I was fascinated by a poem on the radio where an extended metaphor was unsettled by a simile in which the thing metaphorised was likened to its original self (extended description of horses coming up beach, likened in one line to waves).

... and god just a calm blood-donor.

the dimwitted bark, the childlike fly
he watched
the toothmarks of his shoe
everything summer-loose.

behind her brow, a pearl of pain

when she shut her eyes she saw it, white

as snowwhite swine.

the gun was her blood on her


her gun was the blood on me


the gunned blood



on her chests the drip of little breasts, and mine staring at hers, the gaze of the nipples head on. My breasts are waltzed pears, they have the look of having danced, they are capered nips.

But no they are not looking at each other, these albino eyes, these soft bulbed pink buttoned eyes - no, the pupils are divergent, wall-eyed, exotropic. And more and less than blind. But some flesh has sight they say - Medusa's locks, of course, and even Merlin's tongue, or so I remember dreaming.