Why We Love Cliches

No one wants
to approach writing
geared tight in some
grease monkey’s backyard,
like a jacked up Yugo
thinking it’s a Benz.

When I was a child
I salvaged a word
from the side of the road.
Folks, racing past
to never being last,
gave it a glance. But I
hitched it to
destinations unknown.

Sentences, summed up,
and totaled crash into
the still/steel, suspending
our morbid curiousity
for the wrecking ball-
pen we need to manuever
our hands, pounding
out the dents.

When I was a child
I salvaged a word,
beat up, and junked out
like old cadillacs
in an abandoned car lot.
Beauty left to rot, stuck
in rusty rows of meaning -
less, and less.

But metaphors seem
like colliding schemes
down this straightaway,
as my side seat driver
points to some beams
of simple truths used
to operate vehichles like ours.

Then a little intersection
of clear reflection stops
me in my tracks,
with all my scrapes, and cracks,
leaving me in the dust
with just this to say -

” That is the color of his eyes,
in this blue blue sky today. “