"cliched" poems
Be Positive
Because
Being negative
Does not take you anywhere
Being negative does not make you positive.
..
..
so
just be positive..
though it's a bit cliched
a bit old fashioned to repeat..
It still makes lot more difference
in a word which is
+ve.
Oct 23, 2015
Oct 23, 2015 at 4:18 AM UTC
Spring memes
Cuddle under iced sheets
Seduced by frigid lies
And a burberry scarf;
As snow ploughs rule the runway
Glazed rosebuds,
Thimbled thorns,
Strawberries wrapped in cashmere;
And a carrot-nosed character dressed in white,
Play the fiddle
Naked limbs creep
Into the sky,
Seeking green accessories
For fashion week in June
Amidst global miles of warmth
Grandfather's clock
Ticks wisely ahead,
Hands free of politic;
And the memes of Spring delayed
Propagate through verse
And cliched controversies...
Eclipsed by tweets from the Black Sea.
~ P
(#TheMemesOfSpringDelayed)
(3/7/2014)
Mar 7, 2014
Mar 7, 2014 at 5:22 PM UTC
Her arms semaphore fat triangles,
Pudgy HANDS bunched on layered hips
Where bones idle under years of fatback
And lima beans.
Her jowls shiver in accusation
Of crimes cliched by Repetition.
Her children, strangers
To childhood's TOYS, play
Best the games of darkened doorways,
Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of
Other people's property.
Too fat to *****
Too mad to work,
Searches her dreams for the
Lucky sign and walks bare-handed
Into a den of bereaucrats for her portion.
'They don't give me welfare.
I take it.'
6.5k
2 years, 5 months, 19 days.
That's the last time a man
Looked me in my eyes
And told me
He loved me.
Nearly one thousand days have passed
Since someone looked at me
Like I was his whole world.
And now I'm at the point
Where I wonder if I'll be alone
Forever,
Not like the cliches,
The woman who chooses a career over a family,
Or the crazed lady who clings to her cats...
No, just a girl
Growing into a young woman
Who doesn't even remember
What it feels like to have someone
Love her.
Not sure if I've really ever even been loved,
At least not like it happens in the movies.
I've continued to pine hard,
Chasing the affection of conflicted souls
Who never bother to appreciate me,
Those cliched types who are
"Too damaged" to really love someone.
Sometimes I wonder
If I'm gonna be able to accept love
If I finally find it,
My fragmented soul having grown
An allergy to kind gestures,
Compliments,
Or anything that actually might be deemed
Indicative of affection.
Slowly sinking down to the baseboards,
Rotted and gnarled roots
Clinging deep to the underground,
My body dissolved into an anterior realm of
Cynicism
As I grasp the realities of my own
Unrequited love,
My yearning to demand more,
Tied up and twisted with my
Fear to stop settling
And actually obtain
"better."
2 years, 5 months, 19 days.
I'm just hoping it doesn't take me
As long
To look at the
Golden brown eyes that I
See in the mirror and tell me
I love me
Enough to not care who
Else might.
Dec 5, 2014
Dec 5, 2014 at 12:58 AM UTC
I know the cliched answer;
good is more powerful than evil!
Yet, a newspaper filled with positive
will not sell a copy
standing next to an article
filled with drama and bloodshed.
Same in life -
try and toe the line,
good and sacrificial 99% of the time.
Yet, for that one small mistake
I'm crucified and left to the dogs
Chastised and unforgiven.
Why the hell do I even try?
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 1:01 PM UTC
To the ancient Egyptians
hieroglyphics looked like
IMAX-HD blockbusters;
Renaissance art is so real
it's like the Holy Family's
really right in front of u!
gamers & pervs lose their
egos to avatars & **** -
the surplus visual culture
strikes future generations
like silent movies today;
commercials are empty &
expensive; drama, cliched
stereotypes for the money;
gone are the days of Baal
& Dionysus, & gone are the
ecstatic frenzies, gone are
realism & surrealism; space
is our new home, now forget
everything u've ever known
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 7:16 AM UTC
They say follow the rules
There's a predetermined path
Disregard the heart
Obey the minds morality
But choose your own destiny
No more cliched love stories
No xy algebra , but 1+1 math
Go back to a more simplistic start
Monopoly of cloned society slaves
Working for similar goals until their graves
Discrepancy is rejected
Individuality gets neglected
Pour your soul into the ocean now
The deeper it goes
The safer it gets
Watch it fall as the sun bastes on the waves
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 2:17 PM UTC
I read a story today.
Like any good story it was layered upon the premise of the love between two perfect strangers.
