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The Words must be Heard
by K. Kylyra Ameringer
The words must be heard.
They demand life,
they steal our time,
strip us bare,
lay our heads on the block
in a mock appeal for all humanity.
We are the crazed crowd screamers
the prophets
the madmen
the poets.
We can no more stop the words
than we can lop off our own hands;
the pain,
the pain of silence.
The words must be heard.
They scream out,
they whisper softly,
they pour down from the Tower of Babel
raining on subjects and kings alike.
They will not be imprisoned
in black and white;
painted in neon
playing Gene Kelly
padding in the street
to the cool beat of a military rat-a-tat-tat,
modern freedom fighters
in the war against apathy.
Let them burn the flag of mediocrity,
Razing the last vestige of your carefully constructed wall of complacency.
The words must be heard.
We drink them
and eat them
and hold them up as barriers
against the bombardment of slurs and insults
and empty, baseless accusations.
We drop them from heights to see if they bounce,
we kick them in the dirt to watch them roll,
we walk barefoot on the cold stone floor of society's face,
knowing if our words fall
thousands more will spring up in their place.
The words must be heard.
Douse us in petrol and set us alight,
send us to the sea with shoes of cement,
beat us and break us
and still we will speak;
Though they leave us broken backed in a barrel of poverty
though they cause armies to swarm outside our door
though they place us in the ground with nothing more
than wildflowers to remember our name
The words must be heard.
