.24 klee-shey

whether because of over-use,
or under-use,
or age
or meaning
or sour humour
or painful connotation
or failed implication
or annoyance
or frustration
or speech through gritted teeth
or sly cornered smile,
or the unoriginality
orthodoxy
mainstreamed pop
artlessness,
now heartless,
- for it requires no thought,
merely robotic obedience -
and the produced groan
harsh, as the mouthed description
trite
that it makes me squirm
whilst the pressured burden
of future expectation
or of common behaviour
is expected of me too
in that weighted clause
with
an
undebatable decisionary darkness
that weighs a ton.


cliché.


call it bizarre
or ignorant,
but i've been finding myself labelling more and more articles cliché recently.

and it's not so much sayings or turns of phrase,
but rather,
behaviours,
habits,
features
and events.

the covered song overplaying the same cinematic moment -
i cannot allow its intended induced effect any longer because i'm too caught up in how it's simply redone that,
which was in itself a remake of that,
which at the time used inspiration from her original
and misinterpreted the deep now disconnected symbolism in the first place.

the icon
whose digitally remastered image
is replicated across the world's souvenir shops
on cheap clothing and crockery
or occasionally framed
so to make each's bedroom samely...

they weren't even iconic at the time.
but somehow a romanticised suicide
driving your car into a tree
followed by regurgitated photography
gives us our role models:
we'd rather be dead on a mug.


it's got to the point where now if you do anything twice i'll call it cliché.
i used to be such a fan of banksy,
until he became widely known, and imitated, and auctioned.

and marriage,
or is it just love in general?
certainly settling down in a 5 bedroom, leafy suburb, volvo, tenis on tuesdays.
though for that matter, an affair - particularly with the secretary, or the milkman, or indeed anyone in uniform or at work - is quite trite.
and what is it with putting poor black kids on tv to make us feel guilty?
i bet they love the zoo-shaped hole we've left them in.
anything to do with climate change,
tibet,
or the latest fashionable cause
that wants us to light a candle
or request more junk mail through our inboxes.
autobiographies released when the subject is in their mid-thirties.
arabic tattooes on white forearms.
so solid expressions with your hands to insult his mom or say which side of town
(no, it's not sign language- that would be uncool)
and myriad other idiosyncrasies that once began as inhumane racist torments or humble dress-codes of the ashamed,
the great unwashed,
now in style with our jeans,
no genes.
anything to do with God, and religion, and paths leading you home and don't worry because someone's catching (and counting) your tears.
the reformed man,
who bakes cake and wears well-chosen shirts
and isn't gay.


it must be something about the natural urge to want to be different, unique -
so everyone picks something that's wayward
and suddenly it's not so querky.


cliché?


maybe,
but then again 'be unique' is hardly a deeply original motto for me to claim.