Monkey Throws Away the Keys
Monkey is tired of writing reports
that are never read.
He is fed up with frequently asked
questions and their unread answers.
To every lock, there is a key.
Monkey looks at the red and gold
locks of the last orang-utangs
and wonders how to unpick their DNA.
Monkey would give his kingdom
for a key, a key, a little silver key:
the key to a situation, the key to a heart,
the office key, the key to the door,
at twenty-one, the keys of fate,
the Florida keys, the key to San
Francisco’s Golden Gate,
a passe-partout, a skeleton key,
the key to Mother Hubbard’s
cupboard, where she hides dry bones …
On the last day, when monkey leaves work
he takes a lifetime of keys
and throws them down a deep dark well.
As they halve the distance to the water,
he listens to the sound of silence
and wonders if they’ll ever hit the bottom.
rogermoorepoet 
You know how much I love Monkey. I remembered the bunch of monkeys sitting in a room with typewriters and bags of speed hammering away at the works of Shakespeare. I like keys as well, that feeling of what they could open ( I am thinking of the offhand comment in Discrete Charm to the Key to Dreams and the utterly mysterious blue key in Mulholland Dr, the key to the garden at the start of Alice in Wonderland, now that I have started thinking about I suppose the list is endless). Sorry I got sidetracked there this is excellent and got me thinking.
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Nothing like a poem that makes you think, Mr. Cake! I am still totally absorbed by the surreal paintings you place on your website. They take the mind to places they would rarely go if not prompted by the mysterious and the unknown. “Solo el misterio nos hace vivir, solo el misterio”… only the mysterious allows us to love, only the mysterious.” Federico Garcia Lorca.
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Thank you, keep on being the fruits from the monkey room.
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Tomorrow I will put up a really good one. Be prepared!
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I look forward to it. You haven’t put up a bad one yet.
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This is one of my excruciating favorites. When I read it, I point at individual people … and they shiver and cringe.
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Your monkey is really mischievous now that he knows how to press delete
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It brings back so many memories of other times and other places. This is indeed a creepy-crawly one.
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It is excellent
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Thank you so much. I think I will read it at one of my upcoming readings (Oct 30 or Nov 4). That and the Book Burning.
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Good choices and good linkage.
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They make a good pairing and have that “ouch” impact that you so correctly pointed out. I’ll work on the reading(s) … they will both be fun.
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Indeed.
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Even when using something like a monkey as a metaphor, you still write very intelligently
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Thank you. In the case of the monkey poems I would like to think “particularly when …” monkey is a sort of alter ego, in some places; in other places he is something entirely different. I hope!
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Reminds me of the music hall ditty: ‘I’ve got the key to the door, never been twenty-one before. I love your Monkey Temple and everything about it.
Malice in Blunderland redux.
John.
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That is certainly an echo, right in there, John. Twenty-one was so important in the good old days! I love the monkey poems … so different from what I usually write … and yet they echo earlier writing too.
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