Junglehead

My head's a jungle and some people are gutsy enough to say so. Lion, lion, lion.

Jungles consume all that is alive
but taste the dead as much:
curled and ridged as bloodbrown roses.
They fill up the horizon
leaf by leaf,
roiling with heat and sinews.

Jungles sweat
and salivate, thrumming, a flame red tongue
and rough hands in the wood-wet dark:

You say I am a jungle, all branches and tripping roots
rising from the mud like a woken animal, overripe-
full of steam-burnt sunlight and charcoal.
You say I am a jungle:
the glint of teeth, midnight noise,
a predatory bird with oily eyes
that blends easily into shadows and holes,
soft black fruit, heavy swells-
the warm summer moon of a breast.

But I say there is a seed where I began,

I say there is a seed:

cut from the pit of your stomach,
the base of your forearm, the hollow of your throat.

You can split seeds
for years, slice and scatter all 
of the savagery before it finds
its own fingers:
you can drown years of jungle noise, the fever
of fur and flesh.
You can snap the heads from all the rain-drunk flowers
if you're scared enough of what I've become,
sever the webbing of veins and vines, kill the jungles before they
have a chance to rip open, throw against the solid heat
salt, mulch, mossgreen water, sweet yellow milk-
before they have a chance to swallow you.

But I am the jungle grown,
the seed that avoided
your knifing fingers
and found a world to defy.

I am the seed thrust apart--
slivered open, husked, an amber eye.
I am the jungle, the irreversible curve of the claw-

look at me now
and look at me again, you reaper:



I will never die. 

Reviews

[Joe]

This is a really good poem. Great imagery and rhythm help it flow quite nicely. Great job! Keep it up!