Stampede of the Red Elephants

He drew everything with a black crayon.
Black trees, black sun, black water, black grass...
Why is everything black? they asked him.
To cover up all the red.

The elephant is red.
He stomps on people and crushes them,
like crushing grapes with your feet to make wine.

How do you know when you've swallowed an elephant?
When your insides feel like they're being trampled on
by two tons of trumpeting animal outrage.
Why did the elephant commit suicide?
Because he couldn't bear the guilt.

Is that you with your face covered in black crayon?
Yes, but the red is leaking out of my ears.
Now I'm riding the elephant.
This elephant can fly.
Here's his cape.

My cousin used to draw endless battle scenes.
Every gun, cannon and aircraft carrier
was rendered with obsessive accuracy.
Explosions looked like fiery dandelions.
Human heads and limbs detached from their bodies
in jagged triangular edges
like the stripe on Charlie Brown's shirt.
His father was a survivor of atrocities.
There were never any elephants.

The house is black.
The doors, the windows, the chimney...
Now the elephant has to go to jail.
Was the elephant bad? they ask him.
Yes. He's too red,
and there are laws against being too red.

In the 1950s, before I was born,
it was really bad to be red.
It meant you had different ideas
about what was important
and what to pay attention to.
You could be thrown in jail
for reading the wrong newspaper.

This is my neighborhood.
Anything red has to be painted black.
I swallow my red like burning poison.
It fills up my belly until I'm ready to burst
like a blood-filled balloon.
It eats holes in my guts like sulfuric acid
and taints my brain like a virus.

Oh look--here's some red crayon
in the middle of all this black.
Yes--the house is on fire.
How did it catch on fire?
There was too much red inside,
churning and boiling and rumbling,
and one day it exploded
and the entire house burnt down.

But I escaped on my elephant.
My parents were killed in the fire.
Now they're just black skeletons,
charred and smoking
like meat left on the grill too long.

The problem with stuffing an elephant down your throat
is that when he decides to stampede
you have no choice but to barf him back up.

My father and I used to share the same elephant.
It was kind of a family tradition.
The worst part is trying to hide the elephant.
An elephant is pretty conspicuous,
especially a red one.
Wherever you go, people seem to be ignoring you
because they're too busy goggling at the elephant.

I used to dream about setting off a bomb at school.
After the explosion, the pieces of the school
would flutter to the ground like black confetti.
It would be like a snowfall in winter,
except the snow would be black.

What would happen if we scrubbed off
all the black in the world?
Everyone would be walking around exposed
like red raw meat-men with no skin.
It would really hurt when they bumped into each other.

When I cut my arm open,
a lot of red stuff leaked out.
My elephant smelled it and it drove him crazy.
Now I have to keep my elephant chained up
or else he'll squash a whole lot of people.
Then we'll both have to go to jail.
I think my elephant needs help.
Maybe what he needs is a job,
hauling lumber to build houses and such.
Or maybe all he really needs is an apology,
and a few simple words of kindness.

David Aronson
July 2006