Metaphor

By Thomas Thurman

A metaphor’s a gentle curse
that darkens life with soft implying:
or so I learned from reading verse.

A blanket is a woollen hearse.
A lover’s word is widows’ sighing.
A metaphor’s a gentle curse.

And sex is just a human purse
with prices, goods, and people buying,
or so I learned from reading verse:

transactions made we can’t reverse:
a one-way street, a kind of dying.
A metaphor’s a gentle curse,

though dying is a friendly nurse
with copper coins to ease your crying,
or so I learned from reading verse.

I’m left to wonder which is worse:
to hear your truth, or see you lying.
A metaphor’s a gentle curse,
or so I learned from reading verse.

Comments : A friend linked to this poem on facebook today. I liked it and decided to post it here. I liked the description of a metaphor as ‘a gentle curse that darkens life with soft implying’, as well as ‘I’m left to wonder………………lying’. - Zen