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 *** 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 ****** by a thesaurus
That wants everything to be a synonym for “****.”

So I’ve got cliché stuck to my brain
Like gum beneath a classroom seat,
Like ******* that I can’t turn away from,
Disgusted though I may be,
Because everybody’s doing it.

Toilet paper,
                You are the only one who
                Puts up with all my crap.
                You listen when no one else will
                To all my groaning and moaning.
                You share all my private moments
                And follow me from the bowels of hell
                Into the plumbing of despair.

Toilet paper,
                You have seen my most private parts,
                The dark crevices of my flesh,
                Where no one will go.
                And should I sneeze
                You will wipe my nose.
                You will take away my filth,
                And your softness can embrace
                The sewage of my soul
                And the flakes of flesh
                That my heart has discarded.

Toilet paper,
                You are the only one I know
                Who kisses my ***.

Girl, you can’t keep treating love
Like kindergarten.

It’s not time to play with plastic hearts,
Or treat rolling in the mud with the same
Respect that you show the ice cream man.
I don’t care if love is already
Messy like Hiroshima and Pompeii,
The walls don’t need your handprint,
Covered in the blood from
Some poor boy’s heart,
All over the walls.

You crawl along the floors
Swallowing the shiny silver pieces,
Of stranger-*** and even stranger dreams,
And call them romance.
But *** is slapping glue
On that random soul you find.
But when you leave in the morning,
He rips a piece of your laughter,
And you rip a piece of his wife.

Your heart has been slowly carved and
Hallowed out like a Jack-O-Lantern
That makes a very disappointing thud
When some **** smashes it against the concrete.

Now Girl, I’m not saying that
You need to color inside the lines.
I’m just saying that you have to stop
Shoving crayons up your nose
To try to draw hearts
On the gray matter of your brain.

His shirt is too small.
Not too small in the sense that he is a ******* who
Should have bought the right size.
No shirt seems to fit the pit stains
Swallowing his arms with the perfume
Of first date nerves and the awkwardness
Of the soggy must of locker-room-penises.

His beard is patchy.
Like a boy sprawled along the floor of the barber shop
Collecting bits of people to glue to his face.
It resembles the ***** patch of grown men
Running their hands over rough denim
Until their crotch all over his face.

He has Jesus tattooed on his arm.
As if he is some new-age-badass Christian
Who is thuggin’ for the Lord.
But Jesus was probably far from his mind,
Probably all the way over in Jerusalem
Shouting like a refrigerator buzz,
While his macho representative
Swallowed his first ****.
As far back as he could go.
As deep as he could go.

He wears glasses and button up shirts.
So he probably looks out of place in the circle
Of drug addicts and alcoholics where
It only takes twelve steps to stomp on your soul
Like a child kicking up rainwater from puddle to puddle.
They have a dance that has only twelve steps
To sway all over the grave of your homosexuality.

Lee was over twice my age
When he brought me by my hand
Into his house, best described
As a two story trailer that
Permitted the perfume of a bloated corpse
To still haunt the air like burnt popcorn.

My whole mind was pulsing
As he led me into his bedroom.
I felt adrenaline painting my mind
With the static of dread and adventure
Stuffing the sound of my heartbeat
Like sirens driving away
                                                Waning
                                                                Waning
                                                                                Waning

He sat me down as if he were a waiter
And he’d be right back for my drink order.
I’d probably order ***** if I drank
But right now I need a soda for the sweetness.
I don’t remember him sitting down next to me
Because I was tunneling through the carpet with my eyes.
At some point I recognized the grunting on the TV
As the same purr of the demons in my closet.

I felt a hand grab my jeans roughly,
Like he wanted a fistful of popcorn with the movie,
And my pants shrunk around my hips with fear
As the hand began to scrub them,
As if it were possible to wash away
The last fortification of innocence left.

This is what a man does.
He finds his prey and kills it quick
And then meticulously takes the time to clean the corpse,
An irony coupled with the loving fondling of tiny organs.

He gripped my hand.
Not aggressive or forceful, but more akin to
Merlin leading Arthur’s to Excalibur’s golden hilt.
I expected to feel his denim as he felt mine
But I found the rubbery tingle of my nightmare.
The skin of my arm began to curl into itself
As if I had reached slowly into a cold shower
And I could not prevent the dreary progression into the ice.

This what a woman does.
She yields to his strength and calloused hands,
As she yields to let him inside her,
And yields to release his spawn into the world.

I didn’t know what to do anymore.
So he began to pull of my jeans,
Slowly at first, but he began jerking from frustration.

This is what a man does.
His missing father and Y-Chromosome
Compel him to lead:
The cows to the barn to be milked
And his bride into the dimly lit marriage bed.

I follow the melding flesh on the screen
As my hieroglyphic guides into the maze
And I find myself falling to my knees
Saying a silent prayer before being devoured.
I felt the water retreat into my eyes in an attempt
To obscure the last picture of my virility.

Because this what a woman does.
She bows at the altar of a ******* god,
Swallowing the last crumb of pride she has left
After he feet were bound again
                                                                And again
I don’t remember the rest.
And maybe that’s what a woman does,
That’s the only way she would follow him.
I remember him leaving to clean up.
I begged God to let me cry,
As the generations of women before me.
I hoped the tears would wash away the black tar
I could feel clinging to my once unstained skin.
If I could catch them in my hands
I would rinse my mouth out with melancholy.
And this is what a woman does.