Friday, September 3, 2021

Harambe Cum Laude


My mother asked me what happened

Why I stopped leaving the house

She apologized for whatever it was

The elders had done


Oh, Mommy, we can never know

All that we don't know

But in the end they tell me

It will all be revealed

In our dreams


Maybe it had something to do

With nests built too high

And a religion that taught me

The secret magic of

Colanders, Spin Cycles

and talking to trees


And plastic education that

Begat marrying into industries

And royal families

That saw me only as bone

And uterus


Expected to use Mr. Higgins' English

Though I came here in steerage

Surrounded by people

Obsessed with peerage

Their genes driving time, not mine


Nor the forest's or the tree's

Or the apple's or its seed's

But everyone shouting

Me me me alone in their houseboats

on a dying sea

Guns, germs and steel

ensure that's to be


I live in a town named for Love

Where you can have Cupid himself

Postmark your mail

And then get shot in the face for being

Black, old, sad or slow,

or even just a puppy


I live in a world where

unlike you showed me

People find

Sorry a word that makes

Them weak in the eyes of their

Blueblooded squatters


I don't even know, but apparently

I was also born a crime

Too slow quiet hungry short fat

An alien in my own skin

Not meant for here or there


Surrounded by a cacophony of opinion

Facts, figures and masks

Fights over jobs I'll never earn

Food I haven't grown, can't eat

And air that chokes babies

and granddaddies in their sleep


In a country where pant wearers

Sold our inner and outer epithelia

to corporate interests

To uphold a system hungrier than we

Of paid slavery

A national pigskin-induced concussion


A system that pits my existence

Against the environment

And others

All hoping for the final show

Of Christ 2.0 with nowhere left to go


But don't worry, Mom;

I'm not just a pair of boobs

I'm also a pair of legs

And nobody comes when I scream

Or replies to my email


And nothing I say makes any sense

Must be run through eight layers

Of cheesecloth

Because I happen to be boobs

But also legs


And here’s to you, Colin Robinson

Jesus loves you more than you will know

So over the river and through the woods

To grandmother’s bank’s collateral

Make a nice sandwich for the X


With a little too much banana

    Of the second kind

What kind of insurance is that

About as much as the Natives had

Is it deductible when your

Sons go to war to pay for it


While Falwell watches

Well tell the Weekly World News

Carl and Bob showed me that

Harambe comes loudly

In the multiverse

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