The female black rhino hunches down and shits.
It is morning, and the sun is just beginning
to strike down hard at the green dew soaked
plains. Under the snow capped peak of Kilimanjaro.
The hulking beast turns, and hesitantly sniffs at
the piled shit. The turd-pack steams vibrantly.
The rhino spins, and lurches off into the morning
light. Kicking the top half of the mound of turds
hard upon departing with her rear hoof.
A gazelle leaps quietly through the high grass.
Disgusted from the scattering stench of it all.
The rhino turns a gloating heel at the weak minded
gazelle while lumbering off. Her horn is up.
Her hoof trot's high upon these abundantly green
plains of Africa.
A week later. The green has become brown.
The female black rhino squats low in the
shade patch of a giant Cypress tree.
The water hole is almost empty, and drying fast.
Except for some caked and flaking mud.
Her mate is late, and has yet to arrive.
A pride of lions stare on and lick their
lips patiently. Not yet so eager to try their luck.
They know how dangerous a full grown rhino can be.
So they wait and clean one another pretending
not to notice the dying beast.
The rhino is exhausted, and in dire need of water,
and rest with both eyes closed.
The rhino falls asleep. with a shit stain
still on her hoof. A buzzing fly lands on her
horn's dark ivory tip. Her tail whips slowly,
and awkwardly. The heat of the afternoon sun
creates wavering mirages.
They offer no hope only odd visuals all around.
On these scorching Plains of Africa.
The leopard crouches and flexes.
Then crawls closer, but even still, slower.
Towards the slurping baby sounds.
Young gazelle nursing and suckling.
Hears not the silent cat and feeds on.
Pounce! White glint of teeth. Tit-rip, blood!
Mother startled, bounds away not looking back.
She will have another one when the rain comes again.
Off to her right she spies a pride of lions attacking
a dying rhino with a shit smear on its back hoof.
Love comes seasonal,
but leaves flash flood on the plains of Africa.
The sleeping baboon hears something.
Some sound that stirs him wide awake.
Something foreboding in the night's long shadows.
He rolls over to see, and smell and listen.
He sees many eyes glaring down at him.
He hears more than two heartbeats watching.
He smells his brothers and his cousins
judging him, tense.
He exhales a sigh of relieve.
He assumes that it is a bad dream, and he's safe.
But they smell his fear, and his red soft swollen ass.
They need to stroke his fuzzy brown adolescent fur.
His growling friends and family move in,
Gang-raping his soft red swollen ass.
Repeatedly, until dawn. Holding one another's
stinking hands. They then recede back into
the night's long dark niches.
On these unforgiving plains of Africa.
A pair of hyenas cackle and howl nearby.
Having witnessed, in detail, the barbaric deed.
The sun breaks wide and ruthless.
As a warm wind sweeps through the Great Rift Valley.
The baboon washes his ass in the waterhole's corner.
Quitely and quickly, before running off to go find
some nuts and berries with his clan.
Before it gets too hot.
He spies a pride of lions licking clean the
off-white rib cage of a felled female black rhino
with a shit stain on it's hoof.
The baboon smiles, and limps away.
The heat pounds the dry grass with a wicked passion.
Today, on the relentless plains of Africa.
The young cheetah siblings peer out
from their hideaway. They are waiting for mother
to appear from out of the horizon.
Eager, for her distinct shoulder blades jutting
beautifully up into the afternoon sun.
They are very hungry, and extremely thirsty,
but they know better not to move without
the consent of their mother.
Nevertheless, where could she be?
It had been two days by the older brother's calculations.
As he cleans his sister,
he suddenly smells a wonderfully familiar scent.
Food... turning his head towards the water hole.
He notices a vulture half-submerged.
It's dying in the sitting water.
Deciding to risk it. He springs bounding towards
the dying scavenger. The bird of prey still aware,
awkwardly lifts itself off to safety.
The cheetah cub knowing he has been cheated
gets over it. He decides to take a quick
drink instead. One, two, three laps of delicious
water then back to his sister.
Finishing up, he turns and sees a pack of
wild dogs coming up fast to drink and size him up.
He has the speed to get back to his sister,
but he also knows that would be the end of them both.
So, he sits instead.
