Boys Like Me

An older one I dug up. Still holds true.

Boys like me

Always seem to fall for

Girls with leaky faucet eyes,

And safety deposit hearts.

 

The kind with long intricate puzzles

And cryptic clues.

Two minute fifteen second car chase,

Compulsory gunfight and

Mood lighting,

 

Because

 - Dead men tell no tales.

 - Two can keep a secret if one of them's dead

 - [insert cliché here]

 

Cliché is a word

That people spit or swallow,

The ejaculate of Merriam-Webster,

 

As misunderstood

As that toothless old bus driver

That drank himself to death

In the parking lot.

 

Clichés are like gravestones,

Rigid, stuck in,

Buried where they are for a reason.

 

Girls with handkerchief lakes

To waterfall eyes,

And heart shaped padded rooms

With locks shaped like Rubik Cubes

That take more than

Three minutes to solve.

 

Clichés are masks

For hearts and minds to cower behind.

Hemingway once said

Books are like icebergs,

Most meaning is hidden underneath the words.

 

People are a lot like that and

Until you realize this

Relationships have a lot in common

With "unsinkable ships."

 

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

Life is long division on an abacus

Made of string-cheese

Operated by a lactose intolerant.

 

Clichés are Orwell's brainchild.

Doublethink in action,

Clichés are a thing,

Because things are cliché.

 

Cliché is not a state of being,

But a state of mind.

Be your own cliché,

Not someone else's.

 

Grow up, fall in love, have kids,

But only if it seems more fun

Than dropping out

To play the ukulele in Nebraska.

 

Here's another cliché,

Life is a book,

Write your own damn story.

 

F**k their fairytales,

Life has much more to do with

Grim than Grimm.

 

In real life, Sleeping Beauty was in a coma,

Prince Charming was a pedophile

And Snow White was a conceited b***h.

But all stepmothers are still evil.

 

To hell with their fairytales,

Write your own.

Stories of love, revenge,

Escape and freedom.

 

Do things because you love them,

Kiss people for the same reason.

Just like the storybooks,

We burned the rulebook last winter.

No excuses, it was just

F*****g cold.

 

See, faucet eyes,

Leaky hearts,

These aren't her cliché

But she wears them well.

 

The only thing boys like me

Have in common with Romeo,

Is falling in love with girls in masks.

 

If freedom is death,

Then consider me the poison

And this poem a dirge.

 

Caged birds always fall for

The ones who crash into windows,

And boys like me

Always fall for girls like you.

 

Torrin A. Greathouse

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Firefly]

This piece was utterly brlliant, i enjoyed from beginning to end, the way each word flows onto the next is perfect :) well done.

[DarkRainbowPie]

Wow. I'm speechless...well, nearly. x'D What a poem, I enjoyed every second of it! Each stanza is unique and fantastic. The way you have worded things is marvellous. Aw, this poem is definitely gone into my favourites in my library, well done, 100/100

[Will]

This was bloody brilliant. I loved it. It truly spoke to me on a personal level. Excellent job, and it flowed very nicely for free verse.