Monkey Temple

 
Monkey Temple A Narrative Fable For Modern Times © Roger Moore 2012 MONKEY TEMPLE is dedicated to The King of Harlem who with a wooden spoon gouged out the crocodiles’ eyeballs and beat the monkeys on their backsides with a wooden spoon Federico García Lorca Poeta en Nueva York WARNING Any reference to any real monkey, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. However, if you are a monkey and if the cap fits, please do not hesitate to wear it. Reader discretion is advised. PS This manuscript was begun at midnight and completed just before mid-day on April 1, 2012. These Monkeys Bite A large sign at the entrance to Bristol Zoo, off Clifton Downs, announces to visitors the zoo’s motto: “Ask the animals: they will teach you.” My visits to Bristol Zoo always lead me to the Monkey Temple. It is an old, ruined, Indian Temple, half-hidden in the trees and populated by a colony of monkeys. Sometimes, the monkeys are playing in the open, sometimes they aren't. Patience is everything: sooner or later, the monkeys will appear, revealing themselves in all their splendor. I do not like to call these refuges from modern city life zoos; rather, I think of them in terms of nature reserves, preservation centers, museums, art galleries with living portraits, areas where human beings can break from the city’s restlessness and come face to face with a tiny part of a lost natural world, a world which we are so busily destroying. Are monkeys people, you ask? Of course they aren’t. But they do have human qualities and there is no better place to see these human qualities than in the Monkey Temple. Do animals accurately reflect human qualities? Of course they don’t. The monkeys in the Monkey Temple are the distorting mirrors of fair ground, circus, and exhibition where bodies are fattened and flattened, thinned and skinned, turned inside out into falsified figures, stick creations bent out of woolly wires designed for cleaning pipes. Please be reassured: the poems in Monkey Temple do not refer to any specific monkey, living or dead. If you see an aspect of yourself, or myself, twisted beyond the norms of reality, do not fret: it is entirely accidental, taken from the monkeys themselves. Remember: “Ask the animals: they will teach you.” But, be warned: do not place your fingers near the cages -- these monkeys bite. Prologue Monkey Temple
 The monkeys appear, as if by magic. They tumble out of windows and doorways. They clamber through the holes in the temple’s ruined roof. They are quiet at first. They inspect their surroundings. They ogle the crowd gathering for the afternoon show. They watch the watchers watching them. They pulsate, for no reason at all, they pulsate, then ululate, They jump up and down and swing from the temple's roof. They pontificate, gesticulate, and regurgitate. They sit and sift for fleas. They defecate and urinate. They masticate cautiously. They castigate and fornicate. They ruminate. They masturbate. They rush to the top of the temple and on the uplifted faces of the crowd they ejaculate. 1 Monkey Reminisces 
 Monkey Teaches Sunday School on Mondays
(With apologies to Pavlov and his dogs) Younger monkeys e-mail elder monkey and expect an answer within two minutes. Elder monkey drools and writes right back. He is turned on by the bells and whistles of his computer. “Woof! Woof!” His handlers hand him a biscuit. Elder monkey has grown to appreciate tension and abuse: the systematic beatings, the shit and foul words hurled at his head. The working conditions are overcrowded. Elder monkey is overworked. Yet he has managed to survive, to stay alive and fight what he once believed was the good fight. Now he no longer knows: nor does he drool anymore when bells and whistles sound and his handlers bait him with an occasional, half-price biscuit. Monkey and the Bean Counter An acolyte in a charcoal suit runs by. He neither stops nor speaks but slips on slippery words dripping from another monkey’s tongue. This other monkey has eyes of asphalt, a patented pewter soul, ice water flowing in his veins. “Hear not! See not! Speak not!” The hatch of his mind is battened tightly down. Nothing gets out nor in. The acolyte’s fingers grasp at a khaki folder, his manifesto for success. The other monkey stalks to his office and turns on the radio. His favorite music is the clink of mounting money. Disturb him at your peril: this monkey is very important, and very, very busy. First, he empties all the chocolate candies from the box. Then he sorts them into little piles: green with green, brown with brown, blue with blue, red with red. Then, like the Good Shepherd counting His flock, he counts them again and again, to ensure that none have gone astray. Monkey Statue (after Rabelais and his many experiments) Covered in concrete a conquering hero stands in the yard. Pigeons feed on scattered breadcrumbs. Squabs squat on the statue's head. They gift his shoulders with the fresh white lime of guano. Is this what all monkeys will become, statues in a square, shat on by pigeons? Monkey dons an anonymous grey suit of concrete armor. The statue stretches out a hand, clutches at a passing pigeon, thrusts it head first between his legs, strains hard, then wipes his ... Monkey takes the hint, and runs. Pavlov’s Monkey (after Pavlov) A memory murmurs deep in monkey’s chest. They dress him in a grey concrete coat. Now monkey works at his desk from eight in the morning until whenever at night, seven days a week. Trees, stripped of their branches, are disguised as telegraph poles. Their sharp wires shred monkey’s mind: instant messages of work unfinished, Herculean labours stabled on monkey’s desk. When monkey asks for a lifeboat, they send him to government surplus. He fills in forms in quintuplicate. Monkey’s laptop has all the bells and whistles. When bells ring, monkey answers his emails; when whistles sound, he drools. Empty coffee cups litter the floor. Monkey calls for the cleaner, and a magic broom appears. Monkey doesn’t want to be swept under the carpet, or abandoned at the roadside with the garbage; he sticks his head in the waste-paper basket, raises his rear end high in the air, and hides, like an ostrich. Monkey Receives Tenure 
(In the Monkey Rhyming Dictionary, tenure rhymes with manure) “Gentlemen of the Committee: have you reached a verdict?”
“We have.” “And is it unanimous?” “It is, your honour.”
“Then will the committee Foreman stand and read that verdict to this court.”
“Guilty, Your Honour. The defendant is guilty, on all counts.”
“And are there no mitigating circumstances: a failure to complete
an assignment on time, for example, or a questionable reference?”
“None, whatsoever, Your Honour.” “What a pity! What a damnable pity!" The monkey judge puts on his black wig, and raps with his gavel.
“Will the defendant stand. I sentence you to a term of two years’
hard labour at this institution, renewable for another two years.
