Animals in the Jungle (Started from a prompt by Taylor Mali)

One day when I was a kid, I owned a stuffed animal,
a large light brown dog with floppy ears and bulging beaded black eyes.
His place was next to the skinny white elephant who always wore the
same light blue flowered dress.
She sat next to the twin monkeys with their silky black fur and their
matching red and white striped shorts.
Next to the monkeys sat the great polar bear with its ivory colored coat
like the tusk of an elephant.
The kangaroo was next in line, sporting her pointed ears
as one would wear a pair of sunglasses.
One day, the dog fell off the ledge.

Fourteener Poem

The trees and flowers emerge from the ground.
Colorful collections burst through the crust of the earth.
From the patch of dirt, life rises.
Branches and stems twist toward the bright blue expanse.
Water falls upon the invisible seeds.
The nattiest object climbs the highest.
Balls of earth clump together fighting the sky.
Life surrounds the new beginning.
Dead leaves rest upon the birthplace of the trees and flowers.
Old life supports the green emergence.
Green grows by brown.
From the dirt springs spring.
Spring spreads sprouts.
Sprouts rise from the earth.

Jane Eyre

My livre is heavy with words of centuries,
heavy like a metal chest filled with treasure
waiting to be unlocked,
heavy with the guilt of smooth, crisp pages unperturbed by human hands.
She is bound in creamy chocolate brown leather,
her spine stiff with decades spent on a pedestal,
her cover creased with a child's delight.
She holds in her frame the knowledge of years past
like a tree holds history in its rings.
She breathes life into her words like a horse to its filly.
She wraps them in her warm skin like a blanket on a cold day.

I will remove the dust now thick on her coat,
soften the spine of the stiff brown leather,
spoil the pages of their virginal purity.
To home she will return,
cleaned, used, and frequently visited.

Word Poem

The stone wall of the cathedral curved around the narrow path
as the welders employed their pick axes
to cut the crumbling wood
that was filched from the hospitals barely full wood bin.

The hostel volunteer at the hospital
tried to be the rescuer and stop the lawless welders
but his moral was bruised
and the welders rummaged through the rubble.

The welders sutured shut the mouth of the volunteer.
This ruse allowed them to stall
before they threw the band saw at the emasculate
jerk who's cornea was sliced off by the saw.

The welders decided to release the pot of stew
in order to pass by the steward who spent too long processing the scene
and did not notify the police of the spill-over
of salted chive stew.

Eventually the hospital was a gravesite
with tongues protruding from the mouths of scarlet colored people
covered in contusions and bruises.
The welders ran back to the cathedral.