Radical Primaticism

Our body itself is the palmary instance of the ambiguous.

- William James

Jungle cries, echoes

From the bone dry gulch

Of Olduvai:

Monkey business, the ancient

Ancestor, hominid, old Homo

Erectus, not yet sapient, that

Little bitty skull, dragging

His bloody knuckles across

The rocky shale, or her knuckles,

Old mother, and all around them,

Them, OUK OUK, a regular

Barrelful of monkeys,

Only they ain’t got no barrels,

Yet.

Or even worse, the brooding

Silence, poor monkey,

Monkey see, monkey

Stare unseeing,

Bored out of his gourd

Old chimp, jacking off

All the livelong day after day,

Whacking his meat,

But never learned to cook

His meat, chews it raw,

Sad fireless monkey,

Poor old ape, look what

He’s growing up to be.

You may, if you will, shame

The caged chimp,

Smart as a whip but got

No swollen frontal lobes,

Wrong kind of thumb,

Improper opposition,

No elegant tunes to be picked

Out on the clavier by him

Just look at those feet,

They’re only twisted

Angry hands, but before

You get too smug

Consider this:

What’s the ugliest part of your body?

Asked an ad in an old magazine

That made apish men chortle,

Jungle cries, sure enough,

But the answer was, my friends,

Your feet!

●

But not your feet, not your feet at all,

So delicately formed,

Surprisingly lovely, in one

So slim and tall.

●

And consider this:

In California, Koko

And Ndume, signing

Their lives away, their clever

Hands, fingers flying,

Such questions, such answers,

Always looking out for

The nearest Coke® machine.

●

And Michael, RIP, so sensitive, the artist,

Saw his mother poached and killed,

Gorilla brother, died so young,

His pictures on the wall.

●

And consider this:

Washoe, she of “baby

In my cup,” once ran away,

Climbed a tall tree and signed

The worst word she knew,

Long dangling fingers waggling

Underneath her chinny chin chin:

DIRTY, DIRTY, DIRTY!

●

Better than the diarrheic hippo

Who raised his rosy rump up

Out of the sluggish water

And let fly at the gawking,

Ducking crowd.

●

But better for whom?

●

Santino the Swedish chimp,

Planning ahead,

Calmly stockpiling stones

In the corner of his cage

To zing them at noonday

Visitors in a “hailstorm”

Of rocks and concrete chips,

Hjälp! Hjälp!

Tortured lab monkeys, our

First cousins, therefore very

Useful (“Here, Cheetah, have

A smoke.”), like our other

More distant cousins,

Cats, stacked up in boxes

And vacuum packed

So lazy sophomores (not bright

Enough for Physics) can carve

Them up for two academic credits.

●

But not my Sheena, already burnt

To ash and safely tucked away

In a red velvet pouch.

I miss her so

(You do not know).

●

Or think of the great Irish poet,

William Butler Yeats

And his monkey glands,

Requiring what ape

To become a ragged sack

Of bones so that Willie

Could get his willy up again.

A terrible beauty was born.

Or answer me this:

Why did Hitler, yes,

Sentimental Adolf

Who was bedridden for days

With inconsolable grief

When his caged canary died,

Why did he, the fucking Führer,

Order, in October 1941,

The import of 1,000 rhesus monkeys?

And a “troop” of Barbary apes?

To plant them on Gibraltar,

A hirsute fifth column, injected

With an infectious depilatory

To strip the Brits of their apish pride

In the way the CIA were later

To have a go with Castro’s beard?

To do a little testing, a little tattooing,

A little vivisection, a little dental work,

Dr. Moreau, Dr. Renault, Dr. Mengele,

Maybe a gulp or two of poison gas

(You know why), or maybe,

Just maybe, just maybe,

Just for fun?

You tell me.

All those monkeys

In that infinite philosophical

Puzzle, typing, typing, typing,

To be or nix to be, to be

Or mxyzptlk, to be . . .

Even the orange orangutan,

Dweller in the waving limbs

Of the very highest treetops,

Hanging on, harkening to

The din of axes far below,

Or, if captured, disassembler

Of all zoo cages, made to wave

(By Edgar Poe, who knew his cats,

Too, oh yes) a bloody razor, shove

The headless body up the chimney

Flue, or (What do you think

The orang thought of this?) tumble

On the beach in erotic foreplay

With none other than Bo herself

(Did he think she was a ten?),

Or, for that matter, ride around

With old Clint, not so old then,

In a freaking pickup truck.

The things we freaking do.

