2. (From the intermediate sense of, Open to the use of all the community): Commonplace, common, trite; trivial, petty.

[1837 Athenæum No. 504. 453 These bannales personages are ‘much of a muchness.’]
1840 New Monthly Mag. 59 458 All that her late companions can draw from her is the banal declaration, that she ‘never knew what happiness was before’.
1864 N. & Q. 3rd Ser. 6 480 Facetious fools‥set up the banal laugh.
1869 R. Browning Ring & Bk. IV. x. 36 You must show the warrant, just The banal scrap, clerk’s scribble.
1883 R. F. Burton & V. F. Cameron To Gold Coast I. iii. 54 Prizes were banal as medals after a modern war.

Cafe Diem

Espresso juxtaposed against the warm

White porcelain, sluggishly dribbles down,

Hued deep brown black; this smooth barista-beaned

and silky liquid fills a pygmy cup.

The chrome machine chortles tribal chants—

a modern shaman crooning rights of morning?

Caffeine brings daylight to life; it blocks

Adenosine in the cerebrum, sparking

An endless repetition. Déjà vu.

Espresso, juxtaposed against the cold

White porcelain, vanished while residual

rings—accidental Rorschach paintings—remain

for empty consumers who dilute the dawn,

and even the liquid primal black medium;

whipped cream sinks down into the macchiato,

A backward sunrise of milky froth.

We have forgotten how to wake ourselves

before the dawn—to herald Eos herself

enough to inspire our rising wakefulness.

There is no life in the beans brewed thick and bitter,

machine and coffee catalyze the day.