faint shades of what should be

Hunkered in a hole
Captain said to no character
in particular, “whatever
could’ve possibly possessed me
when I signed up for Creation.”

One smudged adjective said,
“all of us are suckers.
Guess we gotta hand it
to the diabolical crew
who designed those posters.”

Captain resisted signs
that might betray agreement
but he finally had to nod
and said, “yeah, those poster artists
did a damn good job. Look at us.”

Meanwhile a metaphor
whose spirits were normally high
but had earlier fallen mute,
called attention to itself,
by saying, “can’t take it no more.”

As if Captain’s concerns
were not weighty enough, he spent
leadership energies to keep
the metaphor from cracking up,
though not the way laughing means.

“yes dear metaphor, this is hard.
None of us exactly enjoy
being stuck so long in this rut.
But we’re already low enough
on similes as it is.”

Metaphor began to mutter
(and a bit bitterly), “can’t take
having to hunker in this hole
without at least taking a shot
at running for a fantasy.”

Before another character
could stop it, the metaphor jumped
out of the hole they hunkered in,
and would’ve charged across the page,
but Reality shot it down.