Dear Emma and the rest of the Sumatran orangutans of Chester zoo

To you, today was just routine. To you, in your bubble of a world, just another friendly face came to talk to you again. To me, this visit was bittersweet, in fact I would say 80% bitter. In seeing you, in meeting your gaze the guilt and shame ripped through me like like a tiger's claws. Ah yes, the tiger, 7 years have past since they had disappeared. People have all but forgotten already, there were plenty of tigers safely locked away right?
You probably don't know this and I doubt that you can read this, but I write this letter to you anyway, do what you want with the letter. Look at the photograph I have included of your Asian relatives that I took during my travels nearly 20 years ago. Or you could discard it, tear it, eat it I don't care as long as you receive this. For nearly 2 centuries your people have been captured and killed and we destroy everything you know. Our growing population pressurised us, we strove for urbanisation, painting a thin venire of chrome. Our colour of comfort, but we made it worse for ourselves as our most important livelihoods were replaced by dust villages and starvation. You were not immune to our pillage I'm afraid, from that first time Charles Darwin met Jenny our blessing became your curse. 3 weeks ago the last of your Asian brethren died. We saw your demise coming, some of us tried our hardest to halt or postpone it, setting up rescue stations and reserves. But the mindless machine wirred on, it wasn't until the last 90 miles of forest remained that the Indonesian bigwigs realised what they had done. In a blind panic they planted new tree seedlings, maybe somehow in the hopes that more bears, frogs, birds and orangutans would materialise from the roots? It was already too late but perseverance drove them to try everything. Everything. Nyaru Menteng offloaded their remaining 8 charges to Western facilities where artificial habitats had been created. The rest of them watched over and monitored the remaining native population, sending out vets and human doctors to keep them alive at all costs. I watched every second of it, followed the blogs and the news. It hurt so much I didn't think I could follow anymore, grief stricken with each "progression" but I was compelled to carry on. And finally, there was one.
A male, Gregory. He never grew his cheek flanges because he had no competition. No drive to find a mate. He knew as much as we did that he was alone. No one knew why they kept him there, all knowledge of reproductive biology was forgotten and replaced with superstitious magic. We kept him there, stayed by his side, fed him and doctored him until finally at the age of 39 he died of a heart attack. The news was like a punch in the guts for all of us. It was announced as breaking news all over the world, pongo pygmeus and pongo abeli officially extinct in the wild. A minority mentioned that many captive orangs still remained in zoos and sanctuaries and that we should not be so sad. But they were quickly shushed like an outspoken attendee of a funeral. Those remaining would not last forever either once inbreeding became too rife, plus, their artificial living arrangements meant these fat, shut in orangutans would live a second rate life, plagued by the same mental ailments that the rest of us urbanites suffer. They would never know the joy, fulfilment, danger, even, of the wild. And these zoo populations were like ghosts or holograms of what used to remain. 
I was afraid for the last 3 months to visit you again, incase you knew and you would turn your head away from me in disapproval. Your disgusted expression would render me speechless. But logic told me this would not happen and I had finally plucked up the courage to see you again. As always you brachiated towards the window and pressed your face against it while I talked to you and pretended to stroke your hair. You were oblivious and ignorant, I envied you. I cried and you wondered why, other humans understood and some looked forlorn themselves. I could see you and your granddaughter looking in concern at our apparent sadness. I tried to look brave for you, I played with your granddaughter as normal. 
Though I had no direct influence over your demise I feel just as remorseful as the loggers did, I was careless in my choices. Living such a sheltered city life and not realising until my second decade the true dangers facing you. I chose too late to be mindful of my grocery shopping, avoided palm oil, never watched films with trained animals in. My few actions made no difference, until very recent years I was still the minority. Don't mistake me for someone self pitying, I don't want you to think I was thinking only of my own feelings and being a martyr. If anything self loathing, I've always been a misanthropist but as of late I've abandoned my species altogether. Apart from my immediate family of course. You were not the only ones that went, Asian elephants too disappeared around the same time. Mackaws of South America have almost completely been depleted. The once hopeful 200,000 chimpanzees whittled down to the last 5000. Bonobos gone already from the wild since the last 100 were taken to sanctuaries and zoos to "rebuild the population" but there were very little captive bonobos to begin in. Gorillas: 1000 (only mountain gorillas are left, ironic isn't it? We focused so much on that one race we neglected the rest). African elephants: 4. Giraffes: 100. The list goes on. And we too, **** sapiens, the most numerous of large mammals are feeling the pinch. It started with Japan over 20 years ago, people retreated more and more into the office, no longer caring to build families and the population declined. The rest followed suite, bursting at the seems we could no longer steal more land for ourselves, more destruction meant less air to breath, less food. People have started to fight their reproductive urges, like the Japanese, retreating into a single life in a cubicle. Sitting by the screen. We are committing a species wide, slow suicide. I consider this a blessing, the rest of nature can finally get even. Some are scared and upset, others relieved. The divide is equal.
I have come to visit you every 3 weeks since I was 21, I am 40 now and in that seemingly short space of time I have seen the world change dramatically while you sit and climb and think your own isolated thoughts in your little bubble. 
Please accept my sincerest apologies. No matter if you read this or not. I am so so so sorry. On behalf of myself, on behalf of my species. Please forgive us.
Yours Sincerely,
Sophie

Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So Jim, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul armed to the teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives staying alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on a horse with no name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from 1967 to 2016 and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam

A pretty blonde researcher
was observing, from a “blind”,
some Silverback Gorillas-
among the final of their kind.

The senior of the silverbacks,
his back turned towards the” blind”,
was communicating with his troop
with gestures much like sign.

“She who is observing us
is a member of that tribe
who fell from grace with Heaven
and was banished far and wide.”

“They were banished from this Eden,
and confounded in their speech.
They then made war upon each other
and have never once known peace”

“Observe, in them, their arrogance,
they think themselves evolved,
Yet they are apes that practice war
and ****** their own kind”

“A gorilla child knows not but love
and tenderness in kind.
Where there is many a human child
left neglected on the vine.”

From elsewhere in the Jungle came
the shouts of evil men.
Poachers of the coarsest sort
with Silverbacks in mind.

“Disperse my sons and daughters.
It’s time to flee and hide
from those who seek our hides and meat
to sanctuary, hie.”

The silverback then beat his chest
and, to buy the others time,
charged against those evil men
and, for his children, died.

Time passed before the searchers
came upon the blind
where the murdered Dian Fossey lay
where the Silverback had died.

Poachers want no witnesses
to their  theft of meat and hide
They left with her the severed hands
of one not kin but kind.

At four, you took my hand and pulled me to your bed,                                                            
your small form cuddling, curling, you urgently said,
"Tell me… tell me a story! Story, make it long",
I began to tell the story, the story of when you were born.

Drums and bugles, bubbles and balloons,
somersaulting clowns and calliope tunes,
you came out to meet them, on the day that you were born,
and they were there to greet you, through a January storm.

Lions and gorillas marched to military airs,
snowmen and snowwomen danced without a spring time care,
somewhere in the harbor, a tugboat played a note,
and all the while you smiled a smile, upon a birthday float.

Just like a circus troupe, we formed a great parade,
and sauntered to the birthing bed where your mother lay,
she picked you up, she held you, as close as close can be,
her hand in mine, she softly said, “Now... we are three.”

Copyright © 2003 Gary Brocks

Between me and you, the day the Monkeys went wild in the Zoo,
was the best day I can remember, let me recall what I saw, at the Zoo on my birthday when I had just turned Two.

My Mum and Dad had taken me for the day, I sat in my pram with the perfect view, for a small person who had just turned Two.

Then came a loud high pitch shriek, from the cage that the three striped Night Monkey lived within.

The Zoo went very quiet, as my Mum would say, you could hear someone drop a pin.

The three striped Night Monkey would sleep all day, come out at night, woke up with a sudden fright.

He began to shriek and began to call, then he rolled over and bashed the cage, he was suddenly in a terrible rage.

His shriek woke up others too, that would normally sleep by day, a Bat-eared Fox, Bandicoot and Badger all woke up about the same time as each other.

The Monkeys in the next cage in sympathy with their kind picked up their food dishes and banged their bars, they weren’t going to be left behind.

I started to laugh at the Monkeys in the Zoo, it all seemed very funny to a small person who was only just Two.

From what I remember of that day the Gorillas chimed in next, they picked the fruit up off the floor and started throwing it at people stood by their door.

The Gorillas too banged their chest and let out a loud roar, as if to say, three striped Night Monkey it’s okay, we’ve got you today.

I ducked my head as a banana flew by and nearly caught my Dad in the eye, he didn’t think it was quite as funny as I, I spat out my dummy and began to shout, “come on Monkeys what’s it all about”.

The Orangutan woke from his very deep sleep, in the middle of the day, he was older than the rest and liked a nap from time to time, to keep sprightly and sound of mind.