Should you continue to publish, and should you fail,
over that four year probationary period, to fall by the wayside,
or to do anything wrong, I sentence you to life imprisonment,
till death do you and the institution part.” The monkey judge coughs. “There, now. Stop your sniveling.
You’ll be reasonably well treated, as long as you remember your station.
Life imprisonment in one of Her Majesty’s Institutions is not that bad.” Monkey Gets Cabin Fever Monkey has worked for forty years among foreigners and lunatics, afraid of the rats who keep him company, devoured by his monkey lust to drive silver knives and forks through the watch springs of their inhuman, foreign hearts. Is there a gem concealed in those hearts, he wonders, a blood-red heart stone, like the jewel in the crown of the green toad’s throbbing skull? Monkey explores new territories with his knife and fork. He lifts the flap on the ventricle’s dark, pulsing cave, and is aware of bright red sparks: blood diamonds, perhaps? Rose petals gently bleed. Monkey wipes his scalpel on his ruby apron, and opens another heart, searching one more scarlet oyster for the perfect mystery of its imperfect pearl. Monkey’s Cage Rage (Remembering Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that dark night…”) “Do not go gentle!” Monkey’s sharp teeth gnaw holes in the safety blanket; a fist in the darkness, he punches the pillow, again and again, until the dark fist tires and rage falls silent. Angry words are forged in iron. Monkey wants to rage, rage, against blind bars which bind him. In dawn’s frail light, cage bars are less visible. Iron bars seem softer in the silence of their invisible, silken gloves. This barred and barren cage in which he bangs his head against the bars means all the world to monkey. But how can monkey lament the loss of liberty when he wasn’t born free? Monkey’s Verdict (After George Orwell’s Animal Farm, an inverted Mr. Micawber, and a Gower proverb) Although monkey has been the primus primate inter pares, he has never done anything himself, so he reduces all competitive monkeys to his own level by negating anything they have ever done: only then, will he be their equal. “All monkeys are equal, but some monkeys are obviously more equal than others!” Here, in the temple’s garbage dump, monkey finds the lowest of the low, scratching for fleas and baring their yellowed, monkey teeth. They scrabble in the temple’s garbage, searching for something, anything to reject yet again. Monkey writes anonymous letters with a poisoned pen. He conceals his hand and throws ambiguous stones. He has learned from blows delivered to another monkey’s head and has become a wise monkey: Monkey’s template for survival in the temple: “Dick other monkeys before they can dick you!” Primus primate steadily ascends the monkey puzzle tree: but the higher he climbs, the more he reveals his asshole. Monkey Turns Down Promotion “I hereby appoint you head of the asylum.” The young office monkey with the plastic stethoscope was dressed neatly in a white sheet. “Dr. Freud, I presume?” Monkey held out his hand but his witticism was lost in a flood of water flowing from the flush and over the floor. Monkey stood there, paddling in piddle. Inmates with crowded heads and vacant faces, fools grinning at a universe of folly, paddled beside him. He wiped a sick one’s drool from his sleeve. The office boy spat on his hands, slicked down his hair, and placed his stethoscope on monkey’s heaving chest. “You have no pulse.” “How do you know I have no pulse? Surely, you cannot hear my heart for you have a banana stuck in your ear.” “Speak up!” said the doctor, “I cannot hear you: I have a banana stuck in my ear.” Then monkey felt fear. Daylight diminished and waters closed over his head. He spurned the proffered paw, the life belt thrown by the offer of a new position. Exit monkey left, pursued by a chorus: “Run, monkey, run!” Swine Flu Hits the Monkey Temple (after a Fable by Lafontaine and with memories of Bakhtin and the Antipodes) Swine flu has struck the temple. Unter- monkeys sniffle and grovel, blaming each other for their snuffles. They request a platypus duck to oversee a kangaroo court with chief scapegoat monkey absent of course. The unter-monkeys sit in a circle, where all are equal but some are more equal than others. They pass a lyre bird feather round and round, weeping crocodile tears and lying through the tight monkey grins of their alligator teeth. A black-capped chickadee lends his cap to the platypus duck who then pronounces sentence “There is no defence: guilty, in absentia, guilty as charged.” “Fumer l’herbe d’autrui? Quel crime abominable!” 2 Monkey Visits the Local Zoo Kinder Monkey Garten Give him a magnifying glass and monkey nit-picks! He likes nit-picking. Hunting for fleas, he combs through the fur of less fortunate monkeys. Monkey see: monkey do; and what monkey does best is crack fleas between his nails and stick his paw in the jam jar. Here, in the Kinder Monkey Garten, young monkeys learn monkey skills: how to conduct monkey business, how to throw a monkey wrench into other monkeys’ plans, how to wear monkey suits, how to square round pegs and fit them into triangular holes, how to build better monkey traps, how to reinvent the monkey wheel, again and again and again. Paradise is to squat on the organ-grinder’s shoulder, top banana that. Monkey also likes to perch enthroned at the top of the monkey temple tower. Monkey also likes to visit the local zoo Monkey Visits the Snake Pit Monkey’s masculine penis envy focuses on the great snakes, lying there, basking beneath hot house lights maintaining a rigid temperature, desert and jungle warmth and moisture ready at the flick of a switch. They lounge in glass cubicles, checking each other out for size, weight, length, girth, with a roll of the eye and a casual flicker of a forked lightning tongue. Fed for far too long on fetched food from the untroubled tenured trough, many have become sedentary, and much too comfortable to even consider sloughing their skins. Monkey Visits the Poisonous Snakes A swift death was never their style, the cobras, the vipers, the adders and subtractors, the bean counters and snatchers, the diminutive dudes. They prefer death by blow-gun their poison dart injected through hollowed fangs or Chinese Water Torture, the slow drip after drip of poison inserted into ears and veins, a drop at a time, and slowly gathering … … until their victim slows down, ceases to struggle, stands there, eyes open, unable to move, poisoned and paralysed. Monkey Visits the Chimpanzees’ Tea Party Dressed to the nines in their gala outfits, they have come here for the tea party. Hairy penguins, they waddle back and forth across the temple, then lunge for a table with its jumbo shrimp, smoked salmon, scallops, baked oysters. Faces slashed from ear to ear by enormous grins, “Food’s free!” they say and stuff themselves regardless of the consequences. Serviettes tucked into collars, they scoff lobster and crab. Birds of Paradise, subtle delicacies flown in from half a world away, decorate the tables. There is something about them, though, these chimpanzees, gripping cup handles between finger and thumb, enormously pleased to be the centre of attention, however clumsily they walk, in their hired-for-the-occasion, ill-fitting, black and white penguin suits. Monkey Meets Pontius Parrot
(With glorious memories of Macarronic Latin)

Pontius Parrot is very clever and very pontifical.
