JUNGLE

It began with a horizontal forgetting.
The spine presses into the damp humus until the vertebrae sprout roots.
Above stands only a chromatic delirium of chlorophyll and suffocating light.

I. The Sticky Sweetness
First, there was only the bursting.
The flesh of an overripe mango, or was it a papaya made of molten neon? Poured over the palate of the world.
Juice occured. A sticky yellow-green ate its way into the retina while the sugar in the blood began to sing.
Every fiber of the fruit was a brushstroke of pure existence, a sweet poison that suspended gravity.

II. The Breathing of Shadows
Then: The betrayal of light.
The violet of the deep ferns began to crawl. A dadaist whisper in the undergrowth.
"Why is a leaf a leaf, if it can also bea scream?" asked the howler monkey in the back of the mind.
The colors became havier, oilier. 
The toxic purple of the orchids bled into the indigo of the approaching electricity.
The air became so thick you no longer breathed it.
You chewed it.

III. The Rupture
Suddenly a tear in the canopy. 

I lay there. As a stain of paint in the wet nowhere.
The storm washed away the contours until only the skeleton of color remained.
A state between saturation and drowning.

"Between the crushed sugar of the fruit and the electric teeth of the storm, the only truth is the stain we leave behind."

70x90