White English

Tongue gone dumb 
  From disuse at some 
  Numb young sea-scum's post 
  Bottle after bottle after bottle out sink 
  Cold filled to the cork with uncrackable code 
  So good through the years the knots went 
  That it's alphabet was even forgotten 
  Me?  I'm head vessel for a fleet of tears 
  Out on my old man's bones parole 
  Under sail only for a hole to hell to fill 
  With handfuls and handfuls of loose-earned dust 
  Or plug up level really with anything other than us 
  And then to toss a dusty rug over-- 

  Lost (lost lost) in translation.  Lost. 

  To a kingdom of light I wish tonight to fall witness 
  But victim to a spite it might incite sickness 
  I sit in and pretend and through it write hymns: 
  Tight-limbed in white English as my one and trite business. 
  Light as a nice fat rice sack boiled in water 
  Out farther than the house of my father 
  Waiting in the sitting room of yet another doctor 
  I taste what little bitter roots this winter has to offer and 
  Without a son or daughter to shoulder the debt 
  Alone with the past and prone to regret 
  Dreamt my death by a knife on a path in Burnet 
  But under the bedspread, I'm younger than dead yet. 

  Lost (lost lost) in translation.  Lost. 

  Even an opal heart hopes all night 
  In the bright, biting strobe lights 
  And bitter cold, as the living set up 
  To a long white joke told through sun up 
  'til the bones and bodies spun around them fold. 
  Hopes all night through the old lone fight 
  And the bright vast cold, but there's no punch-line 
  By this told whack joke for all one's life is surrounded 
  'til the black hole and bodies spun around it fold. 

  Lost (lost lost) in translation.  Lost. 
  Lost (lost lost) in translation.  Lost. 
  *(Glass shatters)