I was just a young word that meant “monkey”
In a beautiful terrible word that meant “jungle”
Under the dome of a bright blue sky
From which the eagle dipped down
And rose again with monkey in its claw
Beside a crystal clear river
Full of a certain monkey-devouring fish
Beneath the soaring green tree
With branch made of venomous snake
And limb full of golden chimpanzee
Those greedy thieves they were mean
And one of them…
One of them…
One of them took my mother
Stole her away from me
While she slept on a branch all her own
Hanging over rich earthen loam
On which the lion paw roamed
Everything here was a beautiful terrible word
And every word was hungry for monkey
But the lion?
The lion was the hungriest word of them all
So I became the words that meant “lion tamer”
And learned to play the part well
And I built my own lonely zoo
A zoo with nets overhead to define doctrines of the sky
And limit the flight of its wings
A zoo with recirculating water pumps
And concrete channels designed to
remind one of rivers but with no fin or scale within
A zoo with very solidly medium height North American maple trees
Because they grew well in this climate
And because their branches snapped easily
Beneath the slither of the monkey-eating snakes
And the grasp of chimpanzees
Damn the chimpanzees
I built a jail out of cuss words just
for them
But the lion?
She became my life
I lived with her
Watching her movements
Never letting her out of my sight
And bearing the scars and wounds
To prove and reprove my necessary vigilance
She and I
We lived for each other
My flesh was her food
And as long as she took what I willingly gave
She stayed well fed
And I stayed alive
A measured dose of death
Administered daily to a terrified monkey
That lived behind a lion tamer’s mask
Free from the jungle at last
Living free behind the bars
No longer feeling those ancient fears
And numb to the pain of the past
And so we went on living this way
My young monkey body
Grew into the Lion Tamer’s suit
Until it fit quite well
Equinoxes came and went
Summer solstices too
But one dark winter solstice day
A word that meant “man” arrived at the zoo
The only visitor that lonely day
He paid the overpriced cost of admission
And unlike most of my guests
He didn’t come for the animals
He came for me
He could see past the scars
On the man’s body I wore as my mask
He could see the monkey that defined me beneath it
And my fear of the beasts
For which he himself held none
As he patiently walked with me
To lovingly study each and every one
In their unnatural enclosures
Reaping the benefits
Of the perfect compartmentalization
Of all the interconnected syllables, meanings and species
And as much as I would have liked it
If he fed laxative-laced bananas to those chimpanzees
Instead he just stood and smiled
And watched
And loved them too
But the lion?
He took a special interest in the word that meant “lion”
Not because of her appetite for monkey
But because of what she meant to me
And… after a long silence
He finally spoke
And asked if I wanted to be free
I told him I was free
And I would never go back to that terrible jungle
To which he replied
“My child…
You are the jungle
You are the sky and the soaring wings
You are the depths of the flowing deep
You are the reaching trees
You are the snakes
And the chimpanzees
You are the lion too
The only thing you are not
Is the monkey in this zoo
You are a child of man
And you are as I am
And all of this is for you”
After he said this I beheld my trembling body
Lying behind this mask of a man
Skinny and upright
Smooth and pale
And I knew that it was true
So right then and there
And that very day
I opened the gates of the zoo
All of the beautiful beasts
Free on the earth
And, after a long thoughtful pause
Even the chimpanzees too
All these creatures never meant to be contained
Free to soar the heavens of my spirit
Free to swim the depths of my mind
Free to roam the earth of my body
Free to disappear in the depths of the wilderness that I am
And I?
Free to love this wild jungle
And all that it contains
To tend this garden of my life
And no longer be afraid
And every sighting of each beast
Has now become a rare and beautiful event
Where I stop and watch and wait and study and love
And let the presence of the beast
In its proper home
Become a sacred moment to be shared
By the beast and myself alone
—
Some manuscripts don’t contain the following verses
—
The animal control officers
And the police
They came later to question my actions
But by then
The animals were long gone
Finding their homes in this beautiful wonderful jungle
Suddenly thriving in the parkways
And backyards of the rattled residents of this town
And contrary to the sudden onslaught of complaints by the armies of armchair animal experts on the local chimpanzee newsfeed commentaries
By this time
There was nothing I could do
Every last animal
Had already
left
the zoo
