I might be writing about you next

Muses wander the earth, like Shyamalan’s ghosts seeking attention.

There’s a restaurant with a pool outside. Nobody’s swimming. Who isn’t afraid of sun cancer nowadays? I eat my triangle toast with very strong jam and wish there was just a little more apple juice in my seltzer. I’ve read the novel a random friend and I are beginning. And now the guy with the very orange biking hat arrives.

Today’s muse.

He is as expressive as he is comfortable visiting in this place. He’s not the owner, at least not of this establishment — but he could be.

He rubs his tan legs, switches elbows and hands, keeps talking to the ladies who work for him, showing off his silly cheap watch. They laugh at everything he says. He looks where he pleases, never showing what his mind is actually thinking.

But then bold as molasses, he scratches his thighs, adjusts his body parts, his eyes begin to go in for the kill, without a sign of shame or grace. These are the days we live in. The more ridiculous is your pitch, the more it’s likely to be swung at. The ladies are swinging away at whatever he’s throwing.

They begin to discuss the new ways that people learn. Acupuncture, diet and eye-wear somehow enter into the discussion. Then academic talking about the importance of getting enough romantic exercise.

“Schools out, Schools out! Who let the fools out?”

None of them have ordered anything yet.

His face is that of a monkey who has taken over the planet, very defined cheeks, black rosy eyes, and always the ears. Pronounced mechanical ears, and that eternal smile. Beware of the person who is always smiling. It is it’s own dark form of hyperbolic flattery.

It reminds me of the only thing compelling about evolution: The commonest features between ape and human. Their expressions and movements, their considerations and actions, so mirroring.

What was God thinking when he made them so similar. The monkey, and the man with the orange hat, who talks now so smoothly.

Didn’t He know it would confound us?

The conversation is different, granted. Monkeys whisper, grunt, maybe groan a little for effect. But talk they do not. Unless in sign language.

But the guy I’m watching talks with his hands as well.

To the untrained eye this is all harmless. To the astute watcher the whole things screams “Cheater!” His wife tucked away shopping somewhere aromatic and discount — adding to the treasure troves of her kitchware and online resale factory. The ladies listening so intently to his moving hands. They are married also, but not to him.

Do chimpanzees break the rules like the bike-hatted sales man, with his nicely weathered ocean skin?

Perhaps. But their rules are different. They live in a jungle.

We simply make jungles.

Monkeys throw their feces.

We flush our’s down porcelain tunnels via polished steel double-levered triggers.

But monkeys don’t lie.

Perhaps orange-hat isn’t lying either. Perhaps they all know what they are doing — this shady business they contract. Maybe even their spouses have consented.

What sort of jungle is ours?

Their eyes say everything, this threesome in front of me. Scheming, posturing , making their beds with sunglasses that flash. Touching arms, beaconing out via bleached teeth.

Who will sweep away this elegant mess when we are done?

I sip again my juice. It is water now.

The two ladies rise with their 300 dollar purses and follow the piper out.

Swimming pools used to flaunt our forms, flirt our prowess.

Now they just reflect back at us, with chlorinated, de-algae-fied water, all of the ways we more and more resemble the beasts of time.

All the while, our souls drop like lead, down through our financed shoes, and into those dank rivers which stink far beneath the pavements under our feet.

We would rather swim there it appears. We’ve lost the desire to be clean. To be free and raised up, above the critters who moo and chew and do — whatever they please.

Welcome to the jungle.

Seatbelts not needed.

Just ride the elevator down.

And smile.