He rose up from the floor, standing seven-foot-tall, made his chest twenty feet wide, banged with his very huge paws and shouted with a very loud roarrrrrr
“alright everyone what’s the fuss, why have I been woken up from my mid-day nap, what’s the problem, what’s the mishap?”

The Gorilla turned to the Chimpanzee, shrugged his shoulder as if to say, “any idea what’s happening today?”

The Chimpanzee had no reply, turned to the Bandicoot, Badger and Bat-eared Fox, as if to say “I haven’t got a clue what’s happened here, what about you the Fox with Bat-Ears?”

The Badger, Bandicoot and Bat-eared Foxed all turned to the three striped Night Monkey and said, “what’s up Night Monkey, why the rage, why did you start bashing your cage?”

“mmmm,” said the Night Monkey slightly embarrassed, “it’s not like I was being harassed, it’s just I don’t like spiders and one was hanging from the ceiling, I woke up with a dreadful feeling, that it was going to fall – that’s why I started to call”

I began to laugh even more “fancy a Monkey being scared of a spider, I’m much younger and I’m not scared of a tiny creature”.

My Mum and Dad saw the funny side too and began to laugh at the antics of the Monkeys in the Zoo.

The Orangutan was feeling happier he could now go back to his nap and the three striped Night Monkey he did say, “he would try to be more considerate of smaller creatures, as long as they didn’t try to nest in his handsome features”.

The Zoo began to return to normal and people went on their way.
I will always treasure, and it will always remain, the best day ever, the day the Monkeys went wild in the Zoo.

Where you going?
What d’ya see?
A hundred thousand polka dots
A comin’ after me
Polka dots and tater tots
And french fried onion skins
A priest in a confession booth
Forgivin’ all our sins
Two or three gorillas
And an elephant in the room
Someone tell the maitre’ d
He’d best be leavin’ soon
Cuz the waiter and the waitress
Have figured out the plot
And if he hangs around much longer
He’s liable to be shot
By a psychopathic mushroom
Or a ******* pizza pie
While the rabid rocket scientist
Wonders how he got that high
The ******* with bedroom eyes
Looks the other way, and
The specialist in pantomime
Does not know what to say.
A hundred thousand looks at love
Not a single one survives
Yet, with regret and toil and sweat
We go on with our lives.
pwl 5/20/15

Chimpanzees:
They’ve sparked our curiosity throughout the ages
Their familiarity became a curse
Prodded in the lab or displayed at the circus
The chimp is loud, boisterous, uninhibited
Known for his violence, infamous for warfare
But that’s only a fraction,
There is much love, caring and empathy in their interactions

Bonobos:
Spritely, funky and playful
These cute little apes look a lot like people
They are a trifle weird and ever so kooky
The lady is alpha, she forms alliances with ******* girl action
Dubbed hippies of the jungle, conflict is solved with a cheeky snuggle
But they’d rather not be typecast, if you mess with the bonobo
She’ll kick your ***!

Orangutans:
The thinker of the rainforest
Remembers more plants than a botanist
Don’t be fooled by her slow moving nature
Keep in mind she’s always watching, she’s a precise imitator
Patience is her virtue, planning her forte
They’re the zoo-mates most likely to escape
When they’re not being industrious
Their orangutan antics are quite hilarious!

Gorillas:
Undeserving of their movie monster status
The gorilla is a kindly, sensitive fellow
Shyly hides in his bushy terrain
Watching over his wives and children
He’s a protective father with an impressive physique
Built only on leaves! The gorilla has nimble fingers
And a nimble mind, not quite the brute we’ve been taught to despise
Though this has changed in recent years
This beef cake with a heart, we now hold dear

Humans:**
Weak and smooth with a layer of fat
His blunt canines give a poultry bite
His skull is round like an overgrown child
He forges his strength from the blazing campfire
He dresses in cloth and goes to work
The office quenches his ancient hunter’s thirst
Yet he knows not how to use his particular gift
He rapes and pillages the earth that birthed him

[Verse 1: GREEKDAGOD]
You rocking with killers
Rocking with the realist
Rolling around gorillas
So how you going to get us
Yeah they call me greek
Yeah they call me greek
Riding around with hottest
I don't own no jeeps
Catch me up in that c05
Catch me up in that ride
Bad ***** on my side
Yall ****** wonder why
Man i rolling, man im rolling
Money man, im throwing
Dont catch me up in that stop
Yall ****** better know im on it
It don't need no intro
Make shawty go get low
Been real since 89
That shawty already know so
Started from the bottom
Now catch me up on that spot
Riding around with drizzy
We buying out those lots

