10:46 am | 21 March 2003 | not a metaphor

Things are always like other things
"�so I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture."
-Mark Twain

I don�t mind being
the means to an end
When you flow this way in me:
You�re the liquid ribbon pour
Of a snake through grass.
This is not a metaphor.

When the lighthouse beam
Of my smile
Sweeps across your face
I know you'll watch it
just long enough
to save yourself
from those rocks.
This is not an allegory.

When still to you
from your distant coast
I am just a function
Of a mathematics I still cannot understand
(I am the loveliest cosine)�
This is not an apologue.

I am the gears. I grease
Your wheels. She says the way things work
"is by admitting or opening away."
She says "I believe
forever in the hooks.
The way things work
is that eventually
something catches."
She explains such things so clearly.
This is not a parable.

I am tired of symbolizing
I am tired of making these analogues
(Masks for the faces I am afraid of seeing
Bedsheets hung over real ghosts�)
I am tired of apologizing.

Bonjour.
It is enough for me to be your runway.
This is not a metaphor.