Like any good story it was about romance that blossomed... and then flourished as quick as it was fierce.
Like any good story it spun a far-reaching web of hope and longing whilst still holding on to the uncompromising nature of responsibility to one's dreams.
Like any good story, there was a spot of intimacy. The gradual build up of physical and psychological attraction that culminated in the merging of two, was nothing less than tasteful.
Like any good story there was conflict.
But it was not the cliched garnish that involved oppressive parenting styles nor glaring racial differences.
It did not rope in the overused notion of "we're so different, we're two parts of a whole".
It was... a beautiful conflict.
One that does not allow the audience to choose sides.
In fact, it encourages you to think inward and root for both parties - be them together or apart.
If anything at all, it boils down to the pursuit of each individual's happiness.
Like any good modern day story, it ended with a breath held in a gasp. You hold it there for the longest moment and you have to close that breath with a heavy sigh of loss.
It also leaves you with ample room to deliberate the "what if" factor.
Happy endings last a while but sad ones... they rip a hole in you that almost never closes...
and you cannot help but go back to read it over and over again in the hopes of finding the elusive right answer or the best alternate ending.
Like any good story it was tailored in my fit. Because I envisioned myself in it. I got consumed by it. Overwhelmed by it, enough to almost break the pipes.
And like any good story, it's worth keeping...
In heart and in mind.
So I read a story today. And I didn't want it to end.
Jan 3, 2017
Jan 3, 2017 at 6:26 AM UTC
Should
never have to
face the
thickened
sticky
white and
creamy
cheesy
cliched
wrath and
terror
of her
mother's smile.
Should
never have to
flinch
inside
behind walls
made of
bricks
behind
barricades
of
stone
wrapped
in
bubble-wrap
at her
mother's
glance.
Eyes
should
never
hold
so
much
power
within
the
flash
of
discontent.
She should not
live
on a boat
always
biding time
waiting for
storms to pass
for
waves to
curl
and crack down
upon her
head
down into
the sand
that
holds her
down into
the dark
that
kisses her
goodnight
down into
the brutal
flick
the tap on the
glass
clench
of
the fingers
twitch of
the jaw
should never
have to
wait
for the
mother's roar
to
echo
through the
chamber
of her heart
until
silence
envelopes
her soul
and she
can sleep
without
fear.
Should
never
fear
her
mother's
evening breath
the
gentle and
stilling
exhale
a sigh
a brittle
and
glassed sound
that shatters
against her
tightly
pursed
lips
locked
mouth.
Should never
tell the heart
to
quiet down
and let
her run
like a
good
child
ignoring
the warning
bells
which
everyone else
seems to ignore
the words
that leave
her
stubborn
lips
in the
joke she
tells
the story
she
preaches
the hesitated
eye
widening
limerick
the expected
story
to tell
her
friends
her
mother's
wrath
tastes like
fire in
her belly
sulphur in
her throat
and
metallic
lingerings
of
biting
her tongue
to
suppress
the
screams
'what can you expect'
'my mother gets like that'
'she attacked me'
'but its okay'
'I was stubborn'
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 7:19 AM UTC
We used to be so uncompromised,
Our words didn't have some double meaning,
Something deeming,
That we were more than we were willing to admit.
I could look you in the eyes without that feeling,
Without my thoughts wheeling,
Away from the possibility of having to commit.
You and I were not some cliched affair,
But now we are something I thought I could not bare,
And I fear,
I fear that we have been compromised,
By those double meanings,
Those feelings,
Deeming,
That we are more than we are willing to admit.
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 2:59 AM UTC
For the record, I suppose it should be stated I lost my soul in Vegas.
I would love to go back there and find it among those glittering lights and buffet tables of never-ending artful desserts.
It's funny that all I really remember are those pretty desserts and fried mashed potatoes.
I want those things back.
I'm like a raver with those lights.
I want to consume them.
I want to glow in my pores.
Not the cliched glow that wraps itself around the impregnated many,
but the glow that comes from sitting next to neon for too long.
That it could somehow stain you.
Rub off like fairy dust on skin.
That I could fly away due to its energy or wishful thinking.
Take me back to Vegas,
where they still hand that out for free by the boatload.
I need not gamble.
I need not glad-hand.
I would simply sit idly by the buzzing of pinks and blues and greens and reds.
And me and those cheap 1920's lights will have a moment,
a moment I can share with the cocktail waitress who asks me for the third time if I'm sure I don't need a little refresher drink.
Apr 25, 2013
Apr 25, 2013 at 10:59 PM UTC
the body falls soft
curves collapsing on the edge of
bedspread tangled in cliched prison
escape ropes
tied loose like old tendon,
we are all but used.
