Free Entry 1, Week 13

This is the poem I came up with in our exercise on persona poems. I wanted to post it here as a sure way of not losing it and to remind myself to work on it more.

Smokey the Bear Goes to Gotham City

Thank god I'm finally free of those damn kids:
there are no woods to protect here and no forests
to keep from their flight, unneccessary fires.
Burn it all anyway and make the world just like
Gotham City, where some wannabe child molester
in black spandex keeps buildings from burning
to the concrete, with the aide of two old men, his pets.

Those kids never cared about forest fires,
and--as long as we're being honest--neither
did I. I suppose some marketing assistant
just out of college assumed a bear would make
an adequate forest ranger since--let's face it--
bears live in the forest; not me. I lived in
a two-bed, two-and-a-half bath in downton
Hollywood, just below Sunset where movie stars
wander streets in the day and whores strut at night.

It was--you can imagine--hel having to pretend
to car, all in the hopes of landing a bigger,
better gig, but no; I was forever typecast, just
like that girl who was always a princess
and never did anything else, besides that one film
where she "came out of her shell"--as she told
reporters--by taking off her shirt and speaking
in a pseudo-Southern accent.

That's why I moved to Gotham:
for a new start, with no trees or forests anywhere
nearby to pretend to worry about protecting.
And thank god, too, because I've already been cast
in a new thriller as a henchman. The director is a
squat, penguin-looking man, who really does resemble
those children I had to lecture to.
But for this part, I'm sure I can get past that.