The naked ape that kills

And eats and eats and kills,

That eats and fucks and kills

And kills and kills, that’s our

Natural sobriquet:

And we do eat, drink,

Solve problems, make

Decisions, speculate,

Theorize, economize,

Hit golf balls on the moon,

Run red lights, pick up

Hitchhikers or pass them by,

Scrimp, save, sacrifice

For others, care, love,

Hold each other close,

So close, roll over in sweet

Clover, make long love

All afternoon, all night,

Make war, make peace,

Bomb cities, bomb towns,

Cathedrals, villages,

Bridges, dams, roads, streets,

Temples, the homes of saints,

Masturbate, fuck,

Procreate, pray, prey,

Sacrifice, and kill, and save,

And kill and kill and kill,

Oh baby, just monkeying around.

●

Not you and I, we’re not the killing kind.

But do poets ever kill? Oh yes, ourselves,

Each other, the stranger on the street.

We’re dirty bastards, too, but we do try,

Don’t we? We try, but even a poet, now

And then, has a bad day.

●

Display:

The scream, the pounded chest,

The bristled spine, advance,

Retreat, KREEGAH,

OUK, OUK, OUK.

Display:

Holding our ugly signs aloft,

Screaming at the crowd

Holding their ugly signs up,

KREEGAH, across the way.

Display:

Dogs straining on the leash,

Fire hoses, knouts, billy clubs,

Lashes, lances, fire hoses,

Rubber bullets, real bullets,

Golf balls with nails embedded,

Sticks and fucking stones.

Display:

The reddened face, the teeth,

The tears of rage, the screams,

And our great gift, gift, some say,

Of the gods, of God, the word,

Words that, some say,

Separate us from the beast(s):

You motherfucking shitlicking

Cocksucking goddam son of a

(Sputtering fucking rage) bitch!

Oh yes, display.

Trained carnival show chimps,

Caged in a sixteen-wheeler

With sides that can be raised,

Beating the absolute shit out of dumb

Men, maybe a little drunk, chumps

Who were offered fifty bucks

If they could beat the chimp

Or even stay in the cage with him

For a specified while (the owner’s

Hands, with only six and one half

Fingers between them, counting

Those two opposing thumbs),

And the way the old chimp

Would size you up, rip off

The safety helmet you were

Told to wear, and beat the crap

Out of you with that, too.

●

No I didn’t fight the chimp or even try,

But I watched, I paid my buck

And closely watched. I did.

●

Tears of rage:

Is there no limit to what

Hurt we will inflict?

Is there no limit?

Is there no limit?

Babi Yar, Katyn, Abu

Ghraib, Van, Darfur,

Wounded Knee,

Berwick, Gatumba,

Messolonghi, Medina,

Mountain Meadows,

Wolstenholme Towne,

Rosewood, My Lai,

Myanmar, Phnom Penh,

Malmedy, and worse

(You know the worst)

And worse and worse

And worse.

KREEGAH!

RAGE

RAGE

RAGE

Tears of rage:

Is there no limit to what

Hurt we will inflict?

Is there no limit?

Is there no limit?

Janjaweed, Danite

Band, IRA, KKK,

SLA, Sombra Negra,

Sendero Luminoso,

Hóng Wèi Bīng,

SAVAK, Hashshāshīn,

Al-Qaida, Brigate

Rosse, Khmer Rouge,

Lohamei Herut Israel,

Mau Mau, and worse

(You know the worst)

And worse and worse.

KREEGAH!

•

What keeps a man alive?

He lives on others.

•

Jane Goodall’s nightmare,

The wild chimpanzees:

The Four-Year War,

Drumming on hollow trees,

DUM DUM,

Biting off fingers, toes,

Pounding with appropriate

Stones, appropriate spears,

Chimpanzee war

In Gombe, that one awful

Female, so intent, chewing,

Chewing, chewing

The oh so tender flesh

Of that baby chimp.

Muncher, muncher.

There, there.

Our cousins:

Gorillas, Gorilla gorilla,

Gorilla beringei,

High flying orangutans,

Pongo pygmaeus,

And monkeys,

Monkeys, monkeys,

More monkeys

Than you could fit in a barrel,

A hogshead, a firkin,

A butt, or even a tun.

And chimps hunted by men

For bushmeat, more men

Than chimps, many more,

Chewing, chewing.

Our closest cousins,

Sharing 98.7% of our genomes,

Bonobos, Pan paniscus,

The so-called hippie apes,

Peter Pans in Everland,

Never grow up, kids

Killing only time, gentle

All the time (unless you

Grab ‘em), sharing food

With each other, with

Strangers, “make love

Not war,” tongue kissing

In the wild, in the zoo,

And screwing, too, having

Discovered on their very own

The missionary position

Without the intervention

Of one single missionary,

Male on female, female

On female, stroking and stroking,

Petting and petting,

Rubbing and rubbing,

Fucking and fucking.

And we, so close to both,

No shock, then, to find ourselves

In such a fix, in such a bind,

Fight or flight, good ape,

Bad ape, the naked wonder.

