This Poem Has Been Censored by the FBI

Yesterday I got eaten by a bear.

It wasn’t even a particularly ferocious bear.

More like a natty brown rug 

full of cat fur & crumbs propped 

up on some old broomsticks.

I think he was even missing some crucial teeth.

Maybe an eye.

I didn’t run very fast trying to get away either. 

I made a kind of lazy, left-handed lope of my escape. 

I don’t know why. I can’t explain my curious lassitude.

I guess I just didn't care very much. 
I guess I couldn’t be bothered.

I was out hunting 1916 biplanes in the forest.

It's a hobby of mine.

The Sikorsky, the Sopwith, the Halberstadt.
The names roll off the tongue like a mouse pad

& a helmet. 
The Junkers, the Nieuport, the Sopwith Pup.

I had with me a box of tissues, a portable drill press & my untreatable ophthalmolphobia.

Yesterday was a day a lot like this one.

You could have cut it with a knife, 

but who would want to
with the mess it would make?

There. The scene is set.

I don’t know much about the digestive system

of a bear. What I do know

is a lot of useless stuff about Keanu Reeves.
Biplanes are like insults. When you start
looking for them, you find them everywhere.

A bear’s digestive tract is short, 

only 40% the length of a normal herbivore.

It cannot digest mature plants. 

It’s the cellulose that give it trouble, buster.

Keanu Reeves, however, does not appear to suffer

the same problem.

I wish I’d known all this before I was eaten.

I, myself, have often been accused of immaturity.

You can be the judge of that.

There are a lot of things that have crashed 

unheard in the forest

A bear could be one of them.

So could Keanu Reeves.

The supersonic jet of the future will be a biplane

according to the Japanese

who should know as well anyone.

If it flew 100 years ago,
it will fly again.
We must somehow keep the faith.