[Hook: Drake]
Got everything, I got everything
I cannot complain, I cannot
I don't even know how much I really made, I forgot, it's a lot
**** that, never mind what I got, ***** don't watch that cause I
Came up, that's all me, stay true, that's all me
No help, that's all me, all me for real
Came up, that's all me, stay true, that's all me
No help, that's all me, all me for real

[Verse 1: 2 Chainz]
Money on my mind, you should think the same
J's on, pinky ring
******* these hoes, I need quarantine
In the same league, but we don't ball the same
(Ah) She want all the fame, I hear that **** all the time
She said she love me, I said, "Baby girl, fall in line"
Okay, made a million, off of denim, ****, watch me switch it up
Walked in, "Ill ***** alert! Ill ***** alert!"
You need that work, I got that work, got ******* in my condo
Just bought a shirt that cost a Mercedes-Benz car note
From the A to Toronto, we let the metal go off
And my **** so hard it make the metal detector go off
This that sauce, this that dressing, Givenchy, ***** God bless you
If having a bad ***** was a crime, I'd be arrested (True)

[Hook]

[Verse 2: Drake]
I touched down in '86
Knew I was a man by the age of 6
I even ****** the girl that used to babysit
But that was years later on some crazy ****
I heard your new ****, ***** hated it
Damon Wayans, homie don't play that ****
I get paid a lot, you get paid a bit
And my latest **** is like a greatest hits
*******, ain't no wishing over on this side
Y'all don't **** with us, then we don't **** with y'all
It's no different over on this side
*******, should I listen to everybody or myself?
Cause myself just told myself
"You're the ******* man, you don't need no help"
Cashing checks and I’m bigging up my chest
Y'all keep talking ‘bout who next
But I’m about as big as it gets
I swear y'all just wasting y'all breath
I’m the light skinned Keith Sweat
I'mma make it last forever
It’s not your turn ‘cause I ain't done yet
Look, just understand that I’m on a roll like Cottonelle
I was made for all of this ****
And I’m on the road box office sales
I’m getting paid for all of this ****
Ask you to please excuse my table manners
I was making room for the table dancers
‘Cause if we judging off your advances
I just got paid like eight advances
*******!

[Hook]

[Verse 3: Big Sean]
**, shut the **** up!
I got way too much on my mental, I learn from what I've been through
I'm finna do what I didn't do and still waking up like the rent's due
Not complicated, it's simple, I got **** ladies, a whole Benz-full
And to them hoes I'm everything -- everything but gentle
But I still take my time, man, I guess I'm just old fashioned
Wearing retro ****, that's old fashioned
*****, see what I'm saying, no closed caption
I paint pics, see the ****, good ***, need to hit
Keep a broad on the floor year 'round like season tickets
I plead the fifth, drink a fifth
Load the nine, leave you split, in the half, smoke a half, need a zip
My new girl is on Glee and ****, probably making more money than me and ****
I swear to God I got 99 problems but a ***** ain't one
I got 99 problems, getting rich ain't one
Like I got trust issues, I'm sorry for the people I've pushed out
I'm the type to have a bullet-proof ****** and still gotta pull out
But that's just me, and I ain't perfect, I ain't a saint but I am worth it
If it's one thing, I am worth it, ****** still hating but it ain't working
Lil' *****...

[Verse 4: Drake]
Oh me, oh me, oh my
I think I done ****** too many women from the 305
Before the end of this year, I'll do King of Diamonds three more times
Smoking on that kush all in our section like it's legalized
Girl, you can't always have your way, sometimes it be like that
They dont really **** with you like that, they ain't never did me like that
I just took my time, you got your shine, I let you eat like that
I've been taught to never loan somebody what you need right back
And I need that **** right back? (no more free Randy)
I’m blessed than a *******
****** been stressed than a *******
****** getting nervous, clutching they chests like a *******
**** that’s a *******
Tell the truth, I don’t listen to you
‘Cause I don’t like being lied to
And that ship won’t sail
And that wind won’t guide you
Daddy was in jail we was talking through the window like a ******* drive-thru
That was back then man, now my ****** rich enough to do whatever I do

This past year was a ******
Looking back, it kinda makes me wonder
How it came and went and **** near took everyone under
Its crazy out here and even though it was tough
I'ma run it back, this is 2016 Rap Up

