Meet Me Tonight on Metaphor StreetBy Vivek V. Narayan
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Meet me tonight on Metaphor Street
past the dead ends of blunt sentences
beyond the sordid dark cul-de-sac
of peeling plaster and crumbling bricks,
in an orchard of fruit and snakes.
Meet me tonight on Metaphor Street
where the traffic lights are forever
yellow—slow down or speed up—and the
birds sit, waiting, forever, for you.
Leave home looking posh, in an armoured
limousine built like a tank, rented from
Articulate Cabs—well-received by
the well-liked, and well-heeled—wearing a
velvet vest of vowels, studded with stone-
sparkling sibilants, consonants as
corals and strapped-on stilletoes
of wit: deadly to those whose dreams you,
softly gently fondly, tread upon.
Wave goodbye once, fondly, once more in pain,
but never look back, for you are to
meet me tonight on Metaphor Street.
Leave behind Comfort, the city of
your childhood: take leave of the limo
take off the velvet vest and stones
sibilant and coral consonants,
keep the stillettoes handy: wit, your
weapon, still deadly to those who tread
on your dreams, softly gently fondly.
Turn left off Comfort into lights that
announce, flickering, Risk Alley, where
garbage bins, meowing cats, smell of piss
form the backdrop for beggars shooting
up the day's wages in a black haze.
Head towards Comprehension Bridge, but
avoid its vulgar hoardings selling
Happiness (Hurry! Buy 1 Get 1 Free!), and
its garish shop windows displaying blank-
faced, terror-struck teddy bears stuffed with
hot air from Cute Profundities Inc.
Wait, instead, under the Bridge, a quiet
place, where darkness is a cheery dog,
where people whizz past without a second
thought, mistaking vapidity for
contentment, splashing puddles of Lost
Opportunities on the waiters.
I'll come by in a scruffy little car,
a dented old left-hand drive with peeling
paint from Curiosity Motors Inc.
We could find a quiet spot and make, in
the back seat, meaning—quick and dirty—
or we could go over to my place
an empty three room flat, which you and
I will furnish with sofas moulded the
shape of your back from Two Shared Lives.
And some from Little Domesticities:
kitchen stuff where we'll cook up cunning
metaphors and spicy similes.
Bed from Making Meaning Together
and soft yellow lights from Infinite
Possibilities. In my scruffy
left-hand drive from Curiosity, you,
discovering a hollow on my
nape the size of your palm, asked me if
I was one who knew Metaphor Street.
“It's easy enough to discover,”
I bragged. “Just look for the traffic lights
with three yellow lights—slow down for some,
speed up for others—park, and plunge in
to the narrow street of treacherous
cobblestone where your stilletoes of
wit get stuck in the cracks underfoot.
A dark narrow cobblestone street, a
two-way fast-moving, hustling street you
must walk, watching traffic lights, all three
yellow, exploding into pigeons,
a million at a time, taking home
a message each to planets, each home
to a million at a time, planets
of meaning—shared, infinite, alive--
born in orchards of fruit and snakes.”
Meet me tonight on Metaphor Street
where meanings explode into millions
of pigeons all eager to fly to
new homes in millions of planets.
Meet me tonight on Metaphor Street
the two-way path with three yellow lights.
They say it is lit up tonight with
soft yellow lights filled with infinite
possibilities of new meaning.
past the dead ends of blunt sentences
beyond the sordid dark cul-de-sac
of peeling plaster and crumbling bricks,
in an orchard of fruit and snakes.
Meet me tonight on Metaphor Street
where the traffic lights are forever
yellow—slow down or speed up—and the
birds sit, waiting, forever, for you.
Leave home looking posh, in an armoured
limousine built like a tank, rented from
Articulate Cabs—well-received by
the well-liked, and well-heeled—wearing a
velvet vest of vowels, studded with stone-
sparkling sibilants, consonants as
corals and strapped-on stilletoes
of wit: deadly to those whose dreams you,
softly gently fondly, tread upon.
Wave goodbye once, fondly, once more in pain,
but never look back, for you are to
meet me tonight on Metaphor Street.
Leave behind Comfort, the city of
your childhood: take leave of the limo
take off the velvet vest and stones
sibilant and coral consonants,
keep the stillettoes handy: wit, your
weapon, still deadly to those who tread
on your dreams, softly gently fondly.
Turn left off Comfort into lights that
announce, flickering, Risk Alley, where
garbage bins, meowing cats, smell of piss
form the backdrop for beggars shooting
up the day's wages in a black haze.
Head towards Comprehension Bridge, but
avoid its vulgar hoardings selling
Happiness (Hurry! Buy 1 Get 1 Free!), and
its garish shop windows displaying blank-
faced, terror-struck teddy bears stuffed with
hot air from Cute Profundities Inc.
Wait, instead, under the Bridge, a quiet
place, where darkness is a cheery dog,
where people whizz past without a second
thought, mistaking vapidity for
contentment, splashing puddles of Lost
Opportunities on the waiters.
I'll come by in a scruffy little car,
a dented old left-hand drive with peeling
paint from Curiosity Motors Inc.
We could find a quiet spot and make, in
the back seat, meaning—quick and dirty—
or we could go over to my place
an empty three room flat, which you and
I will furnish with sofas moulded the
shape of your back from Two Shared Lives.
And some from Little Domesticities:
kitchen stuff where we'll cook up cunning
metaphors and spicy similes.
Bed from Making Meaning Together
and soft yellow lights from Infinite
Possibilities. In my scruffy
left-hand drive from Curiosity, you,
discovering a hollow on my
nape the size of your palm, asked me if
I was one who knew Metaphor Street.
“It's easy enough to discover,”
I bragged. “Just look for the traffic lights
with three yellow lights—slow down for some,
speed up for others—park, and plunge in
to the narrow street of treacherous
cobblestone where your stilletoes of
wit get stuck in the cracks underfoot.
A dark narrow cobblestone street, a
two-way fast-moving, hustling street you
must walk, watching traffic lights, all three
yellow, exploding into pigeons,
a million at a time, taking home
a message each to planets, each home
to a million at a time, planets
of meaning—shared, infinite, alive--
born in orchards of fruit and snakes.”
Meet me tonight on Metaphor Street
where meanings explode into millions
of pigeons all eager to fly to
new homes in millions of planets.
Meet me tonight on Metaphor Street
the two-way path with three yellow lights.
They say it is lit up tonight with
soft yellow lights filled with infinite
possibilities of new meaning.
Vivek V. Narayan is a theatre director, playwright, and performance scholar, whose research is on caste and anti-caste politics in south India. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies, as well as a Ph.D. Minor in Anthropology at Stanford University. He is an alumnus of Royal Holloway, University of London, where he completed MA Theatre Direction on a Charles Wallace India Trust Award. His theatre work has been staged in India, the UK, and the US. Directorial credits include Ends and Beginnings (2007-08), based on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Girish Karnad’s The Fire and the Rain (2004), as well as the new plays An Arrangements of Shoes (2011) by Abhishek Majumdar, A Flame in Hero's Tower (2009) by Andy Dickinson, and Pestilences (2012), a multilingual production inspired by Albert Camus's The Plague. In 2010, he wrote Walking to the Sun for the Mumbai-based Theatre Arpana, directed by Sunil Shanbag at the Tagore Utsav in Kolkata. Most recently, he directed Caryl Churchill's Far Away at Stanford (2016). He is currently a Graduate Dissertation Fellow for 2018-2019 at the Center for Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.