“Pretty Polly!” He pontificates from his pulpit.
His name isn’t Polly and he doesn’t have a pulpit
but he parrots words in Macaronic Latin:
“Caesar adsum jam forte.” 
Pontius Parrot is perky at the podium he bounces up and down, preens himself self-consciously, rattles his chains, shakes his bars, and speaks: “Brutus aderat.” 
He is marked with shame and scandal. A dysfunctional family of feathered friends has henpecked him until he is black and blue

and has thrown up copiously: “Caesar sic in omnibus.”
 He dips his wings in holy water, calls for some soft soap, and washes his feathers and claws.
Poor Pontius Parrot, He can only say “Repent!”
“Brutus sic in at.” Monkey Meets An Anarchist Ant
(Memories of El Camino de Santiago) 
The anarchist ant is dressed in black. He has a little red base-ball cap worn backwards on his head. His eyes are fiery coals. “Phooey!” He says. “It’s folly to go with the flow.” So he turns his back on his companions and marches in the other direction. Some ants call him a fool. The Ant Police try to turn him. The Thought Police try to make him change his mind. Others, in blind obedience to a thwarted, intolerant authority, first bully him, then beat him, then bite him till he’s dead. Monkey Visits the Dinosaurs
(after the dinosaur collection in the Royal Ontario Museum) Monkey looks up with envy at the dinosaurs, their fossilized skeletons suspended from the museum’s ceiling, forests of bony branches, inverted chandeliers. What would it be like to climb upwards, hand over fist, through that ribcage of petrified bone? A trepidatious trail leads out to the dinosaur’s tail, fine-boned, balanced, its wired strength swaying, ninety feet away from its head. Albertosaurus sarcophagus, aka Gorgosaurus, a small, distant cousin of Tyrannosaurus Rex, fearsome with its rows of teeth, and look at the new teeth, underneath waiting, like martyrs, to be sown like dragon’s teeth, and then to be reborn. Above him, like primitive birds, skulls and skeletons of forgotten fish, floating, mouths open, on an ocean of air. These dinosaurs, their hollow bones so close to bird bones; their brains, bird brains indeed, intelligence in a dubious call of “Heads or tails?” Monkey stands on the dry sea-bed, looking upwards, clenching his fists in fear, stranded, far from his natural element. Monkey Meets a Sloth
(Memories of Baudelaire’s L’Albatros in Les fleurs du mal) … and he really is slothful. Slow and stolid, that’s him, folivora and phyllofaga: once locked in his office, he is a devourer of the leaves of ancient books, and totally harmless unless disturbed. Angered, he becomes the Giant Sloth. Believed extinct, but now found lurking behind his desk, he is known to defend himself if forced from the gravy train. His teeth – hypsodont and bilophilodont -- are adapted for vertical biting. His claws can be used as daggers and he often strikes his victims from behind. He has a limited sense of time and will sit for hours doing nothing. When approached, he opens one eye and “What time is it? Is it time for lunch?” His jaws move in slow mastication as he digests the fruit of other peoples’ labours, being virtually unable to labour himself. Unoriginal, not unintelligent, he is scarcely a Darwinian example of the Evolution of the Species, hanging, as he does, in his space, upside down when possible, chewing his intellectual cud, all theories acceptable to his folivorous palate, nothing challenged, nothing rejected, everything relative, and every loose end tied up neat and tidy. “What time is it?” “Nearly lunch time!” says Monkey. And the sloth ruminates contentedly. Monkey brings him food. The sloth cannot even walk to the cafeteria: “Ses grandes griffes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.” Monkey Feels Sorry for Camel How does the camel feel when he sees the zoo-keeper approaching with the shiny needle and that one last straw? It’s all about pain and pain-killers, those little red pills, taken before meals, that swell the ankles, damage the liver, and allow monkey to go about his monkey business with a smile. One morning, under the influence of pain and pain killers, monkey jumped three red lights and failed to stop at five stop signs. Warning signs there were: high pitched giggle, a sense of adventure, of freedom, and the thrill of doing something wrong. Monkey knew surprise as he shot the first light, a thrill of laughter as he drew near to the second, and an absolute sense of devil-may-care as the third red light sped by ... No pain, no gain: so what did monkey gain that day? Nothing really, except the knowledge that there’s only one way to escape from pain, even for an omniscient camel, lying there, waiting, knowing how it will end, while the zoo-keeper draws near, bearing a shiny needle as heavy and as deadly as that one, last straw. Gorilla Drives the Zoo Bus Gorilla drives the same zoo bus all day, every day; same starting time, same finishing time, same route, same stops, different passengers, but every passenger the same: faceless. Gorilla doesn’t want to know their names. “Please tender the exact fare!” Not a penny less, not a penny more, and he polices every penny. Bus conductor and master of every passenger’s destiny, he opens and shuts the door, letting passengers on and off the bus, but only at official stops. Every passenger has a ticket, and he punches every ticket with a neat, round hole. He never makes mistakes. He grinds, like God’s own mills, exceedingly small. He has spent all his life in uniform. He has a belt and braces to hold his trousers up. He’s always prepared for the worst. Ten, fifteen, twenty years: an anonymous wife; anonymous little babies; at shift’s end, a pension, and another bus. St. Peter’s at the wheel. He doesn’t want to know where gorilla wants to go: he wants to know where he’s been. 3 Monkey’s Existentialist Poems Monkey Watch
(after Jean-Pauk Sartre, Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell and the Myth of Icarus) Monkey senses things that are invisible to other minds. He knows that ink in a pen can run dry, that word flows can suddenly cease, that mechanical pencils can so easily break down into their component parts. New Year's resolutions can lie broken on the gym -nasium's floor. Scattered on the ground, they lie shattered, tattered like the beribboned tresses of trees, blown blind by winter's feverish, age old wind. Time has grown feathers and traced its moth flight round the candle flame. These solar spots that beautify the moonscape wings of the meandering moth are too hot to handle. Suddenly, there is the scent of burning flesh, of flimsy wings crisping, of high-flying Icarus left roasting in the candle’s open fire. Monkey contemplates the dry, tight wrinkles on the back of his paw. Then he moves his hand slowly and casually through the candle’s flame and meditates on the brevity of life and the multiple meanings of an existence that precedes all essence. Monkey Chews the Cud
(after Octavio Paz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Stéphane Mallarmé) Brilliant in his rising, a new sun shines on monkey’s world, dispersing darkness, fragmenting it into shadows. Sunshine and shadow: heads and tails of an age old combination sealed back-to-back on the self-same coin. ¿Cara o cruz? Heads or tails? Sunshine or shadow? Solombra, perhaps? Or is it just the act of perception, as Wittgenstein would have us believe, and nothing more: the metal always spinning on its milled edge, never falling, the coin on its axis, a new day with its potential, sunshine or shadow, thrown dice still skittering, a new world imperceptibly poised in its own making? Monkey scratches his head. Such enormous depths are not for him to plumb, this early in the morning. Better by far the banana peeled, the fresh skin thrown away for someone else to slip on, and monkey sitting there in silence, chewing his morning cud. Monkey’s Tractatus
(after a philosophical argument between Ludvig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell) When monkey sees a hippopotamus in the temple grounds he knows it is grounded in fact. We really must get rid of it! It obediently vanishes. There is a silence in the temple cells broken only by the broom’s clean sweep as insects are swept away from the footsteps of the unworthy. Monkey sees the hippo trapped beneath a chair.
