Earth Monkeys

Or
A Friendly Reminder to Our Other Worldly Alien Allies

by Richard Tornello

I'm an Earth monkey, I'm an Earth ape.
Where I come from; where I go
I'm not the kind you want to know.
I killed my cousins the Neanderthals,
I killed the Denisovans, I killed them all.

A holographic copy I do it best,
Of natures' universes I manifest.
My essence here can't be ignored:
A star eats a star, a black hole sated, its neighbor gored.
So when you need that dirty work done
And none of your kind thinks it's fun,
Then who do you call? We, the outliers,
All monkeys, all,

We, the monkey men, from this planetary ball.

There is no 'east is east nor west is west'
(What pitiful lines from some dead wit)
You shrink, you cower, you protest a bit
From the tasks that must be done, which claim you have no taste.
Because realpolitik requires some form of beast.
Where rotting flesh and burning hell
Are nothing much, and we know too well.
So for the price we know you'll pay
A better life? No threats your way,
With your enemy's existence effaced away.
We've made an art, these skills you claim distaste
Yet you, still in a way, secretly admire
Our cold ability to bring a beating heart
For the sport of it, or for said fault
to a very sharp and sudden halt.

Yet we do ponder our nature's role; looking back at our history's toll.
So many dead, so much destroyed
And every now and then a cry for peace… but
But in the end it is nature's call
Like star eating stars,
We
The Earth monkeys, it's what we are.