Reading and "Making" Short Rhyming Poems with Metaphors
Metaphor Poems
(A note to the reader: Metaphor may be most simply defined by comparison with a simile. In a simile we say, for example, that love (an abstraction) is like fire. The word like is the indication that we are drawing a comparison. In a metaphor we say that love is fire. Or we say that it has a characteristic of and behaves like the metaphor, for example, Love burns....
Some poets pile up metaphor on metaphor, often inadvertently mixing them, at the expense of readability and comprehension.
Others consider the poem as a whole “the metaphor” and tend to write in a more plain narrative style. In such poems the clue to the metaphor is often hinted at in the title and more fully disclosed towards the end of the poem. In such poems the title is called the constituting metaphor.
The latter approach to using metaphors describes these poems better than the former, though metaphors appear throughout the bodies of most poems.)
All the poems which appear on this page are taken
from 21ST CENTURY BREAD © 2007 by Leland Jamieson.
You are welcome to copy any poem as long as you credit
the book, author, and copyright date. Enjoy!
Change Pace Poetry 37: Two Poems
The Wallet
In memory of G.M.P.
DeLand, Florida.
At Christmas your suppliers all would flex
your memory with their gifts, so you would choose
and specify their lines when writing specs.
You loved the brick two Georgians fired with blues
(who weren’t real Georgians but transplanted Czechs).
Beside our tree, you mused how they’d promote
their brick . . . each year they seemed to grow more bold.
Your eyes filled up with laughter, then your throat:
“And how about this, embossed inside in gold,
in capitals — G.M. PEEK, GENUINE GOAT.”
The Trumpet
In memory of L.S.J. and for his great grandson,
W.T.J, a young man of trumpets.
When young, he struggled just to spot the zero
inside the level’s glass and bubble — yellow —
by which he hoped to free himself of worries:
He’d level and square a foothold, clear his vision,
build high and dry (to plumb-line true), and trumpet
a carpenter’s motifs with soul-felt comfort.
But un-grieved death? How touch resilient comfort
within a glass when leveled by a bubbled zero?
How lift it to one’s lips and blow it — trumpet
the day-break flames ’til they’re at zenith, yellow —
illuminating not a death but vision
no thunderhead can shake or drench with worries?
Where are those little things that solace worries?
What fragrances from childhood wing up comfort?
Dammed-up for sixty years with his dad’s vision
(his modeling: how to read and write “from zero”
so he, the son, past loss, might climb to yellow) . . . .
Spilling his tears, he blew a salty trumpet . . . .
At sixty-eight, eyes dry and clear (his trumpet
recalled such feeling), he released those worries
encumbering his mind — all withered yellow.
He smacked down spicy sweet and sour, found comfort
by which to speak, at last, the words: to zero
in on, make tangible, his own faint vision.
Felt odd that he tracked down his dad’s long vision
by banging out of words what he could trumpet —
these salty hand-made tangibles — thus zero
from consciousness his tooth-gnawed lip of worries.
And more odd still: Creative solace, comfort,
grew more robust as sun soared past its yellow:
His goal was never just to mint the yellow.
He looked to spot, make tangible, mere vision
while drawing from it strength to be — a comfort
to pass around to all who cared to trumpet,
to valve and tongue a freedom from such worries
as it might help them to reduce to zero.
The trumpet blows, the sun sails well past yellow —
fresh poems displace old worries with new vision
made tangible from zero’s horn of comfort.
Change Pace Poetry 26: Three Poems
Compassionate Conservative?
Gulf Coast. New Orleans. August 28, 2005, and counting . . . .
Though lightly as a ballerina
“Katrina” pirouettes the tongue —
her landfall’s like a spurned czarina.
Denial, blindness, scorn have stung
the sick, the poor, the old, the young.
Katrina bore us no ill will.
But ask the White House. Ask the Hill.
Incompetent politicos
in cabinet posts with perks, well-paid,
have noses like Pinocchio’s.
The public trust they scorn — degrade.
It’s they New Orleans’ poor betrayed.