He can feel it struggling to set itself free.
Now hippo gets tangled in monkey’s hair. Monkey will have its hide for a shield against dark thoughts, an unbroken umbrella to guard him from this rain of teardrops. Hippo bathes in a hip bath of crocodile tears: Sunt rerum lacrimae. He wallows in philosophical sorrow. When the hippo leaves the temple, there is a silence as the unspoken word returns, 

a silence broken only by the hum of the hoover,
and the beat of a condor’s invisible wings. Existentialist Monkey 
(after Albert Camus and his Myth of Sisyphus) Monkey watches Budgie tinkle the small bell hanging below the yellow plastic mirror in which Budgie gazes in fascination at his own reflection, nuzzling and nipping himself with his beak. The sandpaper floor of his cage is covered with black and white soccer balls: 
“Budgies for the Cup!” 
There is a crimson ladder with another bell on top. 
Budgie squeezes a soccer ball between beak and claws, 
ascends the ladder, and pushes the ball upwards. When he gets to the top, the ball slips slowly down. It falls to the sandpaper floor. 
Budgie descends the ladder, takes a new grip on his soccer ball, 
and steadily climbs the rungs. Budgie is clever: he can imitate the telephone, the door bell, the pop of a champagne cork shooting from the bottle, the cat, the dog ... When Budgie whistles, the stupid dog leaps to his feet rushing, barking, to the door ... Budgie is two thirds up the ladder now. He pauses for a rest, stretches his wings, and looks at himself in the mirror. “There’s a pretty boy!” “Il faut imaginer Budgie heureux.” Monkey Prepares to Climb Mount Everest
(after Albert Camus and the Myth of Sisyphus) Monkey selects the largest stone in the temple’s rock garden and places it carefully in his backpack. The backpack is so heavy he can hardly lift it: he has already collected thirty-seven rocks, one for each of the stages of his climb. Nevertheless, suitably bent and bowed, breathing hard, red-faced with the effort, monkey continues to train for Everest by walking up the steepest steps in the temple and climbing the toughest natural obstacles he can find. Some of the other inmates laugh at monkey. They see him punishing himself for nothing. Monkey thinks of this as training, not punishment. His personal Everest is a perpetual motion Never-Rest: higher, faster, stronger, healthier, more competitive. As monkey flogs himself onwards and upwards, he contemplates the victor’s golden crown. He breathes harder, climbs faster, looks down on the weak ones trapped in the valley below, and convinces himself that he is truly happy. Dream Monkey
(after Jean-Paul Sartre and Jorge Luis Borges) When Monkey was too old to give birth, she dreamed herself a baby monkey. She started with four small chambers and turned them into a heart. Then she dreamed his lungs and sculpted inner organs. Finally she dreamed skin and paws and her little boy child was born. She wept when he was born dead. She waited for the summer. When thunder struck and lightning filled the temple woods with fire, she called the storm down and struck a bargain. Fire flowed through her baby’s veins: he walked and talked. “Go forth, my son!” she said, “and fear not fire, for it fills your frame.” When lightning struck and the temple woods flamed with fear, her life was spared. It was then she knew she too was filled with fire and was born from another monkey’s dream. Monkey Floats Like a Butterfly (after Cassius Clay, Rudyard Kipling, the philosopher Zhuang Zhou,
Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali) In the warmth of the Butterfly House monkey dozes and dreams he is a butterfly. He flits delightedly from flower to flower and boasts of his powers as he courts his Butterfly Lady. When he stamps his foot, garden, temple, and zoo are picked up by four djinns and deposited in the outer darkness of a nightmare, sunless world. When he stamps his foot again, light and the world return. Monkey dreams on and on beneath the monkey puzzle tree. A butterfly flutters by then perches on monkey’s fur, turning monkey’s mediocrity into a glorious blaze of infinite iridescence. “Am I a monkey who dreams he is a butterfly?” Monkey murmurs to himself, “Or am I a butterfly floating like a boxer and stinging like a bee in my butterfly dreams?” Monkey’s Day Dream
(after Marcel Proust’s In Search of Time Lost) A cookie crumbles in monkey’s mouth.
