Those Days When Cliches Seem Appropriate

No one wants
to approach writing ,geared
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 still/steel,
suspending our morbid curiousity
for the wrecking ball-
pen we need to maneuver our hands,
pounding out these dents.

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

But metaphors are colliding
on my usual straightaway,
as my side seat driver points
to beams of simple paths used
to operate vehicles like ours.

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.”