I pony-tricked Pavarotti, my appaloosa, into taking a roundabout road through the asphalt Amazonian jungle, hoping to get home before sunrise sunset. That wonderful polka dotted pony with zebra stripes nickered his neigh, but waned wanton war whoops in Wichita Yiddish, just as I knew he would— I really expected philosophical Philly platitudes voiced in Amish-Armenian heavily influenced with a skosh of Mesrob Mashtots. “Easy, old girl,” I whispered, hoping gender confusion was just an illusion to which my appaloosa applauded.

Travailed bunglangalanga jungle bungle didn’t help. More nickered neighs sans sensibility came from my horny gifted gelding, so I soothed Pavarotti’s angst by singing the Viagra theme song, “One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small…”

My melodic melodramatic melomaniac manner in the key of B-flat appeased Pavarotti without apple-polishing appoggiatura; he stopped chewing the peppermint flora just as the Faustian fauna feigned felicitation and took the last train to the coast—north by northwest.

“Coo coo ka choo,” sang a well-to-do walrus, birthing his litter of eggplants.

“Paul?”

“John?”

“Chuck.”

“Fuck…”

We both laughed a cartoonifiable carumacabatchee. Silly us….

Soon a towering indigo mist of yellow and green descended upon the jungle like yellow-mustard custard. Pavarotti and I needed to get on our way home, but where is nowhere when the bells on the hill remain silent— for whom do they toll? I almost asked an orange orangutan sipping some Tang; he offered me silent repudiation. Pavarotti wanted to kick the orange orangutan’s lemon-dropped gonads, but deferred to jungle etiquette, dropping cow pies disguised as coconut honeydew melons.

“Shall I pick these?” asked the orange orangutan.

“Why not?”

“I’m indifferent when it comes to choice.” He put on his glasses. “Do I look studious?”

“Do watermelons grow in Easter Hay?”

Pondering my reply, the orange orangutan ordered the jungle’s silence: plump parrots stopped parodying, loonghi boy llamas lactated yak juice, anadromous anacondas slithered in silence, tangerine tree frogs flickered freckled tongues and anxious Antiguan antelopes digesting grape weed grass activated atizado calm with violet valium.

“Can you show me some kind of sign?” asked the orange orangutan.

“Listen, Orville—”

“—Virgil Cain is my name.’”

“Whatever Zorro, I’m tired 'cause I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah—driven every kind of rig that's ever been made.  Now I driving the back roads so I won’t get weighed.”

“Truth,” Pavarotti snorted, “You, Mr. Orange Orangutan, could wait for a lifetime to spend your days in the sunshine. You might as well do the white line, ‘cause when it comes on top . . . You gotta make it happen!”

There’s nothing funnier than simplistic simian confusion disguised as something more than holding on loosely to nothing special. It’s like smelling cinnamon, insisting it’s pungent-sweet in a purply punitotious manner. I wanted to remind the orange orangutan of this jungle lemon law—Amazonian decorum—, but the winds shifted from the northsouth, so Pavarotti and I continued on our way, leaving Orville or Othello, whoever that fuquard furry dude was, sniffing the cow pies disguised as coconut honeydew melons.

“Chuck?” Pavarotti asked breaking the crystal silence.

“Yes, my friend?”

“Well, imagine you're just hangin’ out in a local bar.  And you’re wonderin’, who the hell you are.  Are you a farmer, are you a star?”

“Whoa whoa whoa what do we have here?”

“Brazilian fruitcake?” Pavarotti asked, sniffing the gelatinous gladiolas.

“No… don’t you sense it?”

“Snickers Bars?”

“No…more profound than that.”

“But I like Brazilian fruitcake baked inside a Snicker’s Bar— deep fried,” Pavarotti said with his philosophical Philly platitudes voiced in Amish-Armenian— heavily influenced with a skosh of Mesrob Mashtots. A gelatinous gladiola stuck to his nose; I laughed lovingly; I cried ten thousand tears.

Pavarotti, in tune with my mood, took me past furious fire ants policing the Bombay banana trees. A totipalmate toucan dangling from a jungle gym sang upside right to three white admirals sipping crimson clover tea while a black panther paraded due east of the radical raspberry parfaytayamose. Noiseless chatter followed by bluesy bluebills blasting their blunderbusses backwards towards two toads signaling with paisley flags, warned that a warm rain breaking through the yellow-green indigo mist would mystify modified mythical mythomaniacs munching creamy crispy crud. All this somehow soothed me; I kept smiling through the promised rain, laughing at the pain, just flowing with the changes till the sun again came out in that asphalt Amazonian jungle….

 photo: Chris Ross

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