Cliché is the glue of our bubblegum-flavored MTV culture,
Because we order language to go and with extra cheesy.
We pour words into televisions and radios,
And sent those waves to space.
We do this because the very vastness of our language
Is oozing from our ears like a runny nose,
And the torrents of tongues cannot seem
To penetrate the walls of the Jersey Shore.
Sometimes at night, Katie Couric weeps.
She bawls into the darkness when she realizes
That most of her viewers are waiting for her to shut up,
Like parents waiting for the baby to fall asleep,
Because there is sex to be had
And maybe Charlie Sheen will say something funny tonight.
We are tweeting away our TV-dinner monologues.
The cardinals miss our singing,
The way my “s” swishes against my “h,”
And the slightest stutter of my best friend,
Like a drum-solo-blue-jazz-soul-snare.
There is a river of modified nouns
This world has not had the privilege
To have run over their naked bodies.
Words that are chocolate-flavored like “cinnamon”
Curl up in your lap and scratch
The deepest part of your throat,
Where syntax has gone to hide away.
This river has been damned by a thesaurus
That wants everything to be a synonym for “sexy.”
So I’ve got cliché stuck to my brain
Like gum beneath a classroom seat,
Like pornography that I can’t turn away from,
Disgusted though I may be,
Because everybody’s doing it.