I feel the force of Fibonacci
spiraling between ribs
and pelvis, golden ratios
divining skin,
1 to 1.616
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 8:09 PM UTC
Cult popularism overtakes my brain
Conformity rushing unwillingly, stiflingly, down my throat
The literature of the mind taken from me
By my own devices
The lure of the cliched mass' is oblivion
Fufillment of an expected mold
Individuality of thought drains away
May my overthinking of all be lost
In this teenage stereotype
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 9:15 AM UTC
I am in cold. I watch that garish ward brimming with false light. Bleached air from his lips touching hers. He hides in her mane, sterile and alone. Why is it so hard, such an insurmountable task for you to see how I lather my face with paint each day just to smile at you?
My face, my heart, my mind not a blank canvas that I hide with these diluted pastels but a deep, rich chorus of colors and oils that were never meant to be hidden. But the ward will never know.
There are thoughts and opinions rolling like a torrent behind this mask I call a face. This world was against me from day one, don’t you dare say I’ve given way to cynicism. Nor optimism, pessimism, or God-forsaken realism. Can't I think the earth is beautiful, God is good, I am right, and people are wrong without someone putting an -ism behind me? Of course not. That's narcissism. Egoism. Egalitarianism.
It is what I unknowingly wrote across my mask. But I never chose to attend this outdated ball, masquerades are cliched. Pure romanticism...surrealism, the kin of commercialism whose visage is a polychromatic wheel of logotypes that you just have to know en masse.
What if I stop believing that compassion Himself can hate me? No, no that's atheism. Agnosticism. And if I'm better than someone because He said so then that is monotheism in all it's delicate flavors.
Can't I breathe alone in a quiet corner? Isolationism. Can't I want to simply be a follower, and think about life, literature, and art? Incomprehensible, that would be totalitarianism, absolutism, authoritarianism. What if I want to give God all the power He gave us, and watch the world change? Fascism. Revolutionism. Extremism, because releasing the wheel is extremism. Existentialism.
And what if I choose to remove the mask, break the levees, release the floodgates, my thoughts and opinions, never watch my tongue, and speak the world as it is: A capital M-madman's schism of logic and faith. As it has always been, and always will be. I will always be in love with the counterfeit ward. And yes, there's a label for that: Catastrophism.
So I watch Beauty and his Beast touching in fluorescence. Bleached breath, save for the smoke of his lungs in hers. Sterile and alone; I am in cold, and cold hurts me.
Mar 4, 2012
Mar 4, 2012 at 3:15 AM UTC
The sun shines on us all, as well as the rain
Torrential downpours of pain, we lose and we gain
We veer into cliched territory to verbalize our response to more tragedies that a lost world continues to offer
The signs of the times the Holy Text forewarned becomes ever more visible...except to the blind and the Scoffer
Why does the blood of the innocent and unknowing continue to shed for the next man’s awakening of his own imminent flatline?
At times I, picture myself in someone else’s fate, how would I have handled myself in that same place?
How would I have responded with bullets suddenly flying around me as potential dead bodies surround me, in that unexpected moment of truth...which characteristic would have ultimately found me? cowardice...or courage?
I find myself at times discouraged by my struggle with self-assurance in knowing that my demonstrating answer would have been in the latter rather than the former
How many times have we entered into a school, mall, concert venue only to have a passing or pressing thought enter into our conscience only to ask “what if I’m not supposed to make it back out alive”?
I often wonder if Rachel Scott struggled with these internal inquiries in the years, months, days, hours, final seconds before she stepped foot on that columbine soil destined to receive her call to became a maytr for the Gospel she lived...and died for.
What exactly are we dying for? Are we dying to self? Or because of it?
Whether our final earthly breath is due to a natural cause or one unsuspecting...what are we dying for?
Many people will not be able to answer that question…until it is forever too late...
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 4:12 AM UTC
* *A tear is shed
For those who are blind to the beauty of this world
Who can only feast on sarcasm, writhing in irony
* *It soon evaporates.
Pictures of a future dressed in ribbons and lace, cast off and burned
Pictures of the future carrying disdainful dystopia, infamous for invalids
Hung to admire in sublime distaste by those that seek knowledge
And see the repetitious antiquities of time that come to pass
But others care not for plans and the imminent
Those that keep to the light of the gas
And carry the past to the present
Hoping for trends to try again, reliving what they had never lived
Laconic and loquacious in emotions and words
Against the gossip, but paradoxically
Pushing for the creation of their “ritualistic social Golgotha”.
Those who abuse the glory of their munificent, malicious mentality
Pathetically unable to procure authentic happiness
A tear is shed.
