Marching Toward the Simian Front

I am re-posting previous work during March.
Since 2014, I’ve published 30 original poems
for National Poetry Writing Month every April.

You can read more by clicking the NaPoWriMo widgets to the right ▶

Aping Our Apologist

Jane of the Jungle (she’s all good)
charmed our world as Darwin’s daughter.
Anglican primates notwithstood,
her leaky theories held some water.

Streams of ngombe, sacred cows
were celebrated. What were these
to which the simian cosmos bows?
Irrelevant hypotheses.

Selecting great apes (naturally)
Miss Misanthrope researched, with love;
her theories, stated factually,
were hailed as truth from God above.

Hoping for reason, shadowing Man
the graybeards came for tempting fruit
unaware of their part in the plan:
to be used, like tools (but more hirsute).

Termites on a slender stalk
delighted hungry primate souls.
Her ripe bananas were the talk
of primatological controls.

Peeling off; mzungu starkness
starred the Tanzanian night.
Chimping out, she lit the darkness
claiming scientific right.

Sweating out the Tarzan fever,
naming names while hugging apes,
let us, laughing, love and leave her
to her anthropoid escapes.

chechimp

King Kong was to film
as bananas are to fruit:
not yet deemed racist.

Aping Our Apologist

Apr8

darwin-monkey-2

Jane of the Jungle (she’s all good)
charmed our world as Darwin’s daughter.
Anglican primates notwithstood,
her leaky theories held some water.

Streams of ngombe, sacred cows
were celebrated. What were these
to which the simian cosmos bows?
Irrelevant hypotheses.

Selecting great apes (naturally)
Miss Misanthrope researched, with love;
her theories, stated factually,
were hailed as truth from God above.

Hoping for reason, shadowing Man
the graybeards came for tempting fruit
unaware of their part in the plan:
to be used, like tools (but more hirsute).

Termites on a slender stalk
delighted hungry primate souls.
Her ripe bananas were the talk
of primatological controls.

Peeling off; mzungu starkness
starred the Tanzanian night.
Chimping out, she lit the darkness
claiming scientific right.

Sweating out the Tarzan fever,
naming names while hugging apes,
let us, laughing, love and leave her
to her anthropoid escapes.

chechimp

King Kong was to film
as bananas are to fruit:
not yet deemed racist.

Fear Science

Aug4

Did your parents also take you to see Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when you were 8 as mine took me? I am only beginning to understand this pretentious and misguided film now – 40 years later. The men in monkey-suits are particularly disturbing. I recall it was a very long, slow movie – and parts of it were DULL. Now, as I read Nietzsche’s …Zarathustra, I find the words that inspired some of the most striking scenes of this outdated but fascinating movie:

“…for fear is the original and basic feeling of man; from fear everything is explicable, original sin and original virtue. From fear my own virture too has grown, and it is called: science. For the fear of wild animals, that was bred in man longest of all — including the animal he harbors inside himself and fears: Zarathustra calls it ‘the inner beast.’ Such long old fear, finally refined, spiritualized, spiritual-today, it seems to me, this is called science.”