It melts like a Madeleine, as ancient shadows return to haunt him. Monkey has always known these shadows,
carried them in the depth of his mind, bent his knee, perhaps, before them ... … and now they stand there, staring him down, barking like a pack of dogs, unleashed through the looking-glass of his mind. The pack runs wild, tears at his flesh: the blood runs freely and monkey shudders to a halt. The rider dismounts from her grey palfrey, cuts off monkey’s tail, and holds it high above her head. She rips out monkey’s heart, dips her fingers in monkey’s blood, and daubs congratulatory signs on an initiate’s flesh. Alienated Monkey (After Saul of Tarsis, Don Quixote, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Viviana y Merlín) On the road back to recovery, the Inquisitor sliced his own eye in two: monkey toppled from his horse. The scales fell from monkey’s eyes and a cloud of incense, blown on the wind, drifted in and out of his mind: he kicked out against the deadwood and the pricks. Black-skirted nightmares cursed and threatened. They turned into windmills and churned forcefully at his brain’s fragility. Their great canvas sails cast monkey to the ground, then returned and launched him to the stars. The lunatic moon was full and round; it rolled over the hill, like a cheese down Cheap Street. When black magic trapped him in the lunatic asylum, his monkey face shone out through the prison bars. At midnight, 
he howled like a lone wolf lost in his dreams. Monkey Lights a Glow-worm (after Schopenhauer) Fine layers of sand sew silt in monkey’s veins. His body has become a burden. Earth’s vain shadows grow thick with menace. Can a glow worm really glow and enlighten the dark night of monkey’s heart? The St. John of the Cross bird chants an evening song of sun light from his branchless tree. Songs of endless love are no substitute for a broken mind and amputated limbs. Monkey sings as he climbs the wooden hill to Bedfordshire: “Here comes a candle to light you to bed. And here comes a chopper to chop off your …..” The candle in monkey’s hand flickers like a glow-worm and sputters to its death. Monkey tries to relight it. When he fails, night thickens and his world grows darker. Paws For Thought Monkey on Wildcat Strike One day, the monkeys all shook hands and wished each other well. The next day, they went on a wildcat strike. The monkeys were frightened at first. They stood on the sidewalk outside the temple precinct, at -35 Celsius, teeth chattering in the bitter cold. Bit by bit, they grew braver. They drew signs and sentences, cast nuts and twigs, and shit, and shoes, and insults. Other monkeys from other temples kept them company with songs, and words, and flying monkey visits: “We shall overcome!” they sang as they walked up and down together. Slowly, the monkeys changed their monkey thoughts. Estranged from the temple, it was no longer their home. They saw it for what it really was: cheap, run down, tawdry, impoverished in thought, word, and deed. Later, when the monkeys returned to their cages, they locked their doors from the inside and dreamed of anarchy and freedom. 4 Monkey Meets His Inquisitors Monkey in Transition (After Domenicos Theotokopulus, Saint Sebastián 
and the Cristo de la Columna of the Churches in Oaxaca) St. Sebastián, fiery coals for eyes, lists from port to starboard in a shell-shaped nave that humps itself upwards like a ship turned turtle. Outrageous slings and arrows penetrate his monkey thighs and chest, and yet he survives, tied tightly to his wooden stake: awake, wide-eyed, mouth open, his ribcage exposed to this lashing rain of hard, sharp arrows. The archers aim at less vital parts; flesh wounds: they don’t want the fun to end too soon. The saint is still alive. We can hear faint murmurs as his brave heart’s clockwork continues to tick. In Oaxaca, Christ -- hands bound -- is tied to his column. Purple bruises mark face and flesh. His back streams blood. A crown of thorns ploughs ugly red furrows down his face but he stands on guard, he stands on guard for thee. Monkey’s Amnesia Sometimes monkey thinks there’s a metal plate growing between his brain and his skull. At night it is pierced with pinholes; he dreams and some stars peep through. By day, it wears him down, heavy on his mind, unkempt in its attempt to handicap his thoughts, to imprison them, to manacle their maniac way of jumping over fences, like sheep, or forcing their way through gaps in hedges. Where did all the images go when they marched last night through the skull’s pinhole camera and raised him up to heaven to dance among the stars? Monkey's metaphors obscure meanings. Yet to live without poetry is to dwell in that wasteland somewhat East of Eden in the Land of Nod where lined ledgers are sealed with the mark of Cain and all forms of freedom are bartered or banned. Monkey’s Revenge
(after Albert Camus, L’Étranger, Abu Graib, and Guantánamo) When the Inquisitors confront the recusant, they see a worn out monkey, grown old and grim before his time. The recusant is devoured from within by worry and worms; he is riddled with the cancers that come from cruel petty deeds perpetrated against the defenseless. Meurtrier ou victime? Who cares? The inquisitors don’t. They will place him on the rack, hang him up by the thumbs, water-board him till he cracks, confesses, and eventually signs whatever they want him to sign. The recusant will have his day in court, and then, whatever the evidence, they will condemn him anyway. Monkey’s Confession One day’s penance in a lifetime of sin, just isn’t enough; this is why hooded men wear chains on their bleeding ankles as they tramp through city streets, at Easter, barefoot in the late spring snow. Does the end really justify the means? Monkey has seen his fellow monkeys water-boarded two hundred times. They will say what their tormentors want to hear as the executioner twists the rack ropes tighter and tighter. Monkey knows all about lies. He can tell the difference between white lies, grey lies, and black untruths; lies that point the finger, lies that cleanse and protect, lies that eventually become the truth after many rehearsals. Turkey Madder nods. The executioner hauls on the ropes. Monkey screams. He finally offers the truth they seek, confessing it through broken, bloodied teeth. Monkey’s Sacrifice Anaerobic, this climb up the steep ship’s mast of the temple steps, heart pounding, stomach nauseous, from the lactic acid, building. Were they in vain, those tablets popped, those liquids drained, all that iron pumped? Were they mindless, all those slogans as they preached no pain, no gain. Monkey is bound, face up, on the sacrificial stone. The high priest’s hand descends. His sharp, obsidian knife carves monkey’s chest: it opens like a Thanksgiving Turkey. When the high priest plucks out the beating heart, monkey’s madly racing pulse feeds sun and sky with blood sending sunlight throbbing around the world. Mexican Monkey
(With apologies to Zouche-Nuttall, Vindobonensis, 
Selden, Bodley, and many others) Xipe Totec wears a new skin today, shed by an enemy monkey, skin freshly flayed. The flayed monkey, all red, skin shed, glistens with nascent blood.
 Xipe Totec bears him now, gesturing with doubled hands, dancing with doubled feet.

 Monkey is used to violence and all kinds of abuse. The monkey on the temple steps, heart torn out, gushes his life blood like lava from an acquiescent volcano. His severed arms and legs tumble down the temple steps,
 bread and wine, for the faithful gathering for the sacrificial feast.