Inside the recesses of the soul where emotions dare not dwell.
It too evaporates.
Trapped in fear and the “cliched harlequin speech of suicide”
Begging for the masses to cast them out and find each other
A tear is shed.
Never seen but felt as it evaporates.
Felt by those who envelop themselves inside themselves
Those who plagiarize their sick self-conscious souls
Those who bring about the very misfortune they strive to devour
Those who are effortlessly envied as they exploit their habitual recreations
By those who wouldn’t dream of falsified euphoria
Those who bastardise and deface the name of creative individualism
As waters of the soul are purged and discarded
They are felt by those
And are quickly washed away in doubt and regret
Keeping to the light of the gas, dangerous and warm
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 10:48 PM UTC
As long as there are teenagers extant,
Anomie and alienation of
an unripened generation
Shall spill upon this site in cliched cries,
Dabbling with threats of pills and lies,
The endless pain felt gives one fright.
To this old soul who wonders silently,
Will these thousands of pained children
Make it through to their next incarnation
So much angst, so much anger,
I wonder if God created poetry
To salve their wounds
Their unknown futures loom,
But all I read is hurt and doom.
You shall survive, children.
Awful poetry, some good,
you will write.
But write and write
till your heart be calmed
For even ancient kings felt the anguish of the soul,
And we profit even today by King David's psalms.
This wizened fool has his hands full,
Mouths to feed, bread to earn and bake,
As midnight is almost nigh,
He rests prone and adds a verse to this old poem
He long ago scribbled down, grimace-smiles now,
Realizing there is little difference tween him and the
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland.
For poetry salves his wounds still, even now,
Unashamedly, he thinks, quiet like, praying,
Hallelujah, spoken in the original,
The tongue of his ancestors
May 22, 2013
May 22, 2013 at 11:35 PM UTC
I’ve been thinking about hands
a lot lately and how fingerprints are like
permanent, foreshadowing tree rings
etched onto our beings; I wonder if
the number of rings on my palms have any
correlation to the number of years I’ll live or
the number of years he’ll live or the number of
years that she lived. I’ve been thinking a lot about
life lines and heart lines
and if there is any stock to be found in palmistry;
I wonder how my fate line got to be
so muddled with my luck line.
I see my life the way a clairvoyant would:
in cut-up and choppy strips of film—
I should have seen the omens,
I should have read the smoke signals,
I should have recognized the cards.
Act One began on a waning crescent moon
and continued until its gluttonous belly
had swollen with light; I thought to
myself that craniums made of gallium
often melt the quickest, that blood filled
with plutonium often flows the slowest. I would
have given my body up to the pathologist free of charge,
would have let him dig his hands into my entrails for
some sort of divination, some sort of revelation—
I was never told to beware the Ides of June
nor the Kalends of November.
Act Two began with the birth of Jack Frost
and has been continuing without intermission for
the past four celestial cycles; I thought to
myself that heart valves made of sodium polyacrylate
often love the most, that sinkholes disguised as
fingertips often feel the deepest. He whispered
in my ear cliched words about not believing in
God, but how I made him feel blessed, and in
that moment I knew he was the oneiromantic being
that had been shadowing my dreams since 1996—
I guess you could say that, sometimes,
I believe in love.
There is an art to fortune-telling
there is an art to hands
there is an art to bones
there is an art to dreams, and over the years,
I have found them coinciding more often
than not. In my sleep, in notebooks, in
irises, in mirrors, in poetry, in small little sighs.
I do not know if I believe in fate or destiny, in
God, in auras, or in the Blood Moon Prophecy,
but I do know that I believe in you. I find myself writing
sappy verses and smelling your shirts and I do
not know if it is because I miss you or if it is because
I’m bored or if they’ve somehow
mergedintothesamething.
I’ve been wondering a lot lately about
where you show up on my hands; about where
he showed up and where she showed up. I want
to know which lines bisect and which lines fall
short; I want to know if the resemblance between
mother and daughter
continues into that of my palm lines. I want to know
if my life line matches hers and if my heart line
is even worth giving away—
find me in your crystal ball, make me
your sacrificed animal, look for my body
in the stars, and we will know that
it was all made to be.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 7:02 PM UTC
Orbs with many layered shells.
Floating around, interacting, and multiplying.
When one Orb meets another for the first time,
It's sweet and endearing.
They are shy and awkward, Unsure of how to act.
Communicating using cliched questions and sometimes answers.
Small sparks of energy transferring between them,
Slowly dragging them closer together.
Cracks begin to appear on their outer most shell and
Tendrils of multicolored energies seep out.
