One Monkey Don't Stop No Art Show

This big monkey is gonna take a week or so off from art, beginning next Monday, and present more musical history stuff. But today, the final poet installment.

Monkey Breath

Hello. The art is still a go even though the USA goes up in class war flames.

More More

Here's more more.

What's Under My Skin

Welcome to another round of poet pix.

Too Much Fun

I've been having too much fun commenting on FB on the things that bug me about politics. Here, however, is week two of my art show.

Art Five Five Five

One more week will complete the first part of art. Lots more on the way.

Art Four

The poets just keep on acomin. Their images are as glossy as their poetry. Can you guess who these poets are? Good luck.

Art Three

Here's art for a long time to come.

Art Two

The theme is still Contemporary American Poetry. 

Art Show One

For weeks to come The Happy Banana is hosting an art show. It begins with The Contemporary American  Poetry collection.

Monkey Business

Obviously, I'm terrible at proofing. Ok, I'm not perfect.

Here Comes Honey

wearing a sweet roll.

Particles of sprinkled sugar
stick to her neck.
She’s like a dozen doughnuts.

Honey’s nails are the longest. Hard

arrows reach from her cuticles.
She has difficulty eating. Her lovers
are scarred & frightened.

Two clowns & the bearded lady

slave over Honey’s manicure
until the final crooked horn loses all
that tied it to ordinary sobriety.

When Honey is thankful,

she worships the sun & moon.
On nights when she receives seed
many animal odors ride the air.

Lights from passing cars

jump back startled as her
fingers move the shanks like
coils of snapped-off lizard tails.

The nails are dangerous,

not to be trusted in anger. Honey
bleeds whenever her head itches.
She could easily destroy her own back.

But at ShowTime, when the winking

fire-eater swerves to catch
a drop of burning oil on his tongue,
Honey points at once to everyone

from the sawdust center ring.

Not even the 2000 year old sloth
dares match digits when Honey’s wings
are so fully opened to surprise

the Ringmaster’s black boots.

Fort the Birds

It's time for another poem.

Related to Herons

My friends can’t believe

what they see from the street.
They watch my brother
catch mice like a hawk
in the front yard. Something
about our diet makes them sick.

They say my family’s

for the birds. I guess they’re right.
Uncle Nick is a hungry pelican,
his throat full of fish phlegm & scales.
Aunt Lucy has a very sharp nose.

My sister Greta wears a boa

to disguise her feathered wings.
My friends won’t give her a break.
They call her “Pige!” & flap their arms.
I know what she wants to tell them.

Mama’s screeching makes Dad nervous.

It causes us all to jump.
He throws up his wings, pretty
much ignores the whole thing.
I wonder if he’s happy.

I fluff my plume in the birdbath reflection.

My great aunt says I’m a peacock.
Her husband calls me a woodpecker.
The chickens in the yard taught me to walk.
My colors absolutely swagger.

I know a girl who wants to lay eggs.

She sings the sweetest song I’ve ever heard.
We have a little nest no one knows about
in the pine behind the house next door.
I hope to get married in the spring.

Mom says I’m not ready.

Dad says it just won’t work.
“Wanna end up like me, pal?
Nest fulla yippers waitin for puke?”
he says more than I care to hear.
All I can do is whistle my love.

Hanging from the Trees

I was born mostly monkey. Here's some stuff.

Cemetery Strawberries

Not old enough (not yet)

to appreciate gravity (the
adults say) that pulls corpses,
relatives, any forever down.

“But I fell–don’t you

remember?”
“It’s not that fall
that counts.”
“But I count–don’t you
remember?”

Dear Aunt Liz, sweet

angel, working on a grave,
spotted red spotted ground,
not many blooms left.

“Not many blooms left,” she

said. “Wait under that tent.”
Shade under that tent
shielded an un-dug grave.

“I dig these berries.”

“I picked these berries.”

Little splattered juice wounds

pocked a ripped wreath
box lid–a banquet tray
wild as the wildest fruit.

“Give us more.” Still eating.

“More. More.” Still eating.
They stopped work & gave
shade to the final helping.