(“The underprivileged should feel glad
the Astrodome’s so grand a pad.”)
Compassionate conservative?
Has Bush imbibed formaldehyde?
His heart exudes preservative
imbued with blue-blood, old-wealth pride.
He’ll Rove for photo ops — abide
the bleating of the human fold
who’ve neither yellow nor black gold.
Contemporary Newborn’s Gaze
(After seeing, at Pump House Gallery, Hartford, Connecticut,
the sculpture in granite, “Solitude,” by Betty Gerich.)
The polished sculpture well-depicts a Mom
whose bearing — shoulder, nape, bowed head — is shown
to flow from swaddled child in cradling palm.
The tiny infant’s skull is still a cone
just springing back from birth canal’s wet vise.
Expectant eyes gaze up, entreat Mom’s own.
The viewer kneels to grasp the newborn’s prize,
to gaze past forearm, breast and collarbone
to face — which has no smile, no lips, no eyes.
Cooling Off with Cayenne
Whose was that deep male voice he just
could hear beneath his study floor?
So late! Who was the neighbor thrust
himself on her at their front door?
Best he step down and rescue her
so she can get some sleep tonight.
Pretext? He’ll raid the fridge! Yes-sir!
He clumps downstairs to get a bite.
The voice? Astonishing! Their son’s!
How could he not have recognized
their flesh and blood, who now outruns
his ears and holds them mesmerized?
The voice breaks — up: a child’s again . . . .
Now, where’d he stash that fresh cayenne?
Change Pace Poetry 25: Three Poems
By Floundering?
It’s best a toddler know all that he feels,
and see it, too, reflected in Mom’s eyes,
attune it with the notes her voice reveals —
or cry blue tears upon her ample thighs.
It’s best a youth embrace what he will do
when he grows up by striding off with Dad
to find, for left and right, the fitting shoe —
embrace a life’s work that can make him glad.
But floundering’s the route we mostly take.
We grasp for titillation, sexual fashion,
high pay and rank, no matter how opaque.
The outer eyes both blaze with them ’til ashen.
The Inner Eye that might see through the smoke
just shuts its lids against — this long sick joke?
Breaking Light
Her canvas backpack carried broken glass,
smashed bottles (soda, wine or beer) she chose
for tint from ghetto sidewalks clumped with grass.
A purplish blue or pink would re-compose
its shards beside those amber, red, or green,
and they a fresh new pattern would disclose.
Epoxied to her gesso boards, they’d sheen
beneath the gallery lights, no longer shards
but fresh bright wholes, compelling us to glean.
We too are artists. Each of us regards
with outer eyes while Inner Eye’s deep sight
construes — makes new — what brightest light bombards.
A Cairn for Our Brindled One
In Memory of Weft.
For G.K.J.
Three months ago we couldn’t fail to note
our cairn had built up tarter — quite a lot.
His pre-op blood work showed up fine. A quote:
“Strong heart — all organs function as they ought
for a dog fourteen. The risk to him’s remote . . . .”
The last six days he’d not eat diddly-squat.
His thirst increased, his brown eyes lost their clown,
his ears drew back in pain. We’re so distraught!
The blood work of the vet had earned renown,
yet failed to flag this pancreas cancer’s knot.
We buried him with hearts of eiderdown,
with cairn of glacial stones we piled abreast —
some stumbled on in forest leaves all brown,
some blocking, deep, the way of his deep rest
our shovel clanged upon as we dug down.
Change Pace Poetry 23: More Metaphors
The Banyan
Summer. Coconut Grove, Florida.
In memory of L.S.J.
When I was six I loved the banyan tree.
I’d shinny up and down its thick air roots
in summer shorts and never skin my knee.
Its deep shade drew in other kids, recruits.
Lots of times I had playmates. We would race
to see who’d reach a limb, or ground, the first.
Alone, I’d climb its limbs to outer space —
and deep in dappled daydreams be immersed . . . .
Iranian peddlers named the banyan tree
for trade that they exchanged beneath its shade.
They steeped its bark and leaves to make a tea
they drank for health, to spare the barber’s blade.
