All round me are words, and words and words, they grow on me like leaves, they never
Seem to stop their slow growing from within, But I tell myself, words
Are a nuisance, beware of them, they Can be so many things, a
Chasm where running feet must pause, to Look, a sea with paralyzing waves,
A blast of burning air or,
A knife most willing to cut your best Friend’s throat… words are a nuisance, but. They grow on me like leaves on a tree, they never run to stop their coming,
From a silence, somewhere deep within…

Which one of the following is not a metaphor employed in the poem?

The correct option is a throat.

To identify which of the options is not a metaphor used for words in the poem, we can analyze the text line by line:
1. a knife: The poem states that words "Can be so many things... A knife most willing to cut your best Friend’s throat". Here, words are directly compared to a knife, making it a metaphor representing the destructive potential of words.
2. a sea: The poem describes words as "a sea with paralyzing waves". This is a direct metaphorical comparison equating words to a sea.
3. a tree: The speaker says that words "grow on me like leaves on a tree". This uses the structure of a tree and its leaves to metaphorically describe how words continuously emerge and grow from within.
4. a throat: The word "throat" appears in the phrase "cut your best Friend’s throat". It is not used as a metaphor to describe or represent words; rather, it is a literal detail within the metaphor of the knife. Therefore, it is not a metaphor employed in the poem.