[Newspoetry] Ape Prompt assignment

[John Wason]

This exercise seems to have captured quite a few people's imagination for
some reason.  Here's mine:


                AGAPE
           by John Wason


"Fourteen lines," he ordered.
What ignorance!  Who's counting?
What's he want, a sonnet?

And what's up with this pencil?
Does he not know the theory
of monkeys and typewriters?
While I will write a poem,
it may not be, good Doctor,
precisely as you like it.

The fool no doubt expects
a poem about bananas.
You'd think he never tasted
a fat white juicy grub.
I need to scratch my buttocks.
Ah!  That feels much better!

Now where was I?  A title...
my poem needs a title.
"Out of Africa?"
"Guerrillas in our Midst?"
Or maybe "Going Apeshit"?
(Now who coined THAT expression?)

They study my behavior
while never contemplating
that I observe them, too -
their habits and their culture,
their foibles and their follies,
the gibberish they call "language".

I hear them prate of Science
as fact and panacea.
I listen while they speak
day in, day out, unceasing,
of humans killing humans
as commonplace occurrence.

I marvel at their theory -
spectacular conceit! -
that THEY "evolved" from US.