The Moon is not a Cliché
A public service announcement
It is a hulking lump of rock and dust that brazenly floats there. There’s no ignoring the bugger, whether it’s beaming back from light polluted crimson or trying to blend into hazy blue.
Only a few have trodden its surface as part of some ridiculous peeing contest that the superpowers chose to play instead of obliterating each other with nuclear payloads.
It pulls the tides in its wake like a toddler dragging their bed sheet towards the breakfast table. For aeons we believed that mammals bled to this tempo.
According to the Great Impact Hypothesis, Earth decided to devour her sister planet, Theia, and the shrapnel that spilled from their collision formed a celestial owl pellet.
It has enraptured poets and it has murdered them. Li Po sang drunkenly to its reflection and then fell into the lake to drown with arms wide open.
These are cliches: white as snow, outside the box, bull in a china shop, like a rag doll, till the fat lady sings. Metaphors that have lost their spark, are past their prime and on the shelf.
Stars are not a cliché, the heart is not a cliché, death is not a cliché. Anyone who says they are is hostage to a dullness that mistakes novelty for originality.
Their poems will never be moons.