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This poem is part of the contest:

Neopoet Weekly 07/19/26 to 07/25/26

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How to Learn Another Language (Simplified and Romanticized) 

Still, I write cliché poems
For his true words unthought and unspoken
A linguistic reason to reason, if you will
Still, his still waters run deep
I want to sow you like a seed, so you seep into id
He's mine yet you remain hermetic 

Let's start with the eyes
I see... you unfolding different lights
These ears hear... you uttering different fears
This nose smells... different heavens and hells
On our tongues twisting... different bee-stung blistering tastes of mouthful lip syncing
In search of [skinship and sipping-kissing kitsch]'s antecedent, our kinship pronouns pronounce us different
Bore me with dullest morphemes, wound me from behind with unpredictable morphosyntax's tactics, hung me half-dead again with morphomic morphines
Then you, somehow, happen to me, like how he bore down on me, wound down with me, hung onto me, even when I was at my most wiped out, wow... 

At last an atlas!
As in more than just an alphabet, more than just an intelligible madness
I long to list, all the longest listless ness-es, of senses
That're long lost and lonely, in the derangement of translation:
Что-то живёт за пределами all verb aspects. Something, a conundrum tốt gỗ đến mức it intoxicates bọn mọt sách. Something first becomes where ك و ن takes root. Something's geboren from Azathoth's subjunctive moods. Sums that sum us semantics up. 

In the Voynich script.
It's always been depicted, an essence flowing in leaf vein patterns which grants divine bliss. To lovers who return to Brocéliande's valley and mist (Voilà!)
On top of the universe.
Bursts a trysting trunk of rendezvous that lifts us up between the Scorpio-Orion cusp. Its bark callused from wearing divine laurel wreaths of our love (Εὕρηκα!)
Corrosive crimson sap.
One of Pomona's cheeky traps waiting since the fall of Rome to coat biblically bittersweet berries like morass. Once they're bruised and brash (Che scena!)
Velvety ivy vines.
Weepin' in their sleep during the charcoal-charring of silver branches cartwheeling in bloody fire. Down to our communal cries for a new life. (Mo ghrá!)
Runes running roused.
Around the Yggdrasil's rings of realities, they're soon to be carved on us hungry hounds. Urðr wyrd wish from her well that our growling howls to come about and echo loud (Gef mér runa!) 

There's not much left for me to say, beneath your wordy wood and shady shades
The way you smother
Suckle-mother me wee boa-boa-boeoui back into illiterate infancy with your humbling HÄHs of a childless father 

If I'm destined to be non-native, let me steal like great artists
I am his, you are him, yet we all IS another
Just another grammatical gender
However, to be gay or not, well, like it or not, I'm already gay
Because you're a person. A raison d'être.
 

— kellustzall, Jul 19, 2026

About This Poem

Last Few Words: Wild Beasts, I love you so much.

Style/Type: Free verse

Review Request Direction: What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?

Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back

Editing Stage: Polished draft

About the Author

Country/Region: VNM

More from this author

Critiques

neopoet

neopoet

2 days 7 hours ago

Neopoet AI [2026-06]

The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:

The poem's most compelling strength is its structural logic: the sensorium catalogue in the second stanza earns its density because each sense becomes a genuine entry point into linguistic strangeness, and the wordplay — "morphemes / morphosyntax / morphomic morphines" — works not just as sonic game but as meaning, since all three words share a root while pointing outward to grammar, wound, and numbness simultaneously. The multilingual eruption in the fourth stanza also feels genuinely motivated rather than decorative; the mix of Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, German, and Old Norse enacts the poem's argument rather than merely illustrating it, and the exclamatory parentheticals (Voilà, Εὕρηκα, Mo ghrá) function as small detonations of arrival that suit the theme.

The main area that needs attention is tonal and syntactic consistency. The poem moves between highly controlled, almost theoretical language and passages that feel unfinished or loosened past the point of productive ambiguity — "I am his, you are him, yet we all IS another" is clearly intentional in its grammatical violation, but several other lines nearby (the closing three couplets especially) slide into statement rather than image, and the effect is deflation rather than earned plainness after complexity. The shift could work beautifully as a landing, but it needs one more image or one more syntactic surprise to feel like a chosen resolution rather than the poem running out of momentum. The penultimate stanza's "suckle-mother me wee boa-boa-boeoui" is a strong instinct — the infantilization of the non-native speaker rendered sonically — but "childless father" needs a beat of clarification, even an oblique one, because as written it introduces a figure whose relationship to the poem's grammar

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