The Simian Prince Laureate Poem by Jay Mandeville

Crowned by chimps in venerable trees
he alludes to tribal ghosts or jabbers of primal suffering
tapping his drum with natural preposterousness
singing love's likeness with characteristic stubbornness
in the piping tones of landfills that will cover us

any person or ape can rip ripe fruit
from its nesting branch, or await its fall,
but he who speaks & sows hectares in solitary lines,
may cultivate vines that reproduce in kind,
& sustenance seize from trifles left behind

thus a wary savage bound like he,
wrapped in language's swaddling clothes,
may be reborn in the Furies' groves
reclaim the brashness of an embryo
& suffer sanction of history's shade-drawn windows

or find himself shunned, dethroned by obscurity
beheaded for failing to vote with Time's jury
of skeptics & converts to painful necessity
who sing as though free, though they lie
in captivity

so this is his royal tale - another hairy, erring
vessel of oblivion,
beyond forest fences, crouching & simian,
shorn of conceit, childish covenant shared
in the company he kept
with the future he prepared