mantra

I am not sure when it all started,
But I recall the switch from Lao to English,
Sometime before age six,
Translating from one language to the other,
In my mind, under my breath.
Little things that I would tell myself,
Pathetic mantras intoned to vacant gods,
Give me this, give me that,
Something about kissing the girls,
Something about whatever else.
Some strange coping mechanism,
Picked up somewhere along the way,
Dealing with the women in my life,
Abandoned and left alone,
At age four, in far northeastern Isaan.
At the edge of the foothills,
At the edge of the rice fields,
A day’s walk from the Mekong,
Often left alone, relying on someone else,
Mantras to gods long dead and gone.
So now what lies do I tell myself,
In the middle of the night,
Or early in the morning at first light,
What mantras fill my mouth,
What words fill my mind?
For a time it was the names of girlfriends,
Or those I had wished to be,
Fondled and manipulated by my tongue,
Invoking their names, crying for help,
Asking for deliverance from who knows what.
Then my children, center-most in my mind,
For years after they were born,
Every breath, every thought devoted to them,
But now as the years fly by,
There is nothing left inside.
The mantras have fallen away,
Nothing left for me to say,
No more delusions in which to believe,
The voices inside have fallen silent,
Choking on my words and beer-soaked tongue,
There is nothing left to say nothing else to say . . .