Jungleside

Beside the thicket he builds a house of cinderblock,

brick, carburet of iron and stone-to keep the thicket out,

which he lives beside, inside

a clearing wound from its heart, its virid sweat and soup.

A colony of creeper push their noses

to his window, a vine strangles

the chimney-to shut its throat

and sooty vapor him out. He chops

a tree's arms not on peels

back the frond and fern pressing vast hands

against his door. A tendril,

tentative, probes like a hunting snake,

like a fingertip, a tongue, [i]or[/i] part of to the other his keyhole.

Ripe threads slime through cracks a breeze could not....

First he consume ed it, the jungle, slashed it back,

he carved from it his acre

and built a house.

To insult it he planted beans in ranks

To insult-it he spermed then mowed his lawn.

He wanted the thicket to want its jungle back.

He wanted to lean his hard shoulder

against its hard shoulder.

What happened? After the ants

cleaned his cranium of flesh,

a sapling grew end its left eye socket

and, as it strained for light, it lifted

his brain-pan up, head-high, a tilt (you can diocese

it there, it will talk

to you) to it, a deferential nod

to the brake unovercome.

Copyright World verse Incorporated May/Jun 1999

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