When we kill all metaphor
i haven't written a poem in a while
there remains nothing but absence,
yet even in such existence
we demand meaning and substance,
and context and corporeality
from abstractions and feelings
so intangible that we cannot help
but fill in the space ourselves.
When we kill all metaphor
and stomach what’s left,
we rummage through what’s known
of the past’s sorrows and the future’s hypotheticals,
and fail to face the nothingness of today
that endlessly permeates
regardless of denial and grief.
When we kill all metaphor
what else is there to trust,
for belief is a necessity interlinked with survival;
suddenly sunshine on one’s face mustn’t evoke a scarlet emotion,
or the Cold is just what it is, sans its capitalization,
frozen with no personification,
and poetry is no testament or act or song or dance,
but a blinking cursor trapped in the code of a white document—
pistol to our foreheads, we can’t read into it.
To kill all metaphor
is to marry the discomforting and disconcerting:
to look at a tree branch and stop all thought thereafter;
to face the bleak nature of your routine and think nothing,
not even monotony, not even loneliness;
to see what exists and ponder less;
to scream into the not-void
and regard of what remains in you as anti-meaning
despite rubbing your voice box raw for
Killing a metaphor
requires a dissection of its anatomy,
and you can’t think of bloodlines or ancestors or magic
or the omnipresent passage of time—
there is no further discussion,
just the incessant backspacing of a figure of speech,
an erasure of what once was.
Though it might prove to be difficult,
I am no stranger to a massacre
Because to kill all metaphor
‘til you grow heavy and wary in the order of letters
and question what was taught to be known—
is it spelled metaphor or chloroform or subpar or
spiral or get off of me or ten-years-old or voyeur or
it’s been eight years or let me forget or malfunction or
who responds to my prayers or
why can’t I kill memory—
I can’t bring back who I was
and what I dreamt of being
and when I think of how young I am, I grow even younger
and shrivel so painfully
where shame and guilt continuously make home
into a fading frame
and dig a burrow to trap all sensations
I've felt on those multiple nights
of defiling.
But killing metaphor is simple.
There is no metaphor.
No question.
No elaboration.
But as it is killed, an excess of irony remains
true within the writer or artist or dancer or scientist or
person.
You want more; yearn for clarity.
Though it works like this.
No explanation.
No footnotes.
A glass of water sits on the table.
An acoustic guitar leans by the wall.
A child is found on a bed.
Muscles quiver out of memory and routine.
It is unsure if the body's calm or in pure shock.
The mouth is agape.
There is silence.
Though it is not odd or special or filled with emotion or devoid of such.
I am going to commit treason
and give you a semblance of finality
for I am aware of my roots as a stringer-of-words,
and will indulge in your expression and past habits:
the child has left a hastily strewn message in pulsating beats,
and tells of a story that ends as quickly as it starts:
you killed me in the middle of class. (thank you)