Scrubbed White Like Clothes

Scrubbed white like clothes on a river stone I search for words to write your name Lathered of vowels Bleached of syntax Sanitized by the drenching light of the sun All I have left is a glossary of feelings Words without legs In the sandy dictionary where I run How did they get that sacred thing To live in exile from its home What did they do to my tongue That I cannot sing The songs of Soweto, Namibia, Biafra In my native note? Look at this cloth that now I wear Cut, spliced, shaped, stitched To suffice my salivation on a spinning wheel O I want my mother's tongue Dyed in the free flow of cloth Clothes that grow voluminous with the wind Free to flow like a river goes Tonal with discrete chimes For my history's telling. Scrubbed white like clothes On a river stone The sunlight sucks my brittle bones.