THE LONELY STRUGGLE OF THE POLITICIZED ARTEMIA SALINA*
By Dale Dobson
This pool, this salty shrine,
This place from whence all good things come –
This is my home.
Like all of you, I bask and breed
And swim from day to day;
I juggle eggs and food,
Absorb the sunlight when I can,
And rarely take the time to think and brood
Upon that larger world,
This gulf ‘twixt shrimp and man.
But now, at last, I rise to speech and action,
Driven by injustice grave and dark.
For evil doth intrude upon our tranquil pond,
And must no longer pass thus unremarked.
“Sea Monkeys,” humans say, and in so doing,
Ignorance and carelessness display.
This salt pool is no “sea” by any means;
No primate lineage informs our genes;
‘Tis slavery and bondage, cloaked in play!
Are we to idly paddle by and laugh,
While yet our precious nauplii are hatched
Into the tanks of strangers cold?
As schoolboy’s entertainment bought and sold?
To bony-toothed ichthyoids a midnight snack?
If we allow this exploitation still,
Invertebrates we are in name and will!
Branchiopoda sullied by this shame –
Inaction undeserving of the name!
My sisters!
Let us swim en masse as one!
The flaming carapace of justice be our sun!
And death by anaerobia
Drought
Or toilet flushed
Not death at all; cryptobiosis true,
Our secret weapon, lets us rise anew!
Hello? Hello?
Will any honest sister here tonight
Help mount this battle? Join this sturm und drang?
Is this thing on?
Will anybody brave this fight?
Where have you gone?
Well, dang.
* as in Sea Monkey
By Dale Dobson
This pool, this salty shrine,
This place from whence all good things come –
This is my home.
Like all of you, I bask and breed
And swim from day to day;
I juggle eggs and food,
Absorb the sunlight when I can,And rarely take the time to think and brood
Upon that larger world,
This gulf ‘twixt shrimp and man.
But now, at last, I rise to speech and action,
Driven by injustice grave and dark.
For evil doth intrude upon our tranquil pond,
And must no longer pass thus unremarked.
“Sea Monkeys,” humans say, and in so doing,
Ignorance and carelessness display.
This salt pool is no “sea” by any means;
No primate lineage informs our genes;
‘Tis slavery and bondage, cloaked in play!
Are we to idly paddle by and laugh,
While yet our precious nauplii are hatched
Into the tanks of strangers cold?
As schoolboy’s entertainment bought and sold?
To bony-toothed ichthyoids a midnight snack?
If we allow this exploitation still,
Invertebrates we are in name and will!
Branchiopoda sullied by this shame –
Inaction undeserving of the name!My sisters!
Let us swim en masse as one!
The flaming carapace of justice be our sun!
And death by anaerobia
Drought
Or toilet flushed
Not death at all; cryptobiosis true,
Our secret weapon, lets us rise anew!
Hello? Hello?
Will any honest sister here tonight
Help mount this battle? Join this sturm und drang?
Is this thing on?
Will anybody brave this fight?
Where have you gone?
Well, dang.
* as in Sea Monkey
Dale Dobson writes, animates and acts in the metropolitan Detroit area, and occasionally gets around to updating http://www.daledobson.com. His work has recently appeared online at Yankee Pot Roast, Opium, National Lampoon, and in The Wittenburg Door.
2 comments:
Hey, Keith!
Thanks for the read, and the mention!
I'm a Sea Monkey geek myself from way back, having read the old Transamerica instruction manual cover to cover several times over as a child. I've raised several batches over the years since.
You (and your readers) might want to track down issue #2 of the revived CRACKED magazine circa October 2006. The editors allowed me to sneak my 70's "Crotch Monkeys" comic-book ad parody into full-color, indelible print.
Cool. Thanks Dale.
I'll try to find that issue.
I'm also trying to hunt down issue one of Futurama, featuring monstrous, mutant Sea Monkeys.
Cracked is alright, but I'm more of a MAD Magazine guy myself, not that MAD's worth much these days, a mere shadow of it's former self.
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