Licking the last living drops of moisture clear
from his lips before he is savagely torn to pieces.
His sister looks on. To parched to cry,
and to smart to move. Across the water hole under
a shady giant Cypress, the sister notices a
male rhino sniffing at the horn, and bones
of his stripped mate.
The right back hoof of the skeleton
has a dark mark upon it.
Her brother died quietly and bravely.
And she is still starving.
The sun has fallen below the tall grass.
As the sky burns on majestically unaware.
Mother is still nowhere to be found.
And odds are, dead too,
on these merciless plains of Africa.
Grunt! Warm surge.
The hyena is born cross-eyed,
and bow legged with a hard splash post
mother's squat, and loud giggle.
He is the runt of six.
Tired and unable to laugh.
mother beds down with pups to rest for
the sun, and another day of survival.
She turns to clean her massive bitch cunt,
and finish off the juicy after birth.
Her pups whine in disapproval for having been
unceremoniously dislodged from her tits.
The runt rolls from mother's milk and warmth
into a bone covered corner of the den.
Nevertheless, his nose is sharp for milk
and he drags his bow-legged and cross-eyed
tiny ass back to a tit, for the night.
The moon is high and full of shadows and craters
tonight.
Under a timeless Cypress tree a vulture hops
around the bleaching carcass of a dead rhino
with no hoofs, and no horn, and no mate.
The night regresses obliviously.
The sound of thunder merges with lightning flashes
off in the distance. The rains are coming, again.
Coming back to the parched plains of Africa.
Author notes
This is a satire using the serengeti as a metaphor for modern society in general.
Written December 25th, 2003
In a list
A contest entry
- Photography by .
400 points, ended March 28, 2006, 2 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
What did you think
Comments
1 - 33 of 33
-
Powerful poem and metaphor! I love it
Well done and good luck
-
Holy... that's beautiful. I love the bleakness of it all. Excellent job. I think you 'was robbed outta first.
-
thanks for entering
-
HORUS *: The literal Goerge Orwell of the 21st century and Animal Farm. Wonder why no one caught tht reference to the poem. Anyways, you language, as Ladie says in her comment, was crude, but the whole world is crude and living the wild life in Africa and surviving is also crude. So the dictionof the poem went with the theme and subject matter and therefore holds water in my books as being a commentary satire on modern life in our civilization. Gregg
-
Reminds me slightly of Hemingway, but he was corse in a different way. I couldn't quite make up my mind about this. Somehow your crudness bothers me more than crudness usually does I mean I'm a Lawrence Durrell fan, but the way you do it, well, I don't quite know. The concept is good if a tiny bit old hat. Some of discriptions of the animal's behavior was very acurate some of it absurd, but, there's always poetic licence. One one hand I liked it, on one hand I didn't. It wasn't consistent, I think that was my problem.
Ladie
-
One thing is for sure: once you've stepped in it...it's hard to rid yourself of it. Society as animals...interesting concept.
~~~POO~~~ -
I like the woding because it gives me a picture with which Im able to see.... but perhaps in mainly the reserves... wonderful work ... i like it ... especially since i dont see much of this as an african myself...
-
WOW...Scorching...stark...relentless...view of
survival on the Plains...have seen countless documentaries,
of course...they were being conservative, methinks...
great write, Poet...Life IS beautiful...survival can
get pretty ugly, though...VIVID...acute...INTENSE...
~~~ Wanda ~~~
-
Not really a poem... reads more like a blunt animal documentary. Found it funny though all the same.
-
Excellent description...makes me almost feel like I was there again...excellent write keep up the excellent work...I kinda think the swearing takes away from it though, just because Africa is such a pure place...but that's just my opinion.
-
You are welcome.
-
Ok thank you for helping me understand now that makes this poem alot clearer and better for me
Undercover Poet
-
The shit stain on the heel of the rhino is a symbol.
It means be careful what you step in. It might be
your own shit. -
Naturally.
-
Well I don't really like the part about the Rhino and the crap that part kind of confuses me but otherwise the poem is good thanks for letting me read
-
They weren't asking silly, they were trying to be
witty and insulting, but it was hopelessly foreshadowed
by their posh username and Capatilistic aspirations
in the world of the clicks vs. the world of clocks. I
however am neither. Everyone knows Tarzan was
in the Congo Jungle of Africa, not on the Plains of Africa.