I’d not known this back then, but even so,
its leaves and limbs helped sooth my secret woe.
Beneath the Ghee
Though I’m no fisherman from boat or pier,
surf casting once held some appeal for me,
especially when the blues were running near
the shore and taking bait and hook to sea.
The slack line hit, gone taut, and running out
I know. The surf caster beneath its spell
who gently tires the fish on line that’s stout,
sets hook, and reels his catch in, earns it well.
The baited hook’s the rub. I can’t surmount,
as long as my own stomach still is full,
gray feelings of deceit on my account
and empathy for a fish that fights my pull.
Alaskan salmon, oddly, canned at sea
I sit without a thought to eat — although,
despite cuisine that’s laced with garlic ghee,
I sense some shifting sand beneath each toe.
Baking Bread and Other Subtleties
Have you, when gazed at from behind, not reeled
to see what gazer’s laid a “pseudopod
of sight” on your neck-hairs from far afield?
We’ve felt these gentle pseudopods, ah-hahed!
them, then pooh-poohed them as exceptions to
all common sense. Why have we hemmed and hawed?
Why narrow “sight”? Why discard ’pods from view?
If “seeing is believing” makes good sense
in every case, how is it we construe
without a doubt the oven’s evidence
of loaves of browning bread quite out of sight?
Who would expect to “see” bread’s savory scents?
Change Pace Poetry 16: More Strong Metaphors
Dance of the Quivering Digits
For Savannah and her Fifth Grade friends. April, 2005.
When thought and feeling don’t pan out,
does your heart throb with aching doubt?
You fear that you will never write
another line that feels quite right?
Then drum your fingers, and find “feet”
to dance the line your digits beat!
Next, find a rhyme word that can pull
a second line — one trim but full —
from heart and mind and quivering hand
whether or not it’s what you “planned.”
When once you’ve got two lines that dance,
across your lips quick smiles will prance.
Where do these two lines want to go?
How step aside and let them flow?
If you rely on feet and rhyme
they’ll find you more lines, every time.
Say “Yes!” to their uncanny smarts —
well known for warming poets’ hearts!
They’ll often lead you to express
a thought or feeling with finesse
you did not know you had in you
until the rhyme pulled it in view.
Thus, you may open inner eyes
to see what’s true — for you. Surprise!
Formal Poet as a Whittler
The poet grips a block of oak
and chips at it with chiming blade
by feel, for rhymes it may evoke.
The lyric heft in hand is weighed
for spirit’s shapely escapade,
for fragrant lines that guide the eye
and ear — and voice to sing thereby.
Graying Catbird — Singing
Pinch me. Within a week I’ll be
a septuagenarian,
and though I’ve still got much esprit
to spend for goal posts not yet won,
the young folks hold that I am done.
They put me in the checkout line
and couldn’t care what I opine.
What I opine — if it’s from left
skull’s brain — myself I couldn’t care.
Of left I’d hardly feel bereft.
It’s right brain’s gifts I hope to dare
to bring to sunshine, open air:
Amazements mother tongue may wing
and felt intelligence may sing.
Mountain Laurel
Within our laurel’s blooms I spy by chance
two catbirds, improvising ear to ear,
as each upon the other’s art descants.
I stand in awe of how the two cohere.
Aware of me, perhaps, they flush, and clear
the laurel, soaring to our neighbor’s orchard —
and leave the scrawny poet in me tortured.
Thirst Drives Us All
To glimpse truth whole, in line and rhyme
which speaks (surprise!) to inner Eye
and Ear, rewards a poet’s climb
up stony brook-beds often dry.
And should one’s readers laugh or cry —
their parched thirsts slaked, so they can swallow —
the joyful poet toasts Apollo.
Change Pace Poetry 15: Strong Metaphors #2
Void of White
The void of white — before that first
impression hands have not rehearsed,
before the voice has found its chords
or fingers beat their keys to swords,
before each moves, creates anew —
most deeply frightens me. And you?
Arcs of Quarks?
What is this pleasure, making poems
from tabula rasa, from scratch?