 Turkey Madder’s Monkey (after Torquemada, El Viti, Paco Camino, El Cordobés, and Phillip II of Spain) The gleaming sword plunges deep into monkey’s back. When monkey falls to his knees the flat sharp blade forces its way into his flesh. Monkey refuses to give in. Night’s final curtain doesn't fall until the piercing nail bites deep into monkey’s spinal cord. Four black mules with pom-poms drag him from the ring, still kicking, or scarcely kicking, who cares? In the slaughterhouse, monkey hangs on a hook to dry along with all the other chosen monkeys. One monkey has lost his coat of many colours; another has had his limbs shorn away; yet another is broken down to bones and hide. Outside, in the city square, Turkey Madder Monkey carries a match for the waiting faggots. “Rejoice ... “ – says King Phillip, eyes alight – “ ... at the fire laid, the heretic brought to justice, my own flesh burning.” Monkey Forks Guy Fawkes The Bishop is helpless when the Knight forks Rook, and Queen, and King: the family fork, and everyone forked sky high. Guy Fawkes waits on his bonfire until someone sets a match to his fiery bed. Sacrificed to the flame, Guy Fawkes’s effigy reduces Autumn’s debris to ashes and dust. So much for Magna Carta and Habeus corpus: yet you may have what remains after the straw-filled body has been safely burned. Over here, the Fall brings Hallowe’en: ghosts and goblins, and Klu Klux Klansmen with their white, high-pointed, faceless hats, their vested interests, their Vesta matches and so much invested in the outcome of these annual burnings. Monkey’s Book Burning (Remembering Cervantes’s Scrutiny of the Library and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451) Who burnt Monkey’s books? Who took them from their shelves, evicted them into the courtyard, built them into book stacks, like hay, then applied gasoline, and a lighted match? Monkey watches in horror as smoke and flame devour his beloveds. He tries to approach, but the fire is too hot. One book jumps out from the smoke, still smoldering, and monkey snatches it and carries it away beneath his coat, the fire burn branded into its cover, the skin still sizzling on monkey’s hand. How many books were burned that day? How many monkeys now walk in the woods, trying to re-create their lives, circulating their memories by word of mouth? Moth is to candle as book is to flame. Monkey runs his hand in and out of the candle. He recalls the bonfires in the streets. He coughs through the throat burn of smoke. He touches the blistered scars of flame. Monkey Presses Delete Monkey loves walking behind the gorillas. He loves to see fear in faces, tears in eyes as the gorillas smash and grab and break down doors. The gorillas break and enter: and when they do, monkey simply points and gorillas do their thing: it’s that simple … Monkey has a code word that he took from his computer course. “Delete!” he says with delight and the gorillas delete whatever he points to. Monkey loves burning other people’s books. He loves deleting parents in front of children, and deleting children in front of their parents can be just as exciting. The delete button excites monkey: maneuvering the mouse tightens his scrotum and he feels a kick like a baby’s at the bottom of his belly as he carefully selects his victim and “Delete!” The gorillas go into action: ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, seventy years of existence deleted with a gesture and the click of an index finger pointed like a gun. 5 Monkey Looks in the Looking Glass And Comes Face to Face With the Absurd Monkey Looks in the Mirror

(after MacBeth, Snow White and the Seven Temple Dwarves) “Mirror, mirror ... on the wall ...” But monkey knows the answer. He sees himself in the mirror every day and he knows he is the chosen one, the fairest of all. Sometimes, he carries the mirror with him. That careful grooming never changes: the lips, the smile. Monkey’s looking glass is never half empty. Whenever monkey consults the oracle, he is there, looking out at himself, speaking those magic words “The fairest one of all.” Down in the kitchen, the cooking staff are preparing the next nutrition break. As the cauldron boils and bubbles, three old monkey witches dance around the pot and polish that bright red poisoned apple. Doppelgänger Monkey’s Dual Duel “Razors at dawn!” monkey said. “When the sun’s blood spills, purifying the horizon. Cut throat!” Monkey agreed. Now this sound: sharp-edged stropping of blade over leather. Next day, the weather was good: a blood red sky stretched like a morning cat as back to back monkey faced himself in steamed up mirrors. The seconds counted down. “First blood!” they said, and monkey agreed, his greed for blood mounting with their counting. Slow lathering of soap in the bowl. Soft touch of fox, bewhiskered badger, foam bubbling, creamy and lush. Monkey would never have it any other way. He smiled at the thought and the razor caught the edge of his lip. Overwhelming, the fast, bright geyser gush as water, soap and blood rushed mingling down. Shaking hands with himself, monkey smiled at his image in the mirror, bowed low, and turned away. Monkey Herds Cats The cats are grey at night. They break out when every one’s asleep and wander the temple, out of mind, out of sight, troubling monkey’s dreams with a rush of paws. They deal him hidden cards, cat’s paws of secrecy, from behind half-open doors. Monkey’s not to reason why: he knows he exists just to provide fresh food and clean out the kitty litter. Autumn leaves drift to their graves. A cold wind twists dead grass into tangled knots. Flowers stand dry and withered in a vase. The pale sky fills with shards of broken glass. Monkey sighs, cuts the deck, and shuffles and herds a pack of mindless cats. Monkey’s Circuitous Circus

(after Bertram Mills, Góngora, Quevedo, and Dylan Thomas) Monkey throws a double six. “Get out of jail: free!” In all this trouble and strife with the apples and pears, who’d Adam and Eve it? The dice are cast: monkey climbs new ladders, slides down old snakes. How many sheep do autumn leaves count as they dream to unknown ends? Do they grieve for trees, left color-blind, abandoned to winter’s frost and snow? The wind stretches its felinity, and purrs the ring master into life. No, no, do not go gentle: rage at fall’s faltering footsteps, at a twilight, dumb with grief. Nadir of nada, nadie, nobody, nothingness, emptiness, empty nests, the void gripping like a pair of pliers, twisting high wires in monkey’s mind. Super Monkey (With apologies to Nietzsche) Monkey is not übermenschen; nor is he untermenschen, either. He thinks of himself as honourable mention, not a whole chapter in the book, but rather an interesting footnote to one of those less important pages that abound in local histories. “Look! There’s a maiden in distress!” Monkey slips into a telephone booth and dons his Super Monkey suit. Super Monkey to the rescue! He races from the booth to rescue the maiden tied to the track in the path of the advancing train and slips on a banana skin thrown to him by some unknown admirer. Interesting footnote: There was no maiden, no track, no train. Monkey was probably dreaming. Anyway, his leg’s in plaster now: he broke it when he slipped and fell. Monkey FAQs
(with apologies to all those who draw them up
at their work place, knowing they will never be read) “What news from the ark?” “Only the dark waves pounding the hull, the wet winds blowing.” “Who placed the whale ribs on this mountain and called them a cathedral?” “Sunshine blossoms through hollow vaults and shadows shimmer. The day is striped across my back and I bear its weight like a beast of burden.” “When the anvil rings out, will the armorers appear?” “When I snatched a blade of grass, its fine glass sliced my finger. Yet, when I grasped the nettle, its swan-song perished in sunlight.” “Who will forge chains for sun and moon? “The peregrine falcon slices my eye in two and I am a mole, blind with a weather’s wind.” “Who will carve a cell door for errant stars?” “I snuffle round the tightness of the temple clock: its legion of Roman numerals marches to the beat of a dull, dry pendulum.” “Why are there no birds in last year’s nests?” “The ox tongue sandwich on which I snack talks back to the lettuce and salt clogs the tomato.” “Why are you avoiding these questions?” “Speak up: the wind is high. I can no longer hear you.” Monkey Plays Straight Man to Socrates
(After the Ancient Mariner and Don Quixote de la Mancha’s warning: 
Amicus Plato sed maior amicus veritas,) It is our local Socrates, and he chats up one in three.