The tendrils find each other and a bond is formed.
It's a scary moment, for the bond doesn't always last.
However the two Orbs struggle to keep communicating,
To keep the pure bond that has been formed.
Jan 3, 2013
Jan 3, 2013 at 3:07 PM UTC
I live
in a world
where a man's tears
must be valiant warriors
dressed in full regalia
polished to such a finish as to be almost invisible
just to exist
where they must wage war
against taboos and stereotypes
cliched replays and replayed cliches
"real men don't cry"
"tears make you weak"
But they don't see the strength it takes
for me to let this go
and let the tears flow
d d
o o
w w
n n
my cheeks
Feb 7, 2012
Feb 7, 2012 at 2:46 PM UTC
I look up and see them
Your two big brown eyes looking down at me
Why do I feel like they are searching me
As you ask that cliched question
'How are you'
You're reaching a hand down
I want to grab it
But I know too much
If you pull me up
I'll only fall back down
Harder
I trust you
But I can't
Take your hand
You'll drop me
I'm scared
Please just hold me
Can't you hear me
Please console me
Please just stay
Don't believe me
I don't mean it
Please don't leave me
'Im ok'
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 6:50 PM UTC
Well
not so sure I think or feel
but it was a hot day
the kind to make your skin melt
and you want to take it off
so your bones can breathe
but ****** is illegal
in Kalamazoo
so we must be polite
to the locals
eat the bacon fat like good people do
love air like lemonade
bitter and delicious
refreshing in the right circumstances
loving the smoke
so sensual
in and out
controlled and contorted by lips
pillars billowing
cliched
but so **** fine
thick and formless
it disappears
but for a moment
it's yours
theirs
yummy
wrists crack like silly skeletons
jumping around
clowns in the heavens
what are you saying
my dear boy(s)
you think you're in love?
I think you're in
for one hell of a ride
if you're into
cremating your dignity
Sep 24, 2012
Sep 24, 2012 at 11:01 PM UTC
Some faded curtain sways in a phantom breeze
and air swells in the old duct behind the bed
Cowboy Junkies play
Salted meat stench, tobacco and zest linger
The misted road on the outside
refracts moonlight through a crack
it's all too disjointed
but also clear, all so clear
The cliched call from anonymous houses, screaming; drunken screaming
I t ' s F r i d a y n i g h t
You're invited
The notion enters in eerie silences
and wood-frames creak
and the curtains still dance
and green leaves look black in that middle point between the lamp posts
and a stray car buzzes along a sultry surface; it is the moth, brazen in search of light
and who are we, if not moths in search of light?
Can you hear that ocean swell
or do you roar in unison too
Would you change as the weather
and embrace everything
everybody
and life
to reach transcendence
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
You spend lone enough waiting tables
or washing cars
or standing behind a register
and you feel a part of you
that played thumb wars and jump rope
die just a little
yeah I know the plight of the proletariat is cliched
but that doesn't mean it's not there
you feel the disdain grow
and even more so
you get hungry
and no ham 'n cheese can fix that
hunger nor nutrition
but for any small sign that all of the toiling
might just pay off.
Well if I go another day without eating that meal
I might just crack
drive my car into oncoming traffic
take as many suckers with me
then they might remember my name
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 1:35 PM UTC
you always made me beg for it
thought i was special when made me work for it
but now u spread your legs to the whole world
like them white wiggas and muthafuckin gayfishs
the fake *** muthafuckas hit it and quit it type riddas
buffalo wild wings muthafucka, laughin to the bank
cuz he hit the jackpot and went runnin from u, u *****
muthafuckin bros thought he was
but now i know that faulty is all it was
what the **** were u thinkin
choosin to ***** your friends ova
not thinkin bout nothin but yourself
whos gonna want u in the end
to think that "I"...
used to love you,
used to let u spend
used to hold your filthy hands
now i know it was just pretend
handed u stacks cuz i cared for you
made u dinners every night and i swore to you
that i would love you foreva
and now i'll let u know its my pleasure
to say **** you but now who u gonna run to
cuz in the end its only you
all by yourself...
so cliched but chillin with all your cats
is all that you'll ever have
and when i say cats
i really mean cats...meow *****
see when u called i came runnin
to make sure that you'd be okay
i see now its only a game u play
now that i know what i know
now i know your just another **
so bite your face off and slit your wrists
cuz the game of life is full of twists
u stupid ***** thought u were sav
i tried to give u the world to have
glad im not associated with u anymore
cuz to me now ur just a trifilin *****
Sep 8, 2010
Sep 8, 2010 at 10:16 AM UTC