Guggenheim Love

Well my girlfriend and I went to the zoo

On a Sunday afternoon

We hadn't been there since we were seven or eight

She had her notebook and pen, she was all set

To work on her masters project

On the dating routines of the higher primates

She was studying how the monkeys lived

From an arch-feminist perspective

I was the king of the jungle in my mind

One theory was that anything with muscles that big

Had to be a sexist pig

You know gorillas aren't pigs, they still can be swine

Gorilla gorilla, my girlfriend explained condescendingly

Gorilla gorilla, this was their genus and their species

Gorilla gorilla, yes that is their name

But I was thinking, Gorilla gorilla, me Tarzan you Jane

She was writing this neat information down

I was beating my chest making OO OO sounds

Hanging upside down off the gibbon exhibit

She dropped her notebook and put her pen behind her ear

And said in a voice all the monkeys could hear

"Young man, you get down from that cage this minute!"

I was feeding my shoe to a marmoset

And my girlfriend got real upset

She said "I've only one thing to say to you."

Paraphrasing two of her books which still sit on my shelves

Origin of Species and Our Bodies, Ourselves

She said, "I guess that it's true, monkey see, monkey do."

"Gorilla gorilla," she said as she walked out the room

"Gorilla gorilla, you're not a mandrill or a big baboon you're a

Gorilla gorilla" That's not my name

But she called me Gorilla gorilla just the same

She called me Gorilla gorilla but then she changed her mind

"Cause I've never seen a gorilla who smoked or drank or lied

I thought you were a gorilla, but that isn't true

Cause I've never seen a gorilla as ugly as you"