WASH YOUR TONGUE

BY DIM CHIMA

Watch your tongue when your irate heart goes agog
Watch it when your eyes see a SECRETing bug
Watch it when you sip drugs and grog
Is it not the dialogue that dictates the epilogue?
So wash your tongue else nothing will be left of what is right.

I have a new spelling for the word ‘white’
It is WYT
The best thing you can do with your tongue is to use your tongue to count your teeth after listening to this piece
Wash your tongue
Brush your teeth
Keep brushing
Wash it
The tongue is an ocean
It can literally drown a nation
The tongue is a knife
Always willing to cut lives
and break hearts
The tongue is a perforated basket with leaky jaws and a weird wide mouth
Always willing to swallow solid secrets
At the expense of disposing it through her bottomless holes
Because she can never hold one bit of a secret
So wash your tongue else nothing will be left of what is right.

Watch the words your tongue lays so you don’t slay the next one by what you say any way
Anyway pray that you may not be dismayed
When you awake to see that your tongue has been detached from your mouth the next day
As a result of what you said the previous day
So wash your tongue else nothing will be left of what is right

Each day you awake, wash your tongue
Because the tongue is filled with dirty words, deadly chemicals and mundane phrases no praises
The tongue is a chameleon it can bless and curse
Save and slay
Make and dismay
It can hire and fire
Impress and oppress
Heal and kill
So wash your tongue else nothing will be left of what is right.

Wash your tongue cause whatever boils out of your breath Evaporates into the atmosphere
And the only time you can catch it back is when you try to catch your breath at death
But don’t swallow it
Because if you try to swallow your words in a gulp rush,
They will choke your throat and swell your belly after all
So wash your tongue else nothing will be left of what is right.

The tongue is too simple but complex in nature
That is why she is being manipulated to do too much chores
Hence she becomes tumultuous
Well, the tongue is not entirely dry though
If well-bred,
she reverberates the breath of God.
She buys miracle from the divine oracle
She is holy and she’s a holy weapon
A tool for spoken word
My tongue is my tooth pick
I use my tongue to prick my teeth
My tongue is my chewing stick
I use my tongue to count my teeth
So wash your tongue else nothing will be left of what is right.

#SpokenWordPoetry
Editor's Note:

Dima Chima is a young spoken word poet based in Lagos-Nigeria. As shown in the video above, he performed this particular piece at #WarOfWords; one of Nigeria's biggest poetry slam competition.