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.