We overestimate the probability of the improbable through eyes and ears that are susceptible to vivid imagery. Social media screams that 100 people died from poisoned cantaloupes instead of saying in less emotional terms 100 in 7,000,000,000 or .000000000001% of the population. Really It’s all about fear and manipulation. You viewed all the news interviews, watched YouTube videos and even read the compelling articles. Now you’re in the grocery store avoiding cantaloupes like the plague because you might be next! Conversely in positive outcomes this is the same rationalization that compels people to buy jack *** lottery tickets. Can you see how we extremely over weighting the probabilities of events based on the vividness and prevalence of the coverage? The news—the government---companies---all individuals have agendas but not everyone is looking out for your best interest. Many are “wolves in sheep’s clothing” that feed on these manipulations in regards to rare events with the sole purpose to covertly produce a particular behavior that prospers outcomes that are favorable to their own position.

Now her goes the paradox of overestimation and underestimation in regards to rare events. A strange thing happens