Jungle Noise | Teen Ink

Jungle Noise

November 12, 2009
By Jackson Vanfleet-Brown SILVER, San Francisco, California
Jackson Vanfleet-Brown SILVER, San Francisco, California
5 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The kids are hooting like chimpanzees
At the bus stop—
like primates dueling for the longest drawl.

The 24 passes by wheezing
like a dying beast with
the driver mercilessly pumping the last of its life out with his pedal
and the
lingering buzz of electric circuitry.

Inevitably there is the distant moan
of an emergency but
is it an emergency?
I cant help but wonder.

Then the sky cracks open and underneath
in the spot illuminated by the heavens
is a motorcyclist,
heralded by his spitting machine
rupturing the air as he passes.

The old man hisses,
hacks out a curse as a chimp would
when the lion saunters by forcing the primates
humiliated into the treetops.

The moon makes no sound
or if she does it is unintelligible.
She is yellow as butter
perched within reach on a trapeze invisible against the night
drawing the sounds of the jungle
towards her by some force more elusive than gravity.


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