koba

 

 

 

there's that part in the new Planet of the Apes movie;

that part were the apes take on the human characteristics

of forgiveness and compassions,

love and honor. And right then, with

the movie not 20 minutes old,

that you knew there was going to be

some trouble. I like it better in 68

when the apes were men in monkey

suites kicking a*s. How devious is our

concepts of emotion. How abradable

our morbid heavens have become.

Today i'll write a poem about being an ape.

About how we licked toes without washing.

Fed each other from each others mouths.

 About how each step was a certain

clinging. And as often as it happens,

entropy will escort me part-way.

Of how abstract this silence of proximity

is. May as well unlearn your chimpanzee

craziness like the strippers, who back in

the day, could pick up bottles of Slitze and

E&B with their asses.

May as well unlearn the taste of salty lips,

morning cocktails; feminist poetry.

May as well sort out

this dizzying jungle  music of despair: Allow the

ghost in the rain forest to be themselves, especially

those doffed in the outrageous masks

of aversion. Don't hasten the

squirrels to open the nuts the've saved.

Stop cussing the beginnings of the

sequel yet started. Stop crying those

hugh half-animal distant tears. Crying

turns the brain into Colorado skies. Gloomy

and snow drenched.

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

I agree with the wise erin-cliberto. The sweep of this poem, with its cleverly misleading beginning (a minor Planet of The Apes charcter? Really?) builds to something universal, something archetypal, an Olympian musing upon man and animal (and how simple we must have seen to the gods!) The world has changed, and we have changed (ah, Roddy McDowall, all is forgiven), and there is no reason for as to keep "cussing the beginnings of the/sequel yet started." As jacob says, you're making the rest of us look bad, but for God's sake, keep giving us something to shoot for.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

geez, dana....

i just get completely humbled when i read your words...i feel like an amateur in comparison.

i love what you said about the beginning of the movie...which i am going to see soon...the irony of the apes displaying what we "used" to display but no longer do...
we need to go back to being like those apes...and actually have comapssion...and forgiveness.
we don't much anymore...and of course technology just keeps us more apart than together..

we need to go back to being the warriors...at least there is contact.

your poem also reminded me of when i was a kid...how different it was...how we shared things...sodas, food whatever, never thought about getting diseases from each other...and we all lived...
the tears are definitely "distant" as you say...and they almost don't seem real anymore.
what do we actually feel now? anything at all.
those apes display more human characteristics than we display now...
a reflection of the old humanity, maybe we need to go back to...

if i were the apes...i would no longer trust us either.

go Caesar!

great piece, dana.
jacob