Jungle

(This poem is based upon my experience in Ecuador 2011)

Sweat bees cling to our faces
and get in our ears as we cut
large leaves to sit on
placed over the stinging bugs
on the ground.
And we sit eating and aching
with thick mud on our boots
And plucking leeches from the
pulled up socks
Our dried food is hard to eat
and washed down with stale water that
we have carried for hours.
Black fly and mosquitoes bite our flesh
and then monkeys congregate in the
trees above, chatter and scorn
and try to piss on us.

(2014)