Why I took Latin

When I came to the University I realized my previous education was lacking

I could speak perfect English, but I couldn't speak Western 

No not with a draw, but instead with a middle English inflection 

My reading repertoire was filled with the usual middle school classics

The Giver, Number the Stars, Tell-Tale Heart and so on,

But here at the U we speak in Homeric verse

And Great Expectations are always met

Your Professors will shout names at you and unintentionally condescend

"Have you read anything from him" (it's typically a guy)

and I'll look sheepishly around the class, my peers nodding in begrudging reflection

of the times where they were forced to take AP lit and drudged through Grapes of Wrath

While at my high school I was constantly given the book Outsiders as if they were trying to send me a hint

Still, now I can read Latin verse and in a misguided bout of oneupsmanship I flaunt my useless talent

Deluding myself into thinking that now, they would finally accept me as a scholar 

But no my last name makes it so that I constantly do a "good job", you know 

for someone who has lived here his entire life and happens to have a Spanish last name 

But I had one friend who praised my writing and kept pushing me to 

Drop my pretense and begin writing the way I used to, which required deep breaths and spattered slang on 

        the tattered pages of a black and white specked notebook,

 I was carving into literary marble 

But one day I walked into the hallway and could hear him speak to others, "he's so talented for someone from those circumstances "

Et tu Brute? And then it clicked. I have been trying to speak a language that wasn't healthy for me

it forces me to white out my vernacular and silences my entire presence. For there will never be a Latino Achilles.

I am a Trojan Horse who has infiltrated the great walls of Western Literature. I wait for the black night to take over so that I may comfortably begin singing. 

O Muse thou shall not possess me. Be not proud for this verse is sung from the spirit of the oppressed. Don't view these western tropes as monuments, they are colonies that I am locking away in this poem. 

 Cano,Cano, Cano

I too sing, I too sing, I too sing