Listen friends and neighbors
As I do my best here to tell
Of some of the animals which
Reside in this jungle hell.
Some may look harmless
But can eat you all alive.
And many for no reason
Prefer you do not survive.

One is so horribly large
It can fall on you and end
Any chance you may have
To become its loyal friend.
It’s the smarmily gracious
Nearly total waste of *****,
Cringingly contumacious
Pusillanimous pachyderm.

It blunders around the jungle,
Often the danger is crushing.
It cares not for little folks, it
Only cares where it is rushing.
The other creatures around
Are annoyances in its way
And it really doesn’t care much
What they might have to say.

Of course, there are donkeys
Of many different classes
But try as each of them may
They always act like *****.
They bray but acquiesce
As long as they get their hay,
And do their absolute best to
Stay out of the pachyderm’s way.

And of course, the chameleons
Who cleverly change their look
So they can hide in plain sight.
No chances were ever took.
They hide among the foliage
And only come out to eat
And stay out from under the
All of the larger animal’s feet.

The pachyderms are herd animals.
They learned to stick together
So, few are clever enough to
Face them down in any weather.
But there are these little creatures
That use tricks and some tools
To take the occasional beast down
Though animals think them fools.

Then there are the tigers as well
And they must be well considered
Because like the pachyderms
They work very well together.
But they won’t often take on those
Huge beasts with the long trunks.
They are smart enough to choose
Their dinner in smaller chunks.

So, the lesson here is for you
To move carefully, don’t bungle.
It may look like a lush and green,
But for reals, it is just a jungle.
The beasts will make short work
Of humans whenever we weaken.
So, don’t walk blindly around.
Remember, it’s you or them!

RED is my left behind soul lingering through the wind.
RED is the balloon wisping through the wind whose freedom has no end.
RED is the taste of something so petrifyingly disgusting it should be a deadly sin.
RED is the taste of blood seeping through the cracks of your precious skin.
RED is the sound of the annoyance called rain clashing with your murky window pane.
RED is the sound of a love for someone so strong you couldn’t possibly explain.
RED is warm liquid slowly slipping out of your cold empty soul.
RED is the worrisome conscious of plunging into a dark hole.
RED is the smell lingering through the halls of a crime scene, where in which someone had to so viciously die.
RED is the smell of the tears you so desperately need to cry.
RED is the feeling of pain and desire that couldn’t possibly be compared.
RED is the paranoia of living forever that makes you so teeth-cringingly scared.

Official scribblers, when I was a poet,
Whinged, driveling into an MFA void— 

Interminably.

Intolerable, as if  God were a literary milquetoast
with no poetic spine,

capable of little. An MA advisor.
If weird line breaks mean anything at all—

totally done with that.

Tepid sort of academic brown-nosing,
tedious rehash of predictable Modernism

obfuscating in rarefied tones, in some chapbook
boringly academic, same as it always was,

except offering their inferior product to no one.

And then before long, an awful new
poem is born. Cringingly dull.