Semantic Bleaching

created in part with images from Unsplash by: Eduardo Soares; James Barr; Sharon McCutcheon; Matt Jones

“Life on hold sucks!”
read the bus shelter ad.

They meant the pandemic
I suppose

But what a wry, ironic understatement
If you think of the awesome reality of life on hold.

{That’s awesome in its original meaning
Of inspiring ecstasy and terror, the experience
That the Romantics called the sublime
And that must have also crossed

Aristotle’s mind when he described
Peripeteia, the sudden reversal of fortune
That afflicts our flawed hero and causes us
To experience catharsis, that cleansing
Release of pent-up emotion;

Not awesome in its 21st-century sense,
As in: “This packaged, six-month-old
chocolate-chip cookie
made by a machine is
Awesome!” or,

“So you’ll take advantage of our
limited-time, this-week-only,
Two-for-one deal
that we’ll actually be offering again next month
and sounds like we’re giving stuff away
if you forget we marked it up four hundred percent to begin with?
That’s
Awesome!”}