Banality
       

There's something to be said for banality,
the way it keeps everything on a level plane,
one cliche blithely following another
like cows heading toward the pasture.

How lovely sometimes not to think
about Russian Futurism, or the second law
of thermodynamics, or how thinking itself
requires some thoughtfulness.

I'd like to ask if Machiavelli
ever owned a dog named "Prince."
I'd like to imagine Rosalind Franklin
lounging pleasantly by a wood stove.

Let the mind take a holiday,
the body put its slippers on.
It's a beautiful day, says the banal,
and today, I'm happy to agree
with its genial locutions.

Woof, woof, goes the neighbor's dog.
The sun is pouring in through the window,
heating up the parlor, the blue sky is so blue,
and the cumulous clouds are looking very cumulous.

I'm all for reading a murder mystery,
something with flair but forgettable.
Or some novelette whose hero's name
is Hawk or Kestrel, a raptor bird
soaring above his ravished love.

I'm lying on the couch with easy puzzles.
I'm playing a song that has no accidentals.
Life's but a dream, comme ci, comme ça.

No doubt, tomorrow I'll be famished
for what's occult and perilous,
all those knots in the brain,
all the words that are hard to crack.

Today, I'm floating like a feather,
call me Falcon, look me up
in the field guide under Blissful,
Empty-headed, under everything
that loves what it does today,
and requires no explanation.

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Copyright © 2015 Gregory Djanikian All rights reserved
from New Ohio Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission