Hooray for the Cliché

Some say the good Lord only worked six
But on the seventh day, he created the cliché

When with birds of a feather,
He found two birds in the hand,
And killed them with one stone.

When precocious snotty kids on the screen
Met drug addicted homeless schizophrenics
And a heartwarming story ensued.

When fossils were created to fool
Poor faithful monotheists
And wedding ring sun tans
Were noted by supposed sleuths.

When assholes said they were,
“Getting too old for this shit”
And we were all caterpillars,
Butterflies in the making,
And we were snowflakes, no two alike.

When teenagers rebelled
With a tattoo here
And a piercing there
And screamed “I hate you”
At bewildered parents.

When comedy had a thousand one-liners
And canned in laughter approved them every time,
Like a child saying, “My whole life flashed before my eyes…
It didn’t take very long.”

When POTUS told another lie,
And everyone pretended to be shocked.
When criminality ruled like a God with a lightning stick,
And the rest of us shrugged,
Defeated by gerrymandering yet again.

When radical Muslims hated Jews and Christian America
And American Christians and Jews hated extremist Muslims.
When all three hated atheists
And didn’t really know why.

When old people ate liver and onions for dinner
And always at 4:00 pm.

When all news was breaking,
They broke it and we bought it.

When cowboys died with their boots on
Eating biscuits and salted pork,
Singing with a stringed instrument
Around a campfire
And remembering their women.

When commercials were all ads for cars, beer
And restaurants’ succulent meat
All sold with sex or else envious fear,
And even mentioning that was cliché.

When divorce and child custody
Were so prevalent they didn’t raise an eyebrow.

When leadership fishily rotted from the head down,
And the powerful went to nice jails
Because they did “white collar crimes,”
Which meant millions or billions in theft
And “black crimes” lost only hundreds
But got years in a dark hole.

When phonies spouted “Fantastic!” and “Fabulous!”
“Mega, super, bigly.”
And screenplay writers wrote about
Screenplay writers.

When hurricanes and tornadoes destroy trailer parks,
And suspenseful movie trailers
With “They have my daughter/family/wife” plots
Drowned us in tense repetitive music.

When the mentally ill were blamed
For all shooting sprees
Though the sick were more likely
To be harmed by “sane” people.

When pink was for girls
And blue was for boys.

When cat videos made us giggle,
And everything was a dime a dozen.