They say that every fourteen days, a language dies. The statistic isn't alarming, after all there are supposedly seven thousand languages in the world. That a language dies every two weeks, is just a statistic. The concern comes with the knowledge that a language dies because it has been forgotten. Thus it dies without recognition, without farewell and without acknowledgment. It was merely there before, a communication bridge once upon a literary dream - now a nothing. This fascinating tool that we use to interact with our fellow human beings is lost. And we don't care. The Eskimos, they say, had a hundred words for snow.
That favourite p
here lie the deep-seated sins
of the hollow-hearted youth,
of the kids who lie
alone
with clammy hands
and half-mast eyes
gripped by late night desires
and words carved into tabletops,
words telling of
wet cold sheets
and
wet hot limbs:
here lie the unspoken truths
of the insignificants,
of the ones who sit
lonely
on mattress edges
and hard floors
while their mouths hang open
and their tongues dry out.