I’m so confused/

/Qué bruto.¿Por qué no hablas tu lengua materna?
/How rude/
/Why don't you speak your native language?/

When they ask me why I don’t speak Spanish/
Which Spanish do you mean?/
The Castillian Iberian Peninsula kind/

/When they’re not sailing out from the Iberian Peninsula ports in search of lands to steal and people to conquer/late 15th to 17th century/"In fourteen hundred ninety-two,[Chris, baby] Columbus sailed the ocean blue"/the Caribbean, the Philippines, and almost all of Mexico, Central and South America/they were swamped those Spaniards/Spanish explorers and conquistadors Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro/plundering, raping/just your everyday genocide/

Is it the Spanish spoken by my Puerto Rican father+Dominican mother+the Spanglish spoken on the streets of the South Bronx back in the day when the Italiaños and the Puerto Ricans+Dominicans in the neighborhood would riff on the sounds of their lengua materna cause there were so many words that sounded the same/mixed with the other mother tongue English/American/

/Did you know that the Spanish language/has several regional dialects/all of them born from Castilian/but different/from European Spanish/Mix it up with those local indigenous screams for help, and out comes/something different and the same/and the blood/lines/run right through it/Underneath every colored skin is a Spaniard trying to break free/

Oh, that mother tongue/

/Oh, you mean/the language of the settlers/who came from a civilized country/and proceeded to rape and pillage/and civilize their way through this empty land/where no one lived/through the Caribbean/and the Southeast/and Southwest/and what we now call California/and what would become/stand up please/The United States of America/what would become Mexico/and Central America/and South America/except Brazil/

The nuns told my parents/Don’t speak Spanish/
	or whatever the hell that is you speak/speek/spic/at home/
What you need is some fine, outstanding English/

/Like in the Isle of England/English/as in the lingo of the conquerors/15th-17th century/there were so many/North America, West Indies/plundering, raping, just your everyday genocide/so I could grow up to be that fine outstanding American/Underneath every colored skin is an Englishman trying to break free/

Excuse me, Nun/ 
I was born in AmericaAmericaAmerica/ 
	In case you didn’t hear me the first time/
I am confused/which one is my mother tongue/

/EnglishEnglishEnglish/how many times do we have to tell you/you espeek English/Do I need to get a translator you dumb brown person or whatever you are/The language of America/you non-English speaking twat/

I speak American/this wacky mix/hybrid/
jumble of word sounds/gargled up from deep/in our bodies/
	thrust out/
	forced out/
	floating out/
Like music in the air/

/La Lengua Materna/The Mother Tongue/both fighting over me like settlers eyeing a piece of virgin land/brought to you by the indigenous people who currently call this home/is their home/and you deny it/condemn it as speculative/not borne by the evidence/because well anyone can see clearly/this is uninhabited by civilized Europeans/we should know/we’re civilized/

But the lengua thing is/
	What the hell/
I’m writing this in American/
I’m not going to keep myself up/
Tonight/worrying about which lengua/
I will be speaking/like that’s a thing to me/

/None of this defines me/my identity/because my identity is more than a language/it’s everything I read, see, touch, and interact with/the people I meet who share something special with me/who leave me with a kind word that is not spoken but felt/or a fear that I will not forget/you won’t be inviting them over for holiday dinner/

I think American/speak it/act it/
So stop with the/
	Que bruto/¿Por qué no hablas tu 
        lengua materna?/
Mi Lengua/is me/
My language/is me/
	open your mind/
	open your mouth/
	and music will flow/from you/
So we can all sing together.