Ode to Insight or Metaphor; or, Musical Nipples
I think that my greatest insight came
when I recognized that writing a truly
horrible poem would be just as difficult
as writing a great one, so I started:
"His hands slid down her side
like the ball of butter slides off a stack
of pancakes, sticky with
sin." But I stopped writing when the theory
of relativity dawned on me.
We will never know how many licks it takes
to get to the center of a tootsie pop. A lick cannot be
measured uniformly. Some things
are different for everyone, and tongues
are one of those things. Everything is relative. And my poem
would have to be to Metaphor, the only thing
worth writing with.
But when I got to the center of my tootsie pop, I remembered
that I don't like tootsie rolls. So I decided to have an epiphany
that actually matters: Things get rough,
and I have to keep writing.
I grimaced and started chewing, nearly choking
on the brown stuff that the members of the Chocolate
family would never accept as one of their own
when the next lines of the poem hit me.
"When she walked away he was filled with disappointment,
like the unlucky triplet baby
who lost his mother's game
of breast-feeding musical chairs."
When my brother walked by and saw what I wrote, he said,
"Can't you just shorten that to Musical Nipples?
Seriously, this is bad, just focus on
nipples, more people will enjoy it." Even though he had
a decent point, his disapproval hit me like a chair
hits the head of a professional wrestler. I must not let that
chair break me.
Oh Insight, you are like the gorgeous girl walking past me,
in a green dress made by an Italian guy
with good hair, too beautiful and pure
for me ever to have.
You are beautiful and pure, too,
just like his brown curls.
And Metaphor, you are her smoking hot friend, usually wearing jeans
that make me contemplate life, who ignores
the whispers about your sexuality. You can be whatever
you want, that's the beauty of you. I will accept both of you
for whatever you are, but you do not usually notice me.
However, every now and then, you both see me longing
for the two (or either) of you and smile
at me and it is enough
to make me keep trying to take
the two of you home.
Sure enough, when I saw both of your exceptionally white
sets of teeth once more, the final lines of my poem
came to me like a dog
finally recognizing that
I never threw the tennis ball at all.
Sent as a joke to poetry.com
