The Naked Ape in the Human Zoo

 

         Let me give my fellow species something to contemplate

These great big babies with fist sized brains

Like our bodies don’t share the same metabolic rate

Our minds aren’t growing at an equal pace

I care little whether you’re buying real estate or live in Section Eight

Whether or not you procreate or have a pretty face

It’s all about your mental state

 

I care about your convictions, creativity and ideas

Your logic and your knowledge and what you think is shit

I don’t watch super-bowls or sitcoms

I resent the TV when that shit’s on

They scare me, those American psychos with their pretty business cards

And plastic housewives who watch FOX news and drive their husband’s cars

They don’t even labor, just buy products for their labels

Never a thought to what isn’t on someone else’s dinner table

 

So if I really feel I have a judgment to place

It won’t be on the poor man begging for change

Not knowing the content of his mental state

Sure simplicity or bad habits may have led him to that place

Or perhaps the bars of the human zoo just disturbed his inner ape

I don’t know the circumstances that led him to that corner

And though I can be a cynic I’m certainly not a scorner
Sometimes I tend to put labels on people’s foreheads

Like we aren’t just apes from the forest

 

The tribe I identify with is the thinkers

There was an era I had a stint with the believers

For a long time I was one who just pretended to know the answers

Wasted years of critical thought and research with rhetoric and banter

Now done with propaganda, I search the facts for answers

Surely the vapor that spreads through an unfed mind is like a cancer

Our intelligence gives us our place on the food chain

When did so many stop using our brains

In-groups/Out groups like common animals but we’re the Human Race

You know: the ones who harm Home Planet instead of contribute

I know there are better ways to put our thumbs to use

I just can’t align myself with agendas so unethical

I would like to think we could evolve past acting as such imbeciles

But I’m living in America…heartland of those fools

 

I wonder when America might pull her head out of her ass

She must have heard about the nice guy

And how he finished last

She steps on those who are lower

She must have bought the lie

That insisted climbing on each other’s backs

Is how you get up high

Claiming equal opportunity

 Free enterprise sure wears a disguise

Selling the American Dream

To demographical groups who buy the lie

But try and try as they might

The rich get richer and the poor don’t get by

 

Unethical America

Using up resources and killing each other

Protecting our guns while our children run for cover

Cursing our president who advocates for our mothers

And advocates for our health and the lives of our brothers

Because we just all want to blame someone else and keep what we have

We want to believe the propaganda that makes us feel better and pledge allegiance to the flag

But we have come too far from our roots

We have evolved but intelligence and ethics dissolved

Because we are so far removed

 

From humanity and brotherhood

Perhaps we should go back to the trees in the woods

Where killing is a means of survival and not a means of money

Nature red in tooth and claw and milk and honey

Where we didn’t need to rape Home Planet for oil and gold

Because we didn’t need products or labels and we weren’t bought or sold

 

I wouldn’t wish to trade scientific knowledge or philosophy

I would hate to give up logic and reason and creativity

But it comes at the expense of such ignorance

As man manages to destroy with everything he invents

It is hard for me to muster the understanding or respect

The selfish agendas that deny cause and effect

My heart bleeds for the damage we’ve managed to inflict

And no matter how I love knowledge and facts and intelligence

I’m not here to sit on a fence

If it meant the end of such greed and violence

I’d choose ignorance

Imagine if we used our brains exclusively to make the world a better place

For not just one species or demographic or nation or state

That my species is something to contemplate.

Labels

 

Bout to head into the third of my nine lives

All I get unless they figure out how to extend life or stop time

Life One under Mama and Daddy’s watchful, um, Thumb,

I was Sissy and Cassy and Baby-Cakes

I was Pentacostal Christian Saved

Spelling Bee Champ Nerd, a Teacher’s Pet

And Stephanie’s Best Friend

Life Two the Terrible Teens

A Skater and a Nerd and A Dork first

But then I was Raymond’s Girl

A Sinner and a Saint depending on the day

CASSARDA when I couldn’t get my way

Now my twenties:

I have been Lower Class and Working Class too

Trailer Trash and White Trash too

Both the Petitioner and the Defendant at times

An ex-girlfriend and an ex-wife

An American Arizonan, Liberal, Leftist, Democratic, Pacifist

Agnostic first, but also a Cynic and a Pragmatist

A Single Mom and a Prodigal Daughter

A Friend with Benefits, an Adultress

A Puppet and a Slave: I’ve been a Princess and a Queen

A Sister and a BFF and an Enemy

A Lover and a Fighter, always a Writer

I’m an Academic and a College Grad

A Blue Collar Construction Worker Tradesman

I have been somebody’s Baby and somebody’s Lady

(But not lately)

Peeling off all these layers of labels

And gathering the ones I swept under the rug and the table

I am glad to have loved and lived and become

Every single one of them

Bored

I didn’t want to say this but I’m getting bored

You use less of our language more and more

More and more you repeat yourself

And your subjects couldn’t fill a corner of my shelf

It’s all about you and nothing else

We never swim to the deep end; it never fails

What we have here is a failure to communicate

Because we don’t share affinity a scientologist would say

Because we’re unequally yoked, a Christian might speculate

Opposite might attract but unlike a magnet, they pull away

It’s a waste to keep my knowledge bottled up inside

And attempt to relate without a meeting of the minds

I didn’t want to say this but I’m no longer impressed

And I’ve contributed about all I’m liable to invest

When I speak you don’t listen; You just wait for a turn

To rattle on with the same things I already heard

Your opinions are shallow because your knowledge is brief

And our conversations falter because your interest is weak

The world takes all kinds and we’re not two of the same

And to be lonely together is the end of the game

To me you are our a work day I never got home from

A boy lost in superficiality that really needs his mum

He is sitcoms and bars and played out country songs

For the little bit of action he’s a whole lot of talk

I didn’t want to say this but it’s time for me to walk…

Being

I  have  tried  to  be  a  lot  of  things.

