on the Local Zoo

I am the hollow man, I am the stuffed man, I am the man with nothing better to do than visit my local zoo and complain about it.     

Lethargic llamas leaning together, quiet and meaningless. Shape without form, shade without color, paralyzed force, gesture without motion. Chewing without eating, bleating without articulating, sleeping a lot. Why do zoos lead with llamas?

Those who grow bored with the llamas cross, with direct eyes, to the monkey house. In this monkey house of dying stars, in this hollow monkey house, a monkey hurls feces at the visitors. A monkey laughs at the broken jaw of a guy who got too close to the chimps. The monkeys grope together and avoid speech. I grope toward the exit and avoid the monkeys.

Let me be no nearer to the African savannah exhibit. This place was billed as “death’s dream kingdom” but it feels more like boredom’s pleasure dome.     Gazelles in a field, behaving as the wind behaves, no nearer, and possibly less interesting.

On to the dead land. On to lion land. The lions sleep a lot. I stare at the lions. Nothing. Come on, lions. Do stuff.
 
I leave the lions, but I haven’t finished this tour. Between the conception and the creation of this manmade terror, between the emotion of boredom and the response of being bored, falls the shadow of the hippo exhibit. Hungry, hungry hippos. This trip to the zoo is very long.

Here I go round the prickly pair of sleeping snakes. Prickly pair prickly pair. Here I go round the prickly pair. Maybe they’ll do something interesting if I come back at five o'clock in the morning.    

This is the zoo you created. Between a need to keep critters in cages, and a need for entertainment, between a ticket booth and a coke machine, between a smelly bail of hay and another smelly bail of hay, the zoo really is one depressing place. This is the Animal Kingdom, packaged for fast consumption.

This is the way my trip to the zoo ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.