On Metaphors.

The metaphor is spying on me,
In the classroom, outside of the classroom.
Mr. Cortez is in the living room of his house,
He is afraid to go out-
He teaches Spanish to ninth graders, to college
Students, and gets a lot of money.
All he cares about is the money,
The feeling of money in his hands, the feeling
Of the wind through the mountain.
He knows about destruction; the destruction of
The rain forest, he knows about the peace,
And the beginning and end of it.
He has given the land to the man in the black
Hat, who looks like Abe Lincoln, but is not;
The metaphor is spying on me, and is jealous
Of my accomplishments, but accomplishments
I have none, and so she is after the fruit
I harvest in the winter.
Without food, the human race will perish,
Dissolve into the big nothing because it cannot
Love, cannot die; is forced to wonder why.
Old men walk around old coffee shops;
They are only old because of the telling of it,
The teller of tales, the redemptions of things.
Everyone is a bully, they like to bully and be reminded
Of a time when bulls and deer and the antelope were
Free, and not chained as they are now;
That they are not chained to film, that they are not guilty,
That they do not wonder lonely down barren
Marshes in the summer, and the summer is not wet
With dew, and that goodness is nothing, means nothing;
Everything is a language, spun of spider webs.