From void’s deep nothingness, what homes
upon the sentient being’s thatch?
What lights it like a flaming match
and would consume it — yet ignites,
with grace, these words by bits and bytes?
What paces heart, darts inner eye,
reverbs in mind, rebounds from brain
through pen or keyboard fingers ply?
What vibes try voice cords, give free rein
to bone-and-air-wave ears’ domain?
What Zero Point Field’s “found-gone” quarks
delight us with their blinking arcs?
From a Long Pig’s Pen
A fellow asked me once, “What makes you tick?
Expressed in three words, neither more nor less?”
You’d think I’d know all my own bailiwick
but I’d not thought it through, I must confess.
No thoughts or feelings would stay put — I roped
and hog-tied lots of them, but most dodged off
my cagey pen, while others interloped.
So I gave up the game of philosophe.
The rods and cones of it come down to this:
By letting go obsessive hot pursuit
I draw myself away from that abyss
to slanting light, capricious breezes, a route:
Blank paper, meter, rhyme — so frangible —
my three are seeing, making tangible.
Form as Kindling
A poet may seek less from speech than embers,
from smoldering coals that shrink on his gray grate
until, with kindling, he some flame remembers.
What heartbeat-metered lines accelerate
his unsung Mother Tongue will celebrate
when inner chimes draw her to life with rhyme
well-matching both his past, and present, time.
Change Pace Poetry 14: Strong Metaphors
Springing Formal Tongues
“The poet who imposes rhyme at ends of lines just complicates his task,” said Freeverse. “Burns up time! Forget those wind-chimes rhyme creates. Dismiss that breeze which captivates, you say, one’s ears and nose and eyes. Throw out those rhymes in senses’ guise.
“What is mere
pleasure
in your stress of speech
against
your ‘feet,’
your ‘line’?
I hear a sing-song voice —
or less.
I sleep.
Ta-TUM-ta’s anodyne!
Don’t ask me drone
ta-TUM-ta’s whine.
Far better that I vote with feet.
Give me potatoes.
Give me meat.”
I said to Freeverse, “Think! Make sense!
It’s speech-stress springs the formal tongue
and heaves into the breeze its scents
and sights, its ear’s delights — when wrung
from pulsing lines the poet’s strung.
You hold in hand the poem, whole.
You feel its heartbeat, sense its soul.
“So you must dare to read with flair!
No formal poem’s a travel guide
in broken prose — look here, look there!
We need your conscious full-length stride
to call up feeling pain would hide,
strike water from the rock of doubt
and heal our wounds from inside out!”
Scrabbling for Scarlet Oaks
A poet scrabbles in his Mother Tongue,
lays down not words with letters scoring high,
but lines of words to hear what’s not yet sung
which — ringing true — will need no alibi.
With serendipity he stumbles on
those sensate words that rhyming lines evoke,
with images a meter spawns: clear-drawn
rough acorns which prefigure scarlet oak.
A reader reads across the meter’s beat
with speech-stress sounding cadenced counterpoint
inviting heart and mind to dance with feet.
The scrabbler’s and the reader’s work — conjoint —
conspire, creating out of clear bold air,
with Mother Tongue, her foursquare oak, mon cher.
Formal Poet as a Rooster
As a violin beneath one’s jaw
will resonate in the conch of ear,
spread gooseflesh through the player’s maw,
electrify his chakras’ sphere,
impel him toward a right-brained awe —
so may a formal chanticleer.
The horsehair bow of reading stress
contests each line — articulates
what’s drawn across pentam or less
(tetram or trim) — and celebrates
new vibes that “free verse” can’t express.
What un-taut string reverberates?
It’s speech-stress firing at the breech
ignites taut measured lines’ end chimes,
push-pulls at sense with feeling’s reach —
as poet (reader, hearer) times
out moss-thick tongues, cliché-gray speech,
and cries up dew-fresh paradigms.
Potter
For G.K.J.
Escaping the glaring sun, the heat’s ennui,
his soul mate — forty-three years plus — and he
explore The Shed to replace mugs they’d lost.
