For money, they'll put holes through
a home.
But I raised the apes whose beds
They'll bore.
So I'm loading a gun. And
I will catch bullets until I breathe
no
more.
From a distance, what is a gorilla?
Nothing but black leather shuffling.
For an instant, what is a gorilla?
Nothing but pounding and huffing.
Without touching or watching them
closely,
Primates' lives seem
too shit-filled to
Treasure.
When oil, ore, stones
under-earth
can be traded—their whole weight
—for
pleasure.
But from a touch, what is
a gorilla?
Loving and playing,
intelligent power.
For decades, what is
a gorilla?
Growing and learning,
month, day, hour.
In an instant, from a distance, a man
Can aim, can make a gorilla
fall. But
if
He never comes closer with his senses
Than that,
is he being a
human
at all?
2015 February 17:
ReplyDeleteWatched the documentary “Virunga” on Netflix last night. Didn't cry, but really wanted to. The documentary starts with a five-minute summary of the history of Africa being exploited by foreigners for its natural resources—colonizers who often use the people against each other and encourage bloodshed in order to gain that control. The film then spends the rest of its time unfolding the current-day struggle of Virunga, a national wildlife park that has been painstakingly building its animal populations up while battling poachers and outside business interests. Their current, seemingly unwinnable struggle, is against SOCA – a British oil company who wants to start drilling in the Northern half of the park. The Belgian man who heads the park recognizes that if they succeed, they will set a precedent that will undermine wildlife parks throughout Africa. So he and his rangers stand their ground and resist. Meanwhile, SOCA is paying off government officials above the Belgian, as well as workers within the park. The Belgian's right-hand man wears a button camera to document the offers of money and requests to undermine the park that he receives. A French journalist is also meeting with a middle-man who takes SOCA's money and pays off locals, as well as the leader of the rebel group M23 who has been bought by SOCA with promises of profit-shares. After watching this, we then watch helplessly as the rebels gain control of area after area, moving closer and closer to the park, and finally enter it and start a firefight.
In 1997, a group had come in and massacred much of the mountain gorilla population (around 800 left in the world, all here), believing that without the gorillas, the government would have no reason to maintain the park. Now, the workers have worked to rehabilitate the population, and we see one man who nurses the young firsthand loading up his gun, prepared to die for these gorillas, who he names as his “purpose” in this world. He was there in 1997, and it is breaking to see him calling out to his gorillas, trying to make rations last as the rebels cut off supplies, cradling them like a father as they shy away from the sounds of guns, and finally loading a gun himself in preparation for a last stand. (All while the middle-man justifies his work by saying, “The park is a joke, not really organized or productive, and how hard can that work be, really?” and “These people can't take care of themselves; they need someone to colonize them and give them order” and “Unless those animals can piss oil and shit gold, they are just not worth keeping at the expense of business: who cares about a fucking monkey?”) The park is beautiful, and delicate. These businessmen are uncaring and tunnel-visioned. And they can destroy in one day of fire what a hundred-plus men built slowly over decades.
Although I have never seen the documentary “Virunga”, I read your take on it in the comments section; there are a few similarities to the documentary “Grizzly Man”. At first I took “Virunga…” as a literal commentary on the documentary, but the photo you inserted above depicting the amount of casualties caused by firearms and warfare made me view your work as an allegory for our own self-destruction. What separates a gorilla from a man? I could argue that only the human mind is capable of consciousness, but on the other hand the gorilla is the “loving and playing” creature capable of true “intelligent power”. For only the gorilla has the capability of living in symbiosis with nature, and that makes them the more “humane” of species. The overall format of the poem stumps me; it seems to be two divergent lines converging together. Could it be a subtle hint that we humans are not as different from the almost extinct beast as we consider ourselves to be?
ReplyDeleteI could be that...or it could be a giant 'V.' :)
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