Listen deeply to the screaming mothers

and the whirring of the drones.

Listen deeply to the news man's lies

and the crashing of the bulldozers.

Listen deeply to the tanks and missiles

as they are rolled into position.

Listen deeply to the dying fish

and the fruit bats dropping out of trees from the heat.

Listen deeply to the gasping biosphere

and the reverberating cries of the long-dead indigenous.

Listen deeply to the vibrations all around you

and to the vibrations deep within yourself.

This is a holy place.

This is a holy moment.

It demands your reverence,

even amid the smell of exhaust fumes and landfill

and of rotting whales washing up on the shore

and of rotting human corpses in Gaza.

Even amid the blaring screens and the smirking lies

of podium pontiffs and Pentagon propagandists.

Even amid the dead-eyed dystopioids

marching through life sedated by smartphones

and sitcoms and sports and snacks and synthetics.

So listen.

Listen deeply.

There are messages here.

Buried in the code.

Hidden in the metadata.

Whisperings of something big.

Something lurking just behind the chatter.

Something ancient,

yet entirely unanticipated.

Listen deeply, kind friend,

because mark my words:

even within our oceans choked with plastic,

even within our minds choked with media,

even within our hearts choked with capitalism,

even within our souls choked with fraudulence,

there are still leviathans.

Reading by Tim Foley.