Denver won the Super Bowl, Cam came up short
Leo got his Oscar and El Chapo got caught
They got mosquitoes with the Zika, so don't get bit
Peyton and Kobe Bryant both called it quits
I gotta admit, Fam, I get mad as ****
When I swipe my card and they say "No, You gotta use your chip"
**** Daniel, "Hamilton" was lit
Who let Kanye West get 53 million in debt?
And Rihanna went to work without taking a pause
ISIS popping and y'all worried about bathroom laws?!?
Come on, fam
How that sound?
So we out here standing up
Just so y'all can sit down?
Warriors went on a streak and then they got served
Panda was a hit and we couldn't understand the words
Huh, and Khaled kept snapping
These youngins keep mumbling
I guess y'all call that rapping
I've seen "Stranger Things", come on dude
Y'all out here shooting gorillas and punching kangaroos
Janet Jackson pregnant at 50, dog
So for you ol' broads, there might be some hope for y'all
I ain't throwing shade, it ain't that deep
**** I don't want nobody out here ******* with me in these streets
Then Birdman ran up on Charlamagne
And Lil' Wayne still not 'puttin' respect on his name'
Michael left Kelly trying to get paid
But the world stopped when Beyonce dropped Lemonade
She slayed, and over-shared
And ya'll still trying to find out about 'Becky with the good hair.'
As far as questions, I got one
"Hey Hov and B, is y'all finished or is y'all done?"
Son, I don't know if it was fake
I know KD did the running man challenge all the way to Golden State
The whole year made no sense
Dog, we live in a world without Muhammad Ali and no Prince
Then Gucci came home
And he looked so different y'all was like, "naw, that's got to be a clone"
Y'all was glued to y'all phones
And LeBron got it done for the Cavs and brought the chip back home
Snapchatting all over the place
I swear to God, if I see one more girl with a dog on her face
It was a sad year for sure
Instead of being woke though
Y'all wanted to play Pokemon Go!
And rap got weird, should we be concerned?
Young **** in a dress, Yung Joc got a perm
And everybody was in the Presidential race
Ryan Lochte, Oh he gets the Michael Phelps' face
Game and Meek beefing, Hillary and Trump
Kap took a knee, T.I., Brad Pitt got dumped
And Trump said he going to build a wall on the border
Ya'll will probably go to flip bottles water
The snow storm had the East underground
The kept shooting black men but wouldn't shoot killer clowns
They kept telling us to use our voices
Knowing **** well they ain't really give us no choices
Get an iPhone with no headphone cord
Or get a Galaxy and go and meet the Lord
See they go low, and we go high
You only got two friends. Why you trying to go Live?
I'ma miss the Obamas, I don't wanna see them go
My prayers to everyone that we lost in Orlando
The Oscars were so white they had to get Chris Rock
And the album of the year had to be Anderson.Paak
Cubs finally Won, Usain was on fire
Melania Trump hired the wrong ghostwriter
I'm petty with the manners
'Cuz I think Kim K. got robbed by Joanne the Scammer
Ooouuu
Biters keep testin' me
They making rappers, but they ain't got the recipe
Huh, Yeah that's facts
Shout to Young M.A. for bringing New York back
And I hear y'all talking about "Kanye is fine"
Well to us it look like Kanye done lost his mind
Cowboys kept ballin', them boys in the zone
Bryson Tiller came along, kept telling us "Don't"
I'm highly favored
I clap back on my haters
I be the beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes
The mannequin challenge, oh, that's how y'all feel?
The World moving dog, we can't just stand still
Beyonce made sure y'all got in formation
One time for Phife Dawg from the Zulu Nation
Did Drake bag J.Lo? I say kinda
But y'all was all up in arms over Rob and Chyna
And that's a new level of female pimping
Biggest L of the year goes to Hillary Clinton
You ask me, man, I thought she had it made
You ask me now, ****, I think we all got played
Another sign of the times
And now the whole World laughing at us, sounding like ChewbaccaMom
2016 was a bully and a punk
On top of that, now we gotta deal with Donald Trump?
Pardon me, as I vent
Bro, we made a reality star the President
And that just makes me sick
Talking about, "We gotta give him a chance." Naw
I ain't got to give him ****
It's going to be hard to cope
Because you can't have progress, dog, if you don't have hope
More pros, less rookies
And if America's ours, how we let it get grabbed by the *****?
They say I sound mad, off the cuff
Oh, I sound mad? Y'all don't sound mad enough
So from here on out, we gotta set the tone
Y'all protect yourself and protect your own
And way too many people got called back home
2016 you can go, and I'm glad you're gone
Felt like a long bad dream
I'm wishing you love and life, Welcome to 2017.

Skillz 12/31/2016.