expresses through metaphor

though art is, in the end, monotonous,
something pushes through the filmy membrane
to turn your head like a car backfiring in slow motion
or the way your chin might tilt on a lover's fingers.

here where the suburbs stretch
for thousands of kilometres,
we leave the beaches for the hinterlands,
dividing our notions of history
to re-invent the desert
as we slip through a cappuccino's thin crust.

if we start again we find a painting called
my day presents the street & never paint it.
you watch as it guides you like a pop song
& my heart attempts a looser simile,
trying to believe these things the poem
expresses through metaphor,
guessing they're alive.

it's the third day of spring
& your life is a pile of quotations.
my face drifts off on an ad.

(Ars Poetica V, 1997)

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ted@magicdog.com -- 1 May 2000