Monkey Business

A lemur schemer

simian plans

invoke the paw clause

or some other laws

to keep cages shining,

nickel and diming the

people, a church steeple

rocks, a tower of blocks

not wearing socks, washing

feet, eating meat, still

packing heat they run,

a nation, a gun, house

of the rising sun, sow

what used to be fun

and expect, fruit

to compute and grow on

but fate passed the baton

to apes, so escape to find

our liberty lost,

head in the sand, no supply

just demand, so stand

and say you are free

no chimpanzee, no

strings on me, no

monkey state, no tête-à-tête

no speech mistake, no sedative

cake, just hands and fists

grasping furry wrists,

names on lists, marching

numbers, the giant's slumber

sleeping thunder, I wonder,

if the Gorilla, a godzilla, a

flotilla of Manilla folders,

monkey soldiers, fuzzy cultures

all dodging vultures, fighting

decay, out this May, a play,

of momentous proportions,

a Kong, a King, the songs they sing

a sound shower, a howler, but the man

man at all, before the fall, let his kids see-saw

over electric lakes, with no brakes to slake

the thirst of political snakes that swarm

in dorms and write verb storms to the pitter

pat, the clicking clack, of acid rain

a drowned campaign, a stain a smudge,

the last page stares, a paper corpse, an

endings lair, and by the words we all

wrote there, a print a finger a bit of hair

from when, the monkeys ruled