poem. I will now analyze it for you. Initially we are just struck by the power of the word; it is brutally efficient — so much is said by the sound alone. The word ‘pox’ is a physical shock — the ‘p’ is plosive and the ‘x’ has makes a lovely 'hiss.' The word ‘monkey’ isn't bad either (that harsh ‘k)’. There is lots of harshness in this word. It startles and pleases in just the right manner. More significantly, the word ‘monkeypox' is redolent with associations, one can almost smell it. We have the photos of course — those gorgeous terrifying images of skin that should be lovely and smooth — blanketed with postules! What could be more horrifying? One is immediately rendered not only physically uncomfortable but ugly -- untouchable. And it is that ‘untouchableness’ that is key. The most evident and pronounced resonance surrounding the word ‘monkeypox’ comes in the first part — ‘monkey.’ This is obviously a racist word -- rich — nay abundant — with associations. When Obama became president I received a ton of racist emails from someone I barely knew. What ever-ending invention there was -- of both a digital, and a lexical variety! I certainly didn't know there were so many different ways to imagine Barak Obama as a monkey! Yes, of course, he has big ears — we can imagine the oversized teeth, the fur, all the rest — and for these racists such images are deeply hilarious. If black people are monkeys, they are of course stupid and probably sexually voracious (don’t monkeys masturbate all the time? ) and they have no shame. And because of the 'monkey' part of the word, we know it is a ‘black’ illness — i.e. that it comes from Africa -- and that it is most likely spread by Africans. A welcome echo is the idea that AIDS originated in Africa, where men and women undoubtedly have sex with monkeys. Thus monkeypox is not only a black disease, but a gay one too. Of course we know this from AIDS - the first victims of AIDs were — bisexuals, Haitians and drug users — the very bottom of the barrel; basically human excrement. So of course we aren’t at all surprised to see that the first cases of monkeypox in Canada occurred in a gay bar on Church Street — Woody’s — and in a gay bathhouse in Montreal —G I Joe’s. (Do they still have bathhouses for gay men? Oh yes yes yes! Through their diabolical sexual practices gay men continue to inflict their gross illnesses upon the rest of the world!) Racists and homophobes know that gay men eat excrement and are in their own way, a kind of excrement, so all of this is no surprise. Then there is the final, and probably most important aspect of the word 'monkeypox' -- it is transmitted through contact with animals. Not so co-incidentally, we have recently come to understand that we have cruelly raped our planet; our technological selfishness has hastened the demise of Dear Mother Earth with a frankly suicidal ferocity. And we are paying for it - in a manner that not even Alfred Hitchcock imagined in The Birds. We will all die with the image of Greta Thurnberg stamped on our psyches! How tragic! It took in innocent child to speak the truth! We are descending to a kind of hell — we have abused Mother Nature for too long and now she is having her way with us, and there is nothing any of us can do. All of this exists in a beautiful tragic word/poem called ‘monkeypox.’ What is alarming to me — and no one else apparently — is that as we gradually remove literary analysis from school curriculums (along with ‘close reading’) and substitute for it math and science, we render ourselves epistemologically impotent. There was a time when the primary subject of all study was rhetoric -- i.e. the theory that the world can be read as a poem, created by God. You see, the world is ultimately unknowable -- at least in a 'rational' 'fully conscious' way. But we can -- by experiencing beauty, by allowing it to have its way with us (as we might do with that gorgeous, terrifying word/poem ‘monkeypox') -- well, we might come to better understand what actually is. However, it's terribly important to remember that the concept of rhetoric does not mean simply enjoying beauty but -- from the time of Gorgias — rhetoric reveals to us that all language is deception; and that words create our reality. Yes, even scientific theories are poems, and the only way to live in this world with any sort of clarity at all is to be acutely aware, from moment to moment, of the techniques of manipulation utilized by master poets, philosophers and scientists to sway us to their various points of view. But sadly, this particular skill set is now lost to us; we know nothing of rhetoric, and even pretend we don't like poetry (i.e. in books). But alas, though we pledge allegiance to the 'truth' we are aesthetically flawed and fatally addicted to mists, miasma, and metaphor! Our tragedy is not ‘monkeypox’ -- it is that we have forgotten that we are dreaming -- and there is no one left to wake us up.
