He was a cliché too

I am a walking cliché:


Walking around in a daze,
Arriving at the crossing, looking up,
Seeing people as if for the first time.
He is gone but they are still here;
And suddenly they are real. Important.
For the first time they are not mindless consumers;
They are souls, each with a story; so many hiding unwept tears.
How did I not see them — really see them — before?
I knew all of this already, I...
"Did he really need to go for me to experience this;
Is humanity imprinted only through unbearable loss?"


I’ve seen this all before;
This scene could have been drafted in moments by any average writer of prose fiction.
Yet... it remains more real than any book or film.


As Dave himself used to say,
"Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being”.
He was a cliché too.




(For Cooglis)