By thy foul-smelling breath and hair-dryer blasts,
why the hell did you pick on me? Socrates pauses, clears his throat, and begins to talk,
demanding that his listener join in the discussion:
“Yes, Socrates … no, Socrates … indeed it must be so, Socrates.”
It seems that today monkey is Socrates’ only unwilling victim.
“It must be true, if you say so, Socrates, I see that now.” Monkey thinks secretly that Socrates is very much like
the Energizer Bunny: he just babbles inanely, insanely on and on,
and monkey must try to keep pace with him.
“Yes, Socrates … indeed it is Socrates ….. true, Socrates, very true.” When the discussion finally ends, monkey walks away,
turns the corner, puts his hand to his nose, waggles the digits,
and blows a loud raspberry. “Yadda, yadda, yadda … three bags full, Socrates … 
and a fig for the frigging king beneath my frigging cloak.” Monkey Chairs a Committee (after Lewis Carroll and “Twas brillig ...” Monkey chairs the committee. He reads the applicant’s résumés and tracks all the brownie points. He examines, under a microscope, all the small, stark indecencies each has performed upon the other. Now, under a cryptic vow of mumbo-jumbo secrecy and silence, monkey must pass judgement. There is a vacant space between his ears, a slum rented out at a bargain basement price. In it, slow thoughts breed with the urgency of slugs, and snails, and puppy-dog tails. Rats in his mental attic worry at the dry bonesof other dead rats. Monkey wears a clean tee shirt today. He takes his vorpal sword in hand and pens a frumious swipe at the slithy tove waiting patiently before him. The dead text he revises is composed of misquotes, harsh judgments, double-talk, and outrageous lies. Monkey Leaves Too Many Things Undone A building too far, monkey stares at his unfinished monument: walls, no windows, no roof, no time, no money for monkey to finish what he started. Rusted girders cross the sky like a giant tic-tac-toe. There is nothing monkey can do. The giant superstructure is a cross on his back flailing the sky and crowning him with thorns. Monkey’s Folly: a facade with no substance, no bottom, no gravitas. Monkey is growing old. Shadows are swiftly closing in. How much longer can he wrestle with them? Monkey barks at his subordinates. He rattles their chains and shakes their cages. Dog in a manger: he can’t devour straw, but he won’t let anyone else eat, either. Apocalyptic Monkey Dust clouds blind monkey’s eyes. Mid-day is a walk at midnight. The sun is eclipsed by the moon’s shadow. At the breakfast table, scarred, scared monkeys cough dust from lungs and spit black tar. Gangrene grenades lunge green spots against spotless tablecloths. No electricity. No running water. Wells long since run dry. The parched throat of the last song sparrow is envied by a dying cat. Squat salt pillars of statues look back in anger. “When will this happen, Brother Monkey?” “It is happening right now.” 6 Monkey Clocks Out Monkey Clocks Out The bartender measures poison and monkey slips it skillfully into his veins. This anonymous death was born with him, walks with him, keeping him company. At first, a friend, distant, perhaps, to begin with, yet suddenly menacing now and uncomfortably close as it draws an arm across monkey’s shoulders. Monkey can no longer ignore its presence. It is a shadow some days between monkey and the sun. It is a slip on black ice, a banana skin stumble on the stairs, the cold shock of an early shower, the suicidal slide of razor over lip and cheek. Tea trickles into the gut, awaking a sudden grief of pain. A hand grips monkey’s heart, urgently squeezing until blood runs cold in monkey’s veins. In vain, he has looked through the pages of panaceas. Nothing can stop this tick-tock of blood oozing slowly towards its close-of-day finality when the windows will be shuttered, the blinds will be drawn, the door will be locked … … and there will be no known tomorrow. Monkey Grows Old
(after Segismundo in Calderón’s La Vida es Sueño) Monkey’s face grows wrinkles in the mirror, deep furrows that Old Man Time has ploughed with his oxen. Monkey wants everything to be the same, but he knows it never will be. When asked where he grew up he says “I don't think I have." When asked what he teaches he replies “I no longer know.” Sometimes, monkey wakes in the middle of the night to feel the old, grey temple walls threaten as they crowd him in. They are alive and trying to smother him. When he can no longer breathe, he sleeps death’s dreamless sleep. In the morning, when he wakes, he is sickened by old memories: “Is life a dream,” he asks, “Or a bloody nightmare!” Sometimes monkey wishes he had never been born. Monkey’s Snowflake
(Reducing Leonard Forster and the Petrarchan Icy Fire
to a moment of Existentialist Philosophy) A snowflake lands on monkey’s hand and perches there, a fallen star glorious in its sparkle. Monkey looks up at the sky: such a long way to drop. All that former glory tumbling to its watery end then fading to nothing but a dried out memory. The ground is cold beneath monkey’s feet. The wet soil waits to devour eyes and nose. Will monkey, like the moth, be drawn to that all- devouring flame and consumed in its glorious gnash of fiery teeth? Monkey doesn’t fear that furious furnace. He isn’t afraid of this death he carries on his back and in his veins, this personal death that is uniquely his, and his alone. Unique, these snowflakes, falling; first one, and then another, perching on his paw, each unmatched in crystalline crispness, melting now, in its uniqueness, this snow moth flaring to flame, this snow spark in its bonfire of ice. Monkey Traps His Reflection in the Mirror Monkey looks for himself in the mirror. The mirror is quite empty. Monkey runs around the temple screeching at the injustice. Nobody pays any attention. The other monkeys lust after an old wrinkled body lying motionless on the temple steps. Monkey cries out to them: but it's all in vain. The looking glass is an empty pool. Dying creatures struggle to