When  I  was  young  I  wanted  to  be

Different  From  Everyone  Else.

Later  I  longed  to  be  more  the  same,  the  sane.

I  don’t  want  to  be  pieces  of  others,  anymore!

I  just  want  to  know  what  they  know

 

So  I  can  feel  what  I  feel.

My  Passions  are  mine  alone—Burdens  to  carry

Weights  like  Responsibility  and  Work

Handicaps  like  Impatience  and  Anger

Crutches  like  God  and  Marijuana

I  am  innocently  ignorant  but  in  awe  of  It  All

Surviving,  Conditioned.

Yes,  I  would  Live  off  the  Land

And  never  miss  the  Sun’s  rising  or  setting

And  love  the  spaces  between  the  cities Until  they  are  no  more.

PLAYED

How come they all sing so sweet

About being trampled under a lover’s feet

That topic should be spit and screamed

Dust be flying when you leave

Outcome of this game you played

Game of our life-I believed in one day

Now spittin, scoffin, lost the faith

I’m  BACKSLIDDEN,  that  word  written,  DONE  WITH  IT

I’m  a  cynic,  ran  my  tongue  with  words  like  love  and  bit  it

Shoved  in  dirt,  I  brushed  off,  the  first  to  say  FUCK  OFF

And  I  should’ve  said  it  all  along,  all  along

Instead  of  getting  stupid  over  sweet  kisses  and  love  songs

Dead  romance,  hopeless  romantics  try to  prolong

Choose  to  cheat  and  lie  instead  of  saying  goodbye

There  was  a  time  when  I  stayed  for  the  fight

Now  I’m  not  even  down to  stay  the  night

Packed  my  bags  and  took  flight

Learned  a  lesson  or  two  to  remember  for  life

And  now  these  lines  I  write

Are  for  the  slaves  of  a  pretty  idea

That  if  you’re  in  love  it can  all  be  fixed--BULLSHIT

Maybe if I were a lot more slim, little more ignorant

Didn’t carry around notebooks and pen

Cared a lot more about how I look

Yeah if I could sew and sing and cook

Screamed all the time “this is so much fun!” and

Never disagreed with you so we wouldn’t have those run ins

About how I’m such a pessimist and a bleeding heart

Preferring conversation than brawls at the bar

Yeah I almost wrote you a letter on this page

But what the fuck would I say

You gave me closure when you needed it

You’d probably shrug and laugh and let that bitch read it.

Thought our love was over-qualified for the game

But in the end you’re the last player

And I am the played

Depositum Fidei (Faith of the Apostles)

In  their  house

Fingers  fumble on

Plastic  purple 

Rosary  beads

And  on  the 

Kitchen  wall

And  in  the  hall

Jesus  bleeds

As  a  child  I  struggled

To  tie  the  blindfold

Over  my  own  eyes

To  see  Him 

More  clearly

What  an 

Empty  child

To  take  the  weight

Of  that  hammer

In  my  hands

Nature  and  purpose

Defined

Comfort  rendered

Now  my  faith 

Lies  alone

In  the  stories

He  told

And  I  think  He

Never  wished

To  become  more 

Than  his  words.

TRIBUTE TO ORWELL’S 1984

DON’T LET YOURSELF SMIRK—DON’T BLINK

WASH YOUR HANDS IN THE KITCHEN SINK

SO THEY DON’T SEE THE INK

WHILE SPYING ON YOU FROM THE TELESCREEN

TOSS YOUR MIND INTO THE MEMORY HOLE

OH SO MUCH EASIER TO GO WITH THE FLOW

TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE AND IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

DON’T LET THEM KNOW WHAT MAKES YOU AFRAID

SCREAM OUT YOUR LUNGS IN THE TWO MINUTES HATE

PASTE UP THE POSTERS FOR SOME PRE-WAR PATRIOTISM

DON’T KNOW WHO WE’RE FIGHTING OR WHY WE’RE HATING THEM

THE PROGRAMMED POPULATION OF MIDDLE CLASS ON BOTH SIDES

WON’T THROW DOWN THEIR ARMS AND REFUSE TO FIGHT

SLAVES TO A LIE

AND IT ONLY TAKES ONE BIN TO LIGHT

THE BOMB THAT WAGES AND WINS A WAR IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

AND ONLY ONE PEN TO RE-WRITE HISTORY

SO LET’S STRIP BARE OUR VOCABULARY

LIKE THE LATEST EDITION OF THE N.I.V.

LANGUAGE ISN’T FOR DESCRIPTION OR POETRY

NO ONE CARES ANYMORE- NO ONE READS

IT IS DOUBLE-PLUS-GOOD NOT TO GIVE A FUCK

JUST LIKE RELIGION- YOU’VE JUST GOT TO TRUST

JOIN THE PARTY- IT’S SO MUCH FUN

IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY YOU CAN BE SOMEONE

JUST STAY DUMB ENOUGH TO DETER THE THOUGHT POLICE

JUSTIFY YOUR DOUBTS BY DOUBLETHINK

STAY CALM NOW- DON’T GET IRATE

TIL YOU SCREAM OUT YOUR LUNGS IN THE TWO MINUTES HATE

HATE WHO? HATE COMMIES OR RADICALS OR WOMEN OR JEWS?

ANYONE THAT’S NOT RICH OR POSES A THREAT TO YOU?

WHAT? HATE THEM TOO? JUST TELL ME WHO! I BELIEVE YOU!

AND YOU DO, YOU DO, WITH BIG BROTHER WATCHING YOU.