You will know what jungle means
Peering cautious around shadows and under every curiosity for any mystery held tight-lipped like a monstrous cackle
A shaman behind each door and climbing out of every tree-bark head
Wild feathers gathered around trunk-necks
You will know what jungle can change in hairpin instants
Teeth in your shoes; teeth inside your shirt-seams, sucking horribly as they gnaw
Baby-mouths quenching terrible appetites and injecting unknown sera
Gulping down their kings-feasts in unashamed slurps
You will feel what jungle feels
Its arms clutching tightly at the villages it loves, then - too tight
Tearing holes - its grip leaving blood-trails and sticky markers of its passion
Furious! Like a lover left in darkness
You will hear when jungle stirs
Raising itself on tiny stick-legs that click and stretch impossibly thin
Chattering in Babel tongues and waving slathered mandibles
You will turn suddenly at the sound -
Half-waking
Half-staring
Wide-eyed as its dizzying limbs tear into your belt
Scattering you prone onto your mattress, panting with distrust and scrambling at sheets
You will curl into jungle's bed
Grateful for its gentle snoring
Rivers tucking you softly in and folding down careful corners
Orchestras of insects in adagio
Sweet fruits dripping midnight sugars into your open lips
You will submit to jungle's power
It will seize you in muscles of durian-stench
It will throw you to the floor to writhe in dirt and sunburnt scratching
You will cough, wracked by spider-bite fevers and paranoid terror of
the canopy
the underbelly
the sheer, unapologetic mass of life
You will learn jungle's guilty secret
Its delicately tended gardens laid in tidy rows
Flowers floating like soap bubbles in the sun-kissed breeze
Colors splashing like children in the wading pool
Nectar streaming out of waterfalls in steaming ringlets
You will study jungle's wisdom
Taking careful measure of ants weaving in-step
Lecturing with all the sharpness of milligram brains
Beards and spectacles dripping from the foliage like mango fruits
As impatient professors work their way diligently through your bowels
You will know what jungle means
It will not compromise to your comfort
You will know when jungle arrives
It will provide no schedules
You will know how jungle moves
It will cull your stumble with vicious pleasure
You will know the jungle
You will be the jungle
You will know what jungle means
Peering cautious around shadows and under every curiosity for any mystery held tight-lipped like a monstrous cackle
A shaman behind each door and climbing out of every tree-bark head
Wild feathers gathered around trunk-necks
You will know what jungle can change in hairpin instants
Teeth in your shoes; teeth inside your shirt-seams, sucking horribly as they gnaw
Baby-mouths quenching terrible appetites and injecting unknown sera
Gulping down their kings-feasts in unashamed slurps
You will feel what jungle feels
Its arms clutching tightly at the villages it loves, then - too tight
Tearing holes - its grip leaving blood-trails and sticky markers of its passion
Furious! Like a lover left in darkness
You will hear when jungle stirs
Raising itself on tiny stick-legs that click and stretch impossibly thin
Chattering in Babel tongues and waving slathered mandibles
You will turn suddenly at the sound -
Half-waking
Half-staring
Wide-eyed as its dizzying limbs tear into your belt
Scattering you prone onto your mattress, panting with distrust and scrambling at sheets
You will curl into jungle's bed
Grateful for its gentle snoring
Rivers tucking you softly in and folding down careful corners
Orchestras of insects in adagio
Sweet fruits dripping midnight sugars into your open lips
You will submit to jungle's power
It will seize you in muscles of durian-stench
It will throw you to the floor to writhe in dirt and sunburnt scratching
You will cough, wracked by spider-bite fevers and paranoid terror of
the canopy
the underbelly
the sheer, unapologetic mass of life
You will learn jungle's guilty secret
Its delicately tended gardens laid in tidy rows
Flowers floating like soap bubbles in the sun-kissed breeze
Colors splashing like children in the wading pool
Nectar streaming out of waterfalls in steaming ringlets
You will study jungle's wisdom
Taking careful measure of ants weaving in-step
Lecturing with all the sharpness of milligram brains
Beards and spectacles dripping from the foliage like mango fruits
As impatient professors work their way diligently through your bowels
You will know what jungle means
It will not compromise to your comfort
You will know when jungle arrives
It will provide no schedules
You will know how jungle moves
It will cull your stumble with vicious pleasure
You will know the jungle
You will be the jungle
You will know what jungle means
I had the good fortune of taking a ten-day trip to Java as a solo traveler in between gigs in Korea. The island is swarming with people - one of Earth's densest points of human population - and yet on the third day of my trip I found myself in a kampung (village) outside of Bogor, a commuter suburb of the sprawling Big Durian, Jakarta. My balcony overlooked a raging river framed by trees disappearing into a towering mountain and the hum of the water was all-consuming. The constant white noise gave my inner Eliot time to flourish and I wrote this poem overlooking the rapids.
That very morning I'd gone for a swim alone in the complex's pool to be confronted by the largest spider I'd ever seen or would care to see again. Significantly larger than my hand, it slept quietly on a web halfway between floor and ceiling of the mushalla, the room used (in this case, theoretically) by Muslim staff and guests for daily prayers. I splashed half-heartedly through the pool thinking of little else but that enormous, dangling beast.
Shortly after beginning my swim alone in the pool, I was joined by the only other residents of the aging tourist complex that I would see over the course of my stay: five giggling transgendered Filipino women who immediately began whooping and cavorting through the waves, throwing large handfuls of poolwater at each other. I was struck by the juxtaposition of the moment, at once both amused by the carefree abandon of my fellow guests and also keenly aware of the terrible mindless predator lurking nearby and sure to wake.
I returned to my room dripping over the cobbled pathways and nearly tripped over a croaking bullfrog that had taken a rest by the door of my room. I had never been in a place so erupting with life, and I felt in that moment I had learned the meaning of the word 'jungle.'
That very morning I'd gone for a swim alone in the complex's pool to be confronted by the largest spider I'd ever seen or would care to see again. Significantly larger than my hand, it slept quietly on a web halfway between floor and ceiling of the mushalla, the room used (in this case, theoretically) by Muslim staff and guests for daily prayers. I splashed half-heartedly through the pool thinking of little else but that enormous, dangling beast.
Shortly after beginning my swim alone in the pool, I was joined by the only other residents of the aging tourist complex that I would see over the course of my stay: five giggling transgendered Filipino women who immediately began whooping and cavorting through the waves, throwing large handfuls of poolwater at each other. I was struck by the juxtaposition of the moment, at once both amused by the carefree abandon of my fellow guests and also keenly aware of the terrible mindless predator lurking nearby and sure to wake.
I returned to my room dripping over the cobbled pathways and nearly tripped over a croaking bullfrog that had taken a rest by the door of my room. I had never been in a place so erupting with life, and I felt in that moment I had learned the meaning of the word 'jungle.'
