
my accent is free.
It comes and goes as it pleases.
But the spirit of its past
will haunt my thoughts for an eternity.
And until it finds the words
of its original dialect
to scrawl across the stones of its tomb
it will never find a sacred place to rest.


2008