Compression

Compression

It was a little monkey

with a red hat.

I knew I couldn’t have it.

The cage was much too small

for both of us

even though the monkey

was no bigger than a drop

of black blood

it made the keepers very
angry that I even

asked.

'How can we ever

let you out,' said the one

who pretended to be kind

'when you want monkeys?'
As if.

The other, never a great

pretender, made that insect clicking

in his beard. 'Tcha,' he said

or perhaps 'Tsttst!'
I said, 'I thought I heard
the Rapture passing through
and it left parson's widow
but took Loup Garou.'

Heads began to shake
in a dominating palsy.

'I can see,' 

said Insect Beard 
though his eyes were eaten
years ago, 'she’s had

too much room

too much space to think,

two big ears

to hear the devil whisper 
in the window.

'We must make it 
much much tighter 

in here, so not even a hair

from a monkey’s tail, or the

itch of a wolf's flea will fit.'

Then I learned to be

small as a dropped

tear, 

smaller than a

particled prion that pulls
its sad viral sponge into 
cow's brain, erasing,
or the smallest enzyme 

in the storm boiled lachrymal lake

for there is no sailing allowed in here

or drowning.

Only somewhere a monkey
wandering
lost in a little red hat.

November 2011

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Footer Image: The Princess and the Monkey, by Janis Rozantals, 1913

Janis Rozentals [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons