elephant poem-not-poem - still gestating

That's not an elephant in the room.
Whichever way you look at it
that's a burning man, and he seems calm
about it all, chewing a sandwich
and reading the newspaper. These burnings
are common enough now, and we all know them -

well enough for them not to disturb
our own eating or sex most of the time -
but behind the sound
of crackling and chewing
is a quiet something,

a whisper that is not really sound,
but is the anger of a million poems
that warned about this burning
and how it would happen

every time a door closed somewhere
in one of those rooms upstairs
where fathers walk barefoot
on bare floorboards
looking for something that got lost.
Or when the lies
got so thick in the air
they started to stick

to people's skin, and burn
like napalm, or raining
ash. And I just want to add
my ashen voice to that soft beat
of the wind in the night, that quiet elephant

in the heart shriek that sweeps down
the mountainside noise of humanity

trying again to stand. It's all been said,
but I want to add my voice and lift
the volume just a little. So this
poem-not-poem is my name of anger

on that long petition
of the heart's horror.