“No more?” Still eating.

“No more.” Still eating.

Termites and Fruit

Lots of problems today, but with luck they can all be fixed.

The Lonesome Beet

Sally’s been goose-steppin.

Jack-boot baby, sexy overkiller,
Daddy’s gotta gas some cows.           Myth in chalk circles

                                                            poisons minds,

           Shucks,                                     tans some hide.
what’s left but the orders?
Muzzle the onlookers
–blindfold them–
            deafen everyone.
                                    Fruit in the jar
                                    burns my heart.
                                    Moses,
don’t melt.  We needin ya.

Split

I'm trying a little different kind of poem today.

Easter Shoes

Mommy bought me a pair.

shoes white as a bonnet.
“These are your Easter shoes.”
knew the Easter Bunny.
scarred me under the bed.

I hated cellophane.

still do the yellow.
Like wrappin a land-mine,
ain’t it?  Darling?
a little puppy?

Ain’t they?  see how?

they fit?  perfect?
“I hafta pinch em.
see if they’re tied.
see if I’m awake.”

The knot in my throat.

around my neck.
Little things like a puppy.
(she’s white
the shoes) [darling things]

around my puppy neck.

Wanna try em on?
check their fit?
happy the white.
horn dance.

“Bold steps

little boy, little puppy.
Know this knot?
we’re tied together now.
pinkie promisers forever.”

8 Foot Bunch

It's daylight somewhere in the world. Here's a song.

Elvis In the Bekaa Valley

Parting the gates of Graceland before us

An icon, his jewelry blinds us
Voices of The Jordanaires resound from his mansion
He wears a turban & a golden ram's head
Elvis in the Bekaa Valley

He's beamed from space down to us

His image is shown to guide us
He knows all, he is like a lamb
We see him kiss girls on TV
Elvis in the Bekaa Valley

Stuff them dogs down in my pants

Call the Colonel with the news
Tell the girls I'm back from the dead
Hound dog

His moves & inflections enthrall us
We stand tall with him behind us
A gold Cadillac zips across the desert
We know immediately it's The King
Elvis in the Bekaa Valley

A Banana a Day

Go Big Orange! I'm going medical and more today.

Turvy Tips

I’ve swallowed a canary & I can’t get it up!

Its song is muffled, my  mouth closed.
Its faux elation is shrill in my ears.
The hysterical wings tickle my throat.

I scan a list of names on my insurance documents.

There’s not a single canary specialist in my HMO,
nor even in the Yellow Pages.  Breathing hard
from the strain, I call a physicians’ referral service.
“Give me a good eyes, ears, nose,
throat & canary doctor, please,” I say,
my voice mixed with whistles & shrieks.
“This is no time for jokes, sir,” the referrer says.
“I need a number!”  I shout over the canary.
“Go to hell, sir!”  the referrer tells me.
I hang up the phone.

I’ve exhausted all home remedies.

There’s nothing left but to go bird fishing.
I allow a night crawler to squirm over my tongue,
guiding itself by my wisdom teeth.
The canary plays coy & doesn’t bite.

Uncle Andy used to work the mines.

He looks down my throat.
“Gonna blast him out?”  I ask.
“We used to take canaries into the mines
to detect methane gas,” he says.  “Maybe
we should take you beneath the earth,
if it’s not already too late.”

I put my hand across my mouth & feel

sorry for the bird.  How uncomfortable
it must be surrounded by gags,
lubricated by saliva & beer.
I don’t see how the poor thing escapes drowning,
or how I’ll ever eat another egg for breakfast.

Banana Skin

I'm wearing banana skin socks. Tally-ho!

The Little Red Book

Quickly after 1949,

Nationalists in Taiwan (Chiang, etc.)
achieved American modernization,
in partial response to Mainland pressure,
but never a popular will (often
decried as forced adherence)
like that generated by the iconic Mao.

Paranoia drove Mainland politics.

The Sparrow Campaign,
back-yard steel, endless searches
for Capitalist Roaders led
to several touted leaps forward
until distinctions between success & failure,
blurred by physical or psychological violence,
vanished without memory.
Then The Bomb.