Edited on Jun 25, 4:02 p.m. because ''. -
that was insanely long but the images just did it for me...you know i like your poetry...so i'm really not gunna see much since you know i like your shit....great poem...lemon/clammy/joan of stark raving mad/ok i'm finsihed....see ya.....great piece.
-
excellent
wow really great write like how you have alot of different animals in this work,and i cant believe someon ask about tarzan omg people are nuts !!
excllent write ! -
Swinging.
-
What was Tarzan doing while all this crap was happening?
-
Hi-Quality
Straight forward depiction of the harshest aspects of animality. This poem is great because of the silent comparison to human behavior. What does it take to make allegory? Hmm. I remember someone who wrote about the harshest aspects of a place...this poem isn't stuck describing the mundane and mediocre...compliments to you. -
Thank you, what an honor. Horus8 will be fine. I'm just pleased you liked it. I don't think a lot of people get it, but what else is new right?
-
Again, all I can say is 'WOW'!!! I've loved watching the horrid faces my friends have made reading it!!! If they don't know better than to just help themselves in my place by now...I would be honored if you would allow me to include this in a project of mine...I would like to publish it with other entries and also on it's own, if you allow. Full recognition will of course go to Horus8 or any name you prefer...???I actually said honored...pah! hehehe...thanks again for this wonderful write! Jim Morrison might wish!
-
That's because life is vulgar, end of story. Maybe next time, I'll dip it in magical candy coating and shoot it up someone's ass, how'd that be?
-
Actually.. i read it all and thought it was entertaining. I thought it was best when it wasn't so vulgar though.
-
Fork everyone, Horus8...I fuckin' LOVE IT!!!
I knew better than any 'soluton' B.S. from the gate, just tired of so many 'love me' scare me' or 'aren't I such a freak' (not all, I know) contest requests out there...Reality is a steaming whore to swallow...This is soooo being printed and stuck in center of my casbar, babe...Damn...WOW...Can't wait to read it again...To feel the stenching heat, to smell the rhino, her shit,even the flattened grass and dust and flies around her...To see the glimmer of sunlight in the young cheetahs' eyes, feel their thrist and ache for their mother...See the fur fly and feel the tortured being of the baboon babe...And to see, feel, KNOW the relations you've laid...wrong way to put that, I think...But you, at least, may get it...Thank you for sharing this wonderful write with me... -
outta africa good
sunday nights - mutual of omahas wild kingdom - marlon perkins would be proud. i remember the rhino shit - baboon rape episode like it was yesterday. makes me sentimental for my brothers. despite the gripe - I think its ripe and worth they hype. -
My comment had nothing to do with your poem, only your attitude.
-
Because Baboons and monkeys and humans actually rape one another Maureen. Do you actually believe animals are in love before they ? When a dog smells another dog in heet? Guess what? that female dog doesn't have a lot of time to fall in love before being assaulted now does she? My depictionofthe plains of africa is dead on, and if you disagree? It's only due to your lack of awareness of the planet around you I fear.
Edited on Jan 03, 4:38 p.m. because 'edited by AnnD Moderator to remove profanity'. -
But why? Playing games with people's minds is easy...writing meaningful poems is hard. Do we deserve to have our minds raped by a baboon?
-
Perhaps, that was the humor in why I put it up there. Maybe, I was laughing long before anyone. Perhaps, I wrote this left handed while playing catch with my Weimerweiner? We'll never know. All I know, is that I thought it would be, how would one say, 'funny in the least' just getting people to read all of it , just to scar their minds with a babboon rape lol.
Edited on Dec 26, 6:02 p.m. because ''. -
boring
-
Thanks for entering.
Horus8,
I was thinking of disqualifying this poem or should I say story.
It was a little too long for my liking.
But then I started thinking... you had put a lot of effort into this.
I did not exactly think I would get an entry like this talking about... how should I put it... crap.
I liked how mentioned the animals... it was sad about the cheetah cubs part.
GOOD LUCK and thank you for entering my contest.
Sincerely,
Nelak
Adding your comment:
1 - 33 of 33
4 old applause
