Cancel Mother Tongue

In the end, we have to be realistic.
Money waits within the lingua franca.
Ignore the soreness spreading in your chest,
the creak down through your lungs, neglect the warmth
unable to escape in English words:
Xìng fú. Inú mi dùn. Mudita-bhā.
Unlearn being communal. Scrap the care
unknown to capital. Forsake respect.
Renounce poetics. Abandon history,
tradition. Invite cognitive decline.
Bleach your tongue. Approximate high status.
Get lost among the words within your throat.
Grovel to be petted. Lose a generation.
Collapse this understanding, to forget.