Headlines:

PET CHIMPANZEE

BITES OFF WOMAN’S FACE

NAKED MAN BITES, EATS

HOMELESS MAN’S FACE

A question for you:

What was it that awaited

Virgins who died unwed,

For centuries were said

To lead apes in hell,

To be harassed forever

By boorish apish behavior

Like those village women

In Kenya recently taunted

By vervet monkeys,

Grabbing their hairy little breasts,

OUK OUK, and pointing at

Their little bitty, OUK OUK,

Pink pricks?

“Admitting that the whole

Of a monkey is disgraceful,”

Reads a medieval bestiary,

“Yet their bottoms really are

Excessively disgraceful

And horrible.”

By the way, what is

The ugliest part of your body?

And yet, there are the mysterious,

Elusive, quick, private,

Almost unknown, unseen,

Shadowy bonobos

Flitting through trees,

Through thick jungle bush

On the south bank

Of the Congo.

And in the Congo,

“Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,”

120,000 lowland gorillas

Graze silently, always ready

To disappear again in an instant

In order one day to appear again.

•

O where is my wandering daughter,

Among the gleaners in the fields

Or in the lowland forests

With these gentle beings?

•

The poem of the apes

Is a poem of muscle, all

That blood from the brain

Drained to sinewy leg

And arm, gripping hand

And clever foot, stanzas of leap,

Stanzas of swing, stanzas

Of soar, stanzas, too,

Of wild careen.

Or the gibbon’s eager poem

Of teetering delight,

On the end of a tall tree limb,

Her long arms spread in anticipation

Of her mate’s hurrying, busy,

Rustling return.

•

Perhaps in Mogodoro

On a dusty road filled

With small monkeys,

“Those little rascals”?

•

Then there are those newly found

Missing links, the little ones,

Barely four feet tall. Are they

Our grandparents or did

Our grandparents—just try to count

The generations in between—kill

Or maybe eat them all?

Or were they just another

Missing missing link,

Perhaps no missing link at all,

Like our other grandparents,

The artistic Neanderthal?

Were they happy in the trees

Or walking slowly erect

From glade to glowing glade?

Or were they, too, afraid?

And what is it that we fear?

Koko in her safe sanctuary

Fears the crocodile,

Even a small rubber toy

Shaped like the crocodile,

Fears it in the bone,

Fears it in the blood,

Fears it in the mind.

What do we fear?

Abandonment.

What do we fear?

Abandonment.

Fear it in the bone,

Fear it in the blood,

Fear it in the mind.

What do we fear?

Betrayal, exile,

Massacre and torture,

The river running

With flesh, with blood,

The cold shudder,

The cold shoulder,

Closed shutter,

Empty shelter,

The serpent’s tooth,

Enislement, isolation,

These people, those people,

The serpent’s hiss

That whispers

In the dead of night,

Whispers

To our eager open ears.

What do we fear?

Abandonment.

It all comes down

Like dishes crashing

In the dark, cracked

Crockery all over

The polished floor.

The noise fills our ears,

As Joseph Conrad put it,

Like “a tribe of monkeys,

That insulting hullabaloo.”

And that long flat space,

Distant, silent, drab,

Without boundaries,

Without doors, without

Windows, that empty

Space from which we

Watch the world

But do not enter in,

Detached, alone,

Lonely, and afraid:

Abandonment.

And yet, and yet,

Swinging lightly among

Broad cool green leaves,

After a soaking rain,

Patter and splatter,

A tribe of monkeys

Chatters like birds

In early spring,

A choral poetry

Of hullabaloo.

What do we fear?

Is it what

We most desire

(Afraid to have it

Or to hold it near)?

What do we fear?

The stumble, the stagger,

The tumble, the fall,

That which is the case.

Ecology of the Day:

Buzzing, blooming,

Vines that wrap and smother

The tree, limb that cracks

And falls, crisscross

Of passing birds, swirl

Of butterflies, hawk’s

Deadly dart, swollen

Carcass of the deer,

Bear’s lumber, crow’s

Beckoning cry, crash

Of waves on the shore,

Teeming deeps, jungles,

OUK OUK, deserts,

Oases, mirages,

Crash of colors on the eye,

Spectra, sun’s dazzle,

Transit of Venus,

Round on round and round,

Water, fire, earth, and air,

Such confusion, such

Assault, such chaotic

Order, part and apart.

Ecology of the Night:

Owl’s hoot, swift swoop,

Vole’s skittered squeal,

Skunk and opossum,

Clawed feral cat, small

Things that move and shuffle,

Moon’s transformations,

Apparent, transparent,

Shadows that shift

Or disappear, a filter

Of fireflies, shimmers

Of distant lightning,

Whisper of leaves,

Silence of snow, punched

Tracks, rabbit’s flurried

Flight, coyote’s paw,

How busy the night,

How lonely the night,

That startled 3:00 AM

Waking, absence,

Presence, alive, alone,

Alive, alone, alone.

