Wrist Deep

Wrote a decent poem today; lost it. Promise to find it. Promise also (half-heartedly) not to write any more poems where the last line negates the whole poem.

Billy

has trouble with metaphors;
woke up one day with a hangover
and made a milkshake from the literal dog
(you should have seen him shaving it)
that bit him, coughed it down sip by sip;

tried to look at the bright side
he stared at the sun, like his mother said he shouldn’t,
went blind in six minutes; saw only white from then on.

At every new position he got,
spent weeks literally testing the water
from the tap. “Is that chlorine? A tinge a rust I taste?”
He lost many jobs that way;

Even had trouble with slang,
which isn’t quite the same, but close;
called the record store to price some records,
fifteen bucks, the guy on the line had said,

so called his uncle in Montana
where the elk are plentiful;
never got it right.
Billy, the name I picked
because it sounds like no one in particular.

Billy, the metaphor himself,
he cannot understand.