Metaphors Quotes

“Apple Core   Outside the morning is cold. He sits at his desk, his fingers motionless on the keyboard. A blanket covers his shoulders and a coffee mug half full of soy milk and Folgers loiters to his right. The surrounding room is strewn with papers, some failed attempts, some nothing at all. Unsealed envelopes and empty packs of cigarettes, unfinished books and drained beer bottles, a dictionary and a worn notebook mixed in with laundry, plastic bags, and cardboard boxes. He sits and stares at his   computer screen, no more than a title punched out along the top of the page. Thoughts swirl around him and the clock face blinks overhead. His speakers lie silent, his printer still. A burned out candle sits next to unopened whiskey. Notes taped to every surface are lorded over by an Easter card signed with familiar names. They speak to the urgency of the world around him. His breakfast is left unfinished, except for the apple, whose core he has wrapped in a napkin and tossed on top of his overflowing wastebasket.”
― T. O'Hara, Metaphors

“Irony   All I want is a pretty, drunk bitch to come home to me when I am reading poetry and dreaming of the stars.”
― T. O'Hara, Metaphors

“The Railway Man Johnny was a railway man. He took his orders from Captain Savage. When Captain Savage became too gruff, Johnny said, To hell with you, and started his own railway. Johnny started his railway by the lake. The water was clean and there were birds above and fish below. He moved his railway then to the mountains where everything could be seen, only in minute proportions. The desert is where Johnny went next and there he became parched. But there was beauty to be had. He loved the desert but knew he had to let it go. When he moved his railway to the forest, there were trees, and he had to work to gain ground. When he made it free of the forest, he found himself at a plain. There were grasses and antelope and a prairie breeze which cooled the face and stiffened the resolve. But Johnny could find no reason to chart his railway across such a place. And then Johnny returned to the lake. And there he sat for a day or two. And Johnny gave up his railway and became a fisher and a watcher of birds. And he said, To hell with Captain Savage. And he lived out his days in peace and tranquility and never bothered the world again.”
― T. O'Hara, Metaphors

“Beauty   We were just the two of us, alone with her poetry and her wine, and I lay against her as she read and stayed in contact when she handed the volume to me for my turn. She was soft like her voice, though she read with earnesty, as if this were the last night these certain poems could be given life. As the wine dwindled, so did the verse and, as gradual as it was sudden, she was up and moving away and I was left with an empty wine glass and a book of poems I cannot remember for the life of me.”
― T. O'Hara, Metaphors

“He wasn’t looking for someone to love. He was looking only for someone to love him, so he could go on loving the other.”
― T. O'Hara, Metaphors