You Already: Poetry Sampler

Echolalia

Misunderstand the initial
                    reaction,
          there is no I.

Ay tell you, the mispronounced
          vowel

                    goes well
          with the wayward

Bus on its last trip: no matter
How you say it, as long as you get their

          attention—

Please, allow me to outtalk the obvious:
An epal is still an apple as long as it's read

          that way:
                    speech not centered on the reaten
Word.
          In Russian that red fruit
May well
          be our tongue's devil
In disguise, яблоко / diablo ka,
the root of evil

Still.
          Truth was, the moment
                    When either epal or fig
Or figment of epal was partaken,
          the tongue sharpened
Into the serpent form.

*

Food for toot: the tongue knows they serve no apple pie in fastfoods.
It cannot be tricked, servant to substitution, while it knows chayote as its filling, it's feeling
The gap where the teeth should be.
And then biting the fruit pit:
The bale borrowing lost meaning.
The kuwan.
The ano.

*

Bale, all my friends' kuwan
          Begins and ends with bale:
It's more kuwan than habit, more
          Kuwan, you know, bale.
Bale, I can get your kuwan whole-
          sale from Kuwan, bale.
Bale, but if it's free, it's free,
          hindi bale, size doesn't matter,
It's the toot that counts.

*

Anong toot? What do you take me for,
Granted? You think I don't know
Anything? Now I know everything.

What do You think of me,
Thinking of You? I can think
Of many things now. Before You toot

Of the moon, I invented the moon
Buggy, the yo-yo. Now You can't look down
On me, I invented the dictionary.

Look me up. I'm somewhere
Between agnostic and idiot.
I'm catholic ("Of broad or liberal scope;
Comprehensive"), Filipino ("The Austronesian
language, not the people"): Ano?