From “Antz”
Thursday
Apocalyptic language seems all the rage in the primaries this year, especially amongst the GOP candidates but with Bernie Sanders as well. If it’s getting you down, here’s a poem by my father to lighten the mood.
True, it’s got its own apocalyptic message regarding the environment and militarism. But it’s told from the view of an “apocalyptic ant” and is heavy on the puns, so there’s a comic element. It appears in An ABC of Radical Ecology (1982, 1990).
How many Biblical references can you identify? The Nativity, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Book of Revelations are heavily represented.
A Is for Apocalyptic Ant
By Scott Bates
who climbed to the
top of the Dome of the
Rock in Jerusalem and
proclaimed himself
the Antichrist
I am the dark beast he cried
my hour has come round at last my
Word has at last found flesh
BIRTH FORMICATION AND DEATH
I am the Alpha and the Omega
proclaimed by the prophets
I was born in Bethlehem of Judea
on Friday the Thirteenth
I was conceived parthenogenetically
by Machshamah
the Great Ant Mother of Nazareth
on the Long Night of the Dark Moon
the sun went down in the west
the workers left their flocks of aphids grazing
the masses traveled to my hill bringing
insects and frangipani and merd
Come to me you sluggards
Come build the Ant Hill of the Millenium
the fifteen signs are nigh
the oceans are beginning to burn
Nation is warring against nation
famine and pestilence are abroad in the land
two billion years of ground work
the ants are ready to rise
Blessed are the ants
for they shall inherit the earth
blessed is pollution
for poisoning the enemy
blessed is DDT
for building our reisistance
blessed is the Bomb
for preparing the way
blessed are the Warmakers
for bestowing the Kingdom of Earth upon us
thrice blessed am I
the Absolute Anticlimax
the Answer and the Antecedent
BIRTH FORMICATION AND DEATH
BIRTH FORMICATION AND DEATH
He spoke and the heavens
opened and a Chromium-plated Helicopter
descended and around about its
many wings shone a multitude
of B-52’s MIG-17’s and F-104”s praising
him in the highest and saying
thrbbrrbgrrbbzrrthrbbhrhgt
and
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
while on earth there
was a great darkness and
the anti-sound of millions
upon millions
of moving
mandibles