Record of a Day Rendered Entirely in Clichés by Stephen Brady

At the crack of dawn
I rose and shone
Had a breakfast of champions
And blew out the stops
Grabbed the bull by the horns
And hit the street
To meet and greet
The great unwashed;
I wended my way
To join the club
Waiting for the rub
Of the green
To set the scene
Of what might have been.

I left no stone unturned
While the home fires burned
And the powers-that-be
Had an air of mystery.
But the empty vessels
Made an unholy noise
And the unstoppable force
Met the immoveable object
And the next thing I knew
It was an open-and-shut case
Of “we are where we are”
where I was.

At the eleventh hour
In my ivory tower
I circled the wagons
Got my ducks in a row;
I let sleeping dogs lay
Where every dog has his day
And all the world was a stage
When we were on the same page
I was flavour of the month
‘Til I was yesterday’s news
My talk was cheap
But I didn’t lose sleep
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks!
I’d been out of the loop
Landed right in the soup
And I was the last to know
I should have gone with the flow.

At the end of the day
It was a game of two halves
I was ahead by a nose
But got pipped at the post
By the Host with the Most
And if turnabout is fair play
You could colour-me-amazed
When the chickens I counted
Didn’t come home to roost.
For the grass it is greener
Where the rolling stones gather
No moss.
(No loss.)

Too many cooks spoiled my broth
And a soft answer turn’d away Wrath
But there were too many chiefs
And not enough indians.
Many hands made light work
Of my best-laid plans
(I’d had the whole world in my hands!)
So I beat a retreat
To a threadbare room
Where I quietly fumed
Til the sun was under the yardarm
And the day
dodgily
damnably
done.