find safety in the silver mud at the mirror’s bottom. The carnivorous, carnival world turns head over heels. Topsy-turvy monkey draws a thin red line of blood in the sand. But he no longer knows where he stands. Monkey’s Clockwork Universe Some days, monkey winds himself up like a clockwork mouse. Other days he rolls over and over with a key in his back like a clockwork cat. Monkey is growing old and forgetful. He forgets where he has hidden the key, pats his pockets, and slows right down before he eventually finds it and winds himself up again. One day, monkey leaves the key between his shoulder blades in the middle of his back. All day long, the temple monkeys play with the key, turning it round and round, and winding monkey’s clockwork, tighter and tighter, until suddenly the mainspring breaks and monkey slumps at the table no energy, no strength, no stars, no planets, no moon at night, the sun broken fatally down, the clockwork of his universe sapped, and snapped. Monkey Throws Away the Keys Monkey is tired of writing reports that are never read. He is fed up with frequently asked questions and their unread answers. To every lock, there is a key. Monkey looks at the red and gold locks of the last orang-utangs and wonders how to unpick their DNA. Monkey would give his kingdom for a key, a key, a little silver key: the key to a situation, the key to a heart, the office key, the key to the door at twenty-one, the keys of fate, the Florida keys, the key to San Francisco’s Golden Gate, a passe-partout, a skeleton key, the key to Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, where she hides dry bones … On the last day, when monkey leaves work he takes a lifetime of keys and throws them down a deep dark well. As they halve the distance to the water, he listens to the sound of silence and wonders if they’ll ever hit the bottom. Monkey by Candlelight Five candles burn at monkey’s table, one in a crystal snowball. Outside the temple, the night wind howls like a dog, and scratches its pelt on the temple’s roof. The wind has torn branches from the monkey puzzle tree and polished the evening ice like eighteenth century silver. A moth circles and is sacrificed in a sizzle of flame. Here at night’s altar, monkey keeps his sacrificial vigil. He places his wrinkled paws, one by one, in the candle’s liquid fire and sighs as he survives the sizzling flame. Put out a candle, put out a child. Who would put out the dog on a night like this? Outside, playing tag between dark trees, the wind runs wild. Snow Flake Monkey (After Copito de Nieve, the albino gorilla in the Barcelona Zoo) When the tamarack loses its leaves, does it pine for the jack pine then turn itself into a needle and thread itself through the sun’s omniscience? The moon’s bald skull washes itself in the pool below the waterfall. Pale, blind ubiquitous eye, the sun hangs itself on an ostrich fern. Snow slowly melts and fiddleheads are born along the river’s banks. Snowflake, the albino monkey, can hear them hustling their lonely foxtrot slyly through the damp of the river’s rising. Freshet debris pushes upwards to the tune of dancing spheres. Where is Plato, now, when monkey needs him most? What will happen when victory falls to the three brass balls and the temple is sold to the highest bidder? Monkey hears coyote in the woods at night making love beneath a fist size moon. Lambs’ tails droop their blood red scalps across the breakfast table. The cat pounces at winter snow, willing each snowflake to sleepwalk through the iced up window and be devoured. Monkey’s hibiscus has lost a trinity of flowers: where can they all have gone? Monkey Meets His God
(after the twin talking heads of Saussure) “The last time I saw Him, God had the angel of death perched on His shoulders. A big black vulture, lay upon Him, feathers draped over His shoulders like a stole. Death’s shadow drooled across His countenance. He had hang dog jowls, brown puffy eyes, skin the colour of clay on a grey day when the sun hides his face, and snow no longer sparkles, but huddles at the roadside in bitter, pockmarked streaks. The weight of God’s burden was bending His back, stiffening His upper lip into a death mask grimace. He only saw what He wanted to see, heard only what He wanted to hear. Saussure’s twin heads, we were, frozen in dialogue, but mine was the only head adorned with ears. Words bounced off His skull. His grizzled, buzzard’s neck thrust out from His collar. He was dying like a vulture, too sick to kill, but He perched on a chair’s edge hoping that carrion would come His way. The stench of our parting still lingers in my nose.” Monkey Lets Go Ali Baba and his forty thieves came silently in the night and stole a decade from his piggy bank. Ten years of pennies lie heavy on monkey’s eyes and weigh his eyelids down. Monkey would have drowned in the river but the ferryman takes pity on his soul and cashes monkey’s unsigned failure to check his flow of tumbling words. The ferryman offers a penny for monkey’s thoughts: that one blind copper coin is enough for the ferry man to ferry him across. EPILOGUE Monkey Sails into the Sunset Flowers flourish in the crazy half-light of the setting sun. Monkey sets sail and rows cheerfully into the sunset. Not even for this magic monkey will the clock turn back. Red wounds rage darkly against yellow-green nauseating walls. As they sift through the garbage, seagulls, rodents and crows, life’s most successful scavengers, scrap daily for the smallest scraps. Real rats win the rat race. The Monkey Temple is a frozen oasis. Digital hostility raises all the middle fingers. There is no time for thought. Abandoned memories litter the temple and garbage fills the heads of the inmates. “Garbage in and garbage out!” says monkey. He doesn’t think of himself as a rat leaving a sinking ship. Rather, he thinks of himself as an Argonaut, a hero of myth and legend pulling rapidly away from the Scylla and Charybdis of a destitute institution filled with the siren squeals of squabbling rats.