Banality by Gregory Djanikian

 

There's something to be said for banality,

the way it keeps everything on a level plane,

one cliché 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.