What We Call Safe

What We Call Safe: The Suburban Life

John W. Gilmore

Patios, decks,

sculpted and wild gardens,

lawns cut so precise I could bounce off a quarter.

Tables and chairs, patios, hot tubs, porches, awnings, and pine trees

reaching like fingers pointing to clear blue sky.

But something is missing.

Within the boxes

behind two cars stationed in every other driveway,

someone is looking at a flat screen

and dreaming about the life they never had.

The car,

the house,

the driveway,

all that Maslow preaches would allow us to rise to a higher plane of

awareness,

and self realization,

has left us alone in the midst of neighbors worshipping the god of things,

but afraid of ourselves.

All the accutroments set up and polished.

Waiting for friends and family to sit,

drink,

laugh and play,

starving for the echo of children laughing and playing,

but no one is there but death holding the keys that will let us out of our

little boxes.

We dare not ask,

we fear Her so much.

Now She is our freedom, not the keys in her hands.

And WE have decided

to never

even desire

to come out

of what

we

call safe.