If you can hear the whales
through your glowing foot roots,
then stand up.
Open your mouth.
Let their aria rip through you.
Let it pound up and out
so the others can find you.
Burrrp!
Now’s not the time for politeness, my love.
We’re staring down mass extinction.
We don’t have time to be cool.
Care! It’s fine!
There’s a rumbling in your belly.
Can you feel it?
An inner ocean,
still teeming with luminescent jellyfish,
dulled by a thin coat of plastic,
immortal but dying anyway.
For so many
their foot roots
have withered away
somewhere in between an Uber shift
and a Door Dash,
and besides,
their heart,
rick-roll racketed by rent scam subscriptions,
beats too loud and fast
to hear any stupid whales.
Exhausted bodies
hosting ghosts
running on
foodless food
and godless gods,
too sick and tired
to look up
to see,
to know what’s happening
in our name,
to understand that the cold blue eyes
of the empire of whiteness
stamped on our every dollar bill that
we are forced to pray for
fervently each night,
“Please God please God
Please may I pay my bills God
Please may I feed my children God
Please may we keep this roof God
Please may you give me more money God
Please oh money God
Please oh please
I don’t want to die
Please give me your demon dollars
Made from the bones of African child slaves
Pressed from the meat of the babies of Gaza
Printed with the oil made from the blood sacrifices of Chevron
Paper gods every one
I know not where they come from
Or how they are made
And I might die of grief if I did
Just give me some more of your green demon prayer cards
So that I might live
Another day,
Amen.”
That is not you.
You pray of course
(we all must),
but you,
you hear the whales.
And there are others.
You can tell us by the flowers of light sprouting
from our eye stalks
and noggin crowns,
from our bellowing war cries
roaring through us
giving voice
to our blue mama,
her rainforest hair slick with oil
but beautiful still.
Reading by Tim Foley.
South Africa