Ecology of the Body:

In a balanced, healthy

State, 10,000 species

Of microbes in and on

Us, each one of us,

Separate, lonely,

But never alone,

Skin and bubbling gut,

Stiff bone, taut tendon,

Erectile tissue, oozing

Organ, bladder and liver,

Kidney and kidney,

Seeing eye, straining ear,

And busy busy brain,

Each of us, each one,

An entire ecosystem,

Swarming with pounds

Yes, several pounds

Of lively bacteria, fungi,

Mitochondrial organelles,

Together, all together,

United as one until

The final parting of the ways,

Final abandonment, final

Bulging, seething feast

Of autocannibalism,

That final obscenity.

Ecology of the Mind:

Not brain, whether

Connected, disconnected.

Interconnected, not brain,

Atop the brain (Descartes),

Perhaps below, intertwined,

Brain as organ of the mind

(Luria’s conjecture),

Mind that observes, perceives,

Accumulates, assimilates,

Organizes, ideates,

Conceives, shapes form

And forms, formulates,

Formalizes, hypothesizes,

Mythologizes, theorizes,

Believes, achieves certainty,

Knows, knows, knows,

Only then to doubt, only

Then to disbelieve, only then

To give in, submit to inertia,

The solitary confinement

Of the tethered mind, alone

To commit the unforgivable sin,

Alone to despair, alone

To undergo the ultimate

Abandonment, alone.

What then is left for us to do

In this ecology of confusion,

This mental mess, this

Feeding on the inner self,

This thought-filled, thoughtless

Gorging of the rational mind?

•

What keeps a mind alive?

It lives on others.

•

Wallace Stevens offered

This solution, said once

Before he found

The palm at the end

Of the mind, of mind:

“Of what value is anything

 to the solitary and those

 that live in misery

 and terror, except

 the imagination?”

Shall we take his word?

Or perhaps other sights

At the doors of perception,

Hallucinations of the mad,

Absurd larks of the hypnotized,

Acid nightmares, opium

Dreams, shroom visitations,

Even the possible dreams

Of the restless dead,

I, there’s the rub,

Dreams on the nod,

Waking dreams, dreams

Of the tossing sleepless?

Or perhaps what Peirce

Called “play of musement”?

Or perhaps what John

Cowper Powys called

“Dithyrambic analysis”?

Or perhaps what Werner

Herzog called “ecstatic truth”?

Or perhaps the very visions

Of the mystics, prophets

And the saints?

The poem of the ape

Is dappled by leafy

Sunlight, layered

Network of passing

Birds, drifting clouds,

Patterns of light

And shade, the poem

Of the ape contains

Long days of jungle

Rain, long nights

Of noisy silence,

OUK OUK,

Chit-chatter, high

Squeals, shrieks,

EEK EEK,

Screams, soft

Rustling of vine,

Of leaf and leaves.

What do we fear?

Distant rolls of thunder

Or are they guns,

Rattle and thud, loud BANG?

Poor chimp, hand

Ripped off by a poacher’s

Trap, scabbed and leaking

Pus, hobbles, huddles,

Doesn’t know he’s dying,

Infection eating him alive,

Bloating corpse of a lowland

Gorilla, hands and feet

Lopped off to give some

Credulous Chinaman

A happy hard-on, oh yes,

The poem of the ape

Even contains the weary

Bars of its dreary cage,

The poem of the ape

Includes all of this,

All of this and more.

What do we fear?

Collapsing stars?

Wandering asteroids?

Magnetic polar shifts?

All our land floating

On a seething sea

Of molten magma?

Infinitely extended

Finite universe

That repeats, repeats,

Repeats? Infinite

Universe that goes on

Forever without ever

A stammer?

Mad tock and tick

Of puzzling time?

Does the poem of the ape

Contain all this? Should

The poem of the ape

Contain all this?

What do we fear?

What do we fear?

Suddenly,

I hear a gentle voice,

Melodious, as of

One singing.

●

Is this voice yours?

●

What does it say?

Fear not, the stone

Is rolled away?

Is this the voice

That nurtures, sings,

Purrs, enjoys

The passing moment

Of the passing day?

Every day, every day,

Birds begin to sing,

(They do, I hear them),

Twittering, fluttering,

Harmonizing their sharp

Discords all the livelong day,

Apparently (“apparently,”

I say) as happy as a whole

Barrelful of monkeys.

What do they say?

JUMP UP!

JUMP UP!

GET IT!

What do we have to fear?

What do we have to fear?

What do we have to fear?

Not a goddam thing.

There, there.