Mao fattened on the world stage.

Nationalists fattened on western tits.
The Cold War kept things even
until the bloated, rotten-toothed dictator
tired of foreign policy & again looked in.
Unquestionably, the counterrevolution
he saw, to his mind, existed as China’s
most serious problem, inflaming The Chairman,
who in 1966 leapt forward & unleashed
the fury of The Gang of Four.

Led by Chang Qing, the group’s

most influential member, a former actress,
& wife to Chairman Mao, The Gang
instituted Red Terror, later called
The Cultural Revolution, to root out
counter-revolutionary & black gang ideology.
For a full ten years unsubstantiated exploits
carried out by cadres of intellectual enemies
terrified the 12% of the population
able to read The People’s Daily propaganda.

After interviews conducted by a
Central Case Examination Group,
cadre leaders, followers, & associates
faced public humiliation & execution
or banishment & forced physical labor.
In 69 education stopped, thereby
achieving The Gang’s ultimate goal,
turning themselves into state deities.
Even Kissinger ass-kissed The Chairman,
once insinuating Mao’s stature
to be as eventful as God’s.

Mao the merciful died in 76.

The new government arrested The Gang
& began to resolve the chaos.
Normalization of Sino/US relations
followed recognition by the Carter
Administration in 79, & presaged the current
Great Leap into the free market by building
an industrial manufacturing base
on the world’s largest labor force,
creating a major economic player.

Since the British ceded Hong Kong,

can Taiwan be far behind?
Economic power breeds military force.
Material & technological modernization
points to a struggle or shift in the Pacific.
Will Hawaii again pivot the line between
US interests & another Asian problem?

Electrical Banana

I'm offering a political poem for the 5th.

Year of the Pig

The New Deal

Between 1968 & 1981

the leading Marxists:
Lenin, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Bernstein
stirred wooly masses more
through malice than conscience.

The blistered Left produced

the golden age of social thought,
or so it was announced, but then
multilingual Central Europeans
spread Christian heresies, &
almost everything else, culminating
in a Polish October as early as 54.
Even the phones rang Hilferding.

This new, idealized intellectual

trajectory brought by ideological fugees
to their various adoptive countries
unexpectedly weakened the proletarian
impulses of the Marx/Engles crowd.
Bluntly stated, the Soviet Marxism
institutionalized by Stalin, aside
Trotsky’s ineffectual theorizing, created
an antiquarian cult of personality
more in line with modern Fascism
than in lock (goose?) step with labor.

Meanwhile, Mao’s wake & CIA

interference in Latin experiments,
suppression developed as a prototypal
doctrine of order & historical necessity.
After the Bay of Pigs, pompous leaders
like Castro denounced, manufactured
charges, jailed & murdered all but
the worshipful, ideologically faithful,
& how safe were they, really?
Progressive disdain for non-patronizing
elements elicited little reform in the satellites.
As evidenced by Dubcek’s Prague Spring disaster,
paranoia & cold war tyranny reigned.
Yet the end neared.
After several Latin American successes,
the US, in the 80s, instigated a massive
global arms race & buildup that broke
several moribund Eastern Block economies, &,
on the heels of a poorly conceived Afghanistan
adventure, destroyed the Soviet system, too.
In short: Gorby dropped the wall,
Yeltsin dropped a fifth,
but nobody dropped The Bomb.

Happy 4th of July Weekend

Let's all celebrate.

Mr Kim Never Sleep

Day is close. The sea is boil.

The sun’s scalp is wet.
Many thing hide to rest,
but Mr Kim never sleep.
I see him at 7. I see him all night.

Mr Jo scratch his head.

He never hear birds
scrounging breakfast without
Mr Kim walk by toss worm & bread.
He want keep Mr Kim out of birdbath.

Neighborhood safe. Mr Kim

watch everything. He write note.
He take video & picture.
He talk to police.

I think his mind is slip.  Baca?

Maybe, I say sorry.
He helpful.  He curious.
Never too tired to be good friend.
He watch over sick.
He watch everything.
He does so much.
What he don’t do?  I never know.
Mr Kim never sleep.