Mother Tongue

Inspired by good ol' Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth and Caliban in this one and also a wonderful poem by Sujata Bhatt called 'Search for My Tongue'.

In hindsight, it was also inspired by the Fool character in Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters too: 'My lord, there are such words that can [harm], said the Fool. “Liar! Usurper!"'

I had also recently read about the idea that Dickens may have based Wackford squeers on a real cruel schoolmaster and had turned him into a fictional villan.

Mother Tongue

My dictionary says you should be

Technically, genetically

A biological parent:

Beget, origin, source – this is all.

Other meanings are erased:

Safety, home, love,

Nurture, tenderness, protector.

You chose to be Lady Macbeth

Selling your milk for venom.

I didn’t ask for this tongue, mother

But now I have this mother tongue

I’ll play Caliban

And I’m sure as hell going to curse you.

You scorned an innocent fool

For using the wrong word at the wrong time

An adult blaming a child for misusing a tool

Clumsy words not good enough

So I learnt that while sticks and stones may break bones

Words hurt too

and don’t heal so quick

So I determined to excel with words, to please you

But later you’d scold me for seeming supercilious and sycophantic

Nitt-picky and pedantic.

You made me obsessed with language,

My profit on it?

I’ll use it to re-write you:

Not mummy - an emotional standing stone

But mummy – a rotting, outmoded monster, a dead palimpsest

Words can hurt – but can heal, can rewrite:

You’ve become the cat’s mother,

a womb, a matrix I’ve unplugged from.

Mome - fool, blockhead,

madre - scum,

modder - dregs, decaying object,

mudde - sludge.

Necessity is the mother of all invention

So I’ve replaced you:

Mother Nature, Mother Goose.

Lost the mother but kept the tongue;

Language will be the motherland.

You were the mother of all migranes:

Mother didn’t know best.

Mum’s the word but I won’t keep silent.

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