We Be Tsunami

PROSE POEM: How To Finish A Dying Empire

The steady thrumming of scared hearts beating sound like a war chant. We are a few feet running from the sour reality. To my left I feel cousins separated by some genealogical diversion from several centuries ago.

Sing a song and call it slavery. Sing a song and call it forced separation. Sing a song so hard it burrows deep into your bones and whispers to you “Hey girl, the diversion is the point. Hey girl, the diversion is theft. Hey girl, hey girl, there is a choice between fighting and running.”

Ears perk up as if hearing for the first time the song in their bones. You stop and wipe the sweat off your brow. Your almost cousins stop too. Every one halts. The silence of so many feet halted in solidarity echo as loudly as the cry of one’s jumping off ships. The splash of realizing your power is a wet salty thing is almost as salty as the taste of how many times you have looked away at the slow peeling away of the flesh that you all call indelible rights.

In the loud silence of stillness many eyeballs roam in your heads back and forth back and forth. It is an odd dance, the dance of eyeballs wanting to escape closed eyelids. You bring your hands to your face and force your eyes open. Look in front of you and you see what you thought were a few cousins is actually a tsunami of human bodies peeling their eyes open too. And you see now why the sound of your heartbeats were so loud. It was millions of feet. Many millions of eyeballs.

The intensity of the sound of your fears amplifying is I= P/A. Where I is you, the individual, and P is the power you all share divided by A, the area between each terrified heart beat and freedom.

You mumble through sewn lips you try to say “I was never alone. Neither were you.” Sign to each other gestures of solidarity. Push your tongue against the thick thread sewn criss cross criss cross. When you feel the stretch of thread about to burst you all turn backwards and see them. Giant eyeballs floating. Except, they are not just eyeballs they are nests cradling guns, bombs, nuclear weapons waiting to crush you all under the sheer weight of their power. They smell of copper and sadistic slavery.

You all scream a scream trapped within your body. Where else can it go when your lips are sewn shut. One of your almost cousins step forward nails razor sharp and slices your thread snip snip snip. You roll your jaw; experience the feeling of this small freedom. Sometimes violence is an act of liberation. Your fingers are sharp too. Snip snip snip the thread of your almost cousins lips fall away too. Then there is just the sound of shared violence and the rolling of jaws finally free. You can hear teeth snapping open shut open shut.

Your many many eyes turn up toward the floating nuclear bombs that have been staring down at you with violent precision. Then someone hums. This is a familiar song. You all hum. A familiar song. A variation deviation of a song that has buried itself deep into your bones. Vocal cords rusty with lack of use crack and splinter and many throats vibrate a song so loud the nuclear balls come crashing down, crumbling, useless. What a wonder what so many eyeballs looking, so many mouths open, so many throats vibrating in unity can do.

Let us sing the song of liberation.

Come cousin let me snip the thread from your lips.

We can be a wave of salty water drowning drowning drowning oppressors. A tsunami of spit and rage.

And perhaps in the screams of metal eyeballs crashing down under the weight of our saliva you may hear a new song ringing through the air.

A song of hope birthed out of the crumbling of dying empire, of power reclaimed.

Come cousin let me snip the thread from your lips.

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