Cavalcade of Cliché , 1

(A parade of words and phrases eligible for retirement.)

I heard it from your lying lips:

“All’s fair,” you said, “in love and war.”

I offer you some tasty sips

Of hemlock … Now you know the score.

The poison of your daily acts—

The poison of the things you say—

Has changed the rendering of “facts”

In dictionaries of today.

And “all” cannot be truly fair,

For “fair” demands an open heart,

And if you do not really care,

Relationships will fall apart. 

Words, Words, Twaddle, 50

(We all dislike/hate certain words and locutions; here are some of mine.)

Skilled

You're looking for someone who has

The “skill set” that you say you need:

Some PowerPoint and all that jazz—

Excel would help, oh, yes indeed!

You probably don’t want to hear

About the person you should find,

Someone who has both tongue and ear—

And has an educated mind.

I have a skill set, you should know—

I am a man of many parts.

I know about explosives, Yo,

Am talented in martial arts.

So when I hear the junk you say,

I calculate your body mass;

I plan a dynamite display,

But first, of course, I kick your ass. 

Words, Words, Twaddle, 49

(We all dislike/hate certain words and locutions; here are some of mine.)

A Clarification

They hired you here, or so you’ve said,

To “disambiguate.”

But large words only seem to change

A small into a great.

For just behind those syllables—

And this you know is true—

Sits someone unimpressive, and

In this case, well, it’s you.

Words, Words, Twaddle, 48

(We all dislike/hate certain words and locutions; here are some of mine.) 

Measuring Up?

“Assessment” is the word these days

In school. It forever plays

In conversations about kids

And how they learn. And it forbids—

Or limits—talk about the art

Of teaching to the human heart.

Though learning’s more than measurement,

We have no choice but to lament.

These days there’s little to discuss:

Assessment drives the school bus. 

Words, Words, Twaddle, 47

(We all dislike/hate certain words and locutions; here are some of mine.)

Harping Again?

You said, “We should up-skill the staff!”

Then smiled in pride at your own words.

I stood and held the hot carafe

And thought about those mythic birds—

The harpies! Yes, I’d summon them

And tell them of a man in need

Of shredding. They’d swoop in on him,

And soon they would begin to feed.

But that’s too hard—would some giraffe

Attempt to solve some Sherlock case?

And then I looked at the carafe …
How would hot coffee shut his face?

Hmmmmmm … ?

Words, Words, Twaddle, 46

(We all dislike/hate certain words and locutions; here are some of mine.)

 Ace in Its Place

And so “aces … their places”? You’re going with that?

Well, you should reconsider: The sound of ker-SPLAT

Could soon be in your future—so not long from now,

You will hear from a hit man a POW Pow Pow POW!

And the last thing you’ll think? “Oh now I am disgraced!”

Cuz I misused the language and now I’ve been aced!”

Words, Words, Twaddle, 45

(We all dislike/hate certain words and locutions; here are some of mine.)

Grounded

“We need boots on the ground”—oh, you said it again!

And it made me forget what a Good Guy I’ve been.

So I found an old minefield—“Let’s go for a stroll!”

But to see an explosion was really my goal.

And as soon as it happened, I looked all around,

And, well, all that I saw were your boots on the ground.