Listen Deeply
Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:
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.
________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Off topic, but great news! Assange is finally going home.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/us/politics/assange-plea.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U0.xsFJ.etBRwfClFzvQ&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
Wonderful poem! I especially like this image:
"Dead-eyed dystopioids
marching through life sedated by smartphones"
I've seen more than a few of these crossing the street, eyes glued to the phone screen, oblivious to the traffic, oblivious to the sounds and sights and smells around them. Walking and staring dead-eyed like the walking dead.