Works of Art by Roberto Figueroa
A monkey walks through his familiar jungle,
doing all of his little monkey chores,
when all of a sudden he’s hit by a dart
and soon begins to let loose little monkey snores.
Our monkey awakes in a large room,
which he thinks cannot get any brighter.
It’s a room full of other monkeys,
each working furiously on a little typewriter.
The other assorted monkeys work hard,
intently staring at a white page.
Though they are all chained to their desks,
the room contains not a cage.
A man in a lab coat approaches our monkey,
and stands beside his little work station.
The man types a bit and fruit falls from above
which explains the other monkeys’ typing fixation.
So our monkey begins his typing,
starting a tale of a young monkey prince
who sees his father murdered by his brother
but cannot trust anyone with this evidence
He calls it “Love and Death in the Time of Bananas”,
and in it the main monkey pretends to be insane.
Our monkey works long hours, ignoring falling fruit per page
and he soon finishes his writing campaign.
Next to him, an old chimp periodically stands on his chair,
and hoots poetry that touches other monkeys to their core.
The old chimp reads his newest line, which is:
“The poem falls to the soul as a banana peel falls to the jungle floor”
But our monkey keeps working on his masterpiece
and soon a lab man comes over, smoking a pipe
he looks at what the monkey has written,
but understands nothing, as our monkey cannot actually type.
As the lab man finishes reading the monkey masterpiece,
our monkey is grabbed by a hidden protester in a rage.
He is whisked past gorillas fiddling with film equipment,
and orangutans gathered on a stage.
Our monkey is returned to his familiar jungle,
Where the trees grow so very tall,
and he thinks of his short writing career,
as he sits by his favorite jungle waterfall.