Ode For Whatever You Thought You Wanted Out of New Jersey
she was black, real black, they said
way too big to be a cat or a dog
way too curious to be a man or a cop
we go to the zoo to see monsters like that
she came to us to see idiocy like ours
and we welcomed her with yelling, with a bullet
or seven or ten or whatever we had in the clip
unlike the tranquilized bear who fell
and bounced and landed after hitting the lip
of a trampoline but we had nothing like that now
not in New Jersey, where the garbage mafia
puts hits on bears for taking all the good stuff
she woke up hungry and we've already emptied her larder
so what's a 200 pound lady to do? other than venture
forth into the world we built to protect us from her
After
this. I'm too torn up about it right now to say more. I've always sort of loved bears. I've been dying to see one in the woods by our house. And, I just hate guns. I really do. They could have just tossed her a ham or something. They didn't have to kill her.
If I could cry, I would. Instead, I'm writing poem after poem and hating New Jersey.