Nearby, two droning, throbbing fans exhaust
the shed-bound, moist, and fragrant earthy smell
of drying work five potters soon will sell.
They each move slowly, carefully appraise
a little vase that shines in a slate-gray glaze:
“Nasturtium nosegays would look nice in this,”
she says. He now recalls how she finds bliss
in hardy gentle flowers she re-seeds
each spring in barren clay, and gladly weeds.
She steps behind a potter at her wheel
who trims a bowl and adds more eye-appeal.
He sees, within his soul mate’s eager eyes,
a thirsting ardor she would minimize —
it’s clear they shop not for a mug or vase
but with a purer need she must embrace:
She has a yen to shape soft silicate,
extract from it what may authenticate
her gift for comely, strong design — that stole
she wears which births and clothes her maker’s soul,
gives thanks for every free-form gift of mud,
and consummates her clay-self’s trial by blood.
All One Has
For G.K.J., who holds that
art is not a competitive sport.
One’s character is all
one has, and it grows tall
against all droughts with a taproot
burlap cannot wrap.
One’s character’s revealed
in action one’s concealed
from ogling eyes’ cold praise,
from klieg lights’ hazy rays.
(The public will accept
clichés, and is adept
at avoiding deeper feeling —
although it thirsts for healing . . . .)
When unobserved, and free,
what does one do to see,
to be, make tangible
a hidden life that’s full?
To find and do that thing
emboldens one to sing —
art’s character impart,
its taproot got by heart.
Breaking Light
Her canvas backpack carried broken glass,
smashed bottles (soda, wine or beer) she chose
for tint from ghetto sidewalks clumped with grass.
A purplish blue or pink would re-compose
its shards beside those amber, red, or green,
and they a fresh new pattern would disclose.
Epoxied to her gesso boards, they’d sheen
beneath the gallery lights, no longer shards
but fresh bright wholes, compelling us to glean.
We too are artists. Each of us regards
with outer eyes while Inner Eye’s deep sight
construes — makes new — what brightest light bombards.
Contemporary Newborn’s Gaze
(After seeing, at Pump House Gallery, Hartford, Connecticut,
the sculpture in granite, “Solitude,” by Betty Gerich.)
This polished sculpture well-depicts a Mom
whose bearing — shoulder, nape, bowed head — is shown
to flow from swaddled child in cradling palm.
The tiny infant’s skull is still a cone
just springing back from birth canal’s wet vise.
Expectant eyes gaze up, entreat Mom’s own.
The viewer kneels to grasp the newborn’s prize,
to gaze past forearm, breast and collarbone
to face — which has no smile, no lips, no eyes.
Knot-Popping Art
For G.K.J.
She, the hydraulic engineer,
thrusts to and fro the three ton ram
as he hoists logs so they will shear
against the wedge, and not just jam.
He must stay conscious — that is key —
and keep his palms and fingers clear
of log ends (where they’d like to be)
or he will pay a price too dear.
The art’s in turning from the wedge,
and to the ram, the log’s knot ends.
The length of log gives wedge an edge —
knot-popping leverage that it lends.
Knot-popping art between these two?
Compassion. In each rendezvous.
Waxwing, Turkey, Dove
The cedar waxwing, fragrant from her bath
in curbside dust, struck with a dull petard.
Her beak, her crown, her wings on upward path
imprint our picture window, which had barred
her from our home, built far too avant-garde.
We boast that Art one-ups dull nature’s frame.
These sunlit dust lines other views proclaim.
We seldom take the turkey’s point of view.
Slaughtered and plucked, racked belly up, legs tied,
its skin browned crisp, there’s nothing it can do
to reassert its dignity and pride.
Who stops to think, when hungry, goggle-eyed? —
before the asteroid did reptiles in,
these feathered flying lizards owned the inn!
Too close, caged doves contest the sole swing perch.
They’ll not defer, through courtesy or love,
or yield the swing, though cage may wildly lurch.
Nor is the dove content to push and shove,
or on those talons lace a boxing glove.
The one is mirrored in the other’s eyes —
will shred that image ’til the meeker dies.
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