Dart-Throwing Monkeys

These explanations simply will not do.
Gods and politics generate pundits
In every watering hole from Tokyo
Down to the Sumerian underworld,

All of us Joe Six-Packs accurate
As any projectile-flinging primate
Who isn't one of us, the descendants
Of death from a distance (another tale

For another poem, from another time
That won't happen and keep not happening
Over and over again forever,
The way all not-times keep not happening).

The bar maid earns her keep by keeping
Silent except to jolly drinkers up
A bit whenever our attention flags
And we cry or hit each other instead

Of merely carrying on quarreling.
She knows that it's the argument itself
That's more or less immortal, not her, not
Us, busy drinking, loudly complaining.

The argument belongs to a genre
Honed to regenerate itself wholly
In the transiently reverberating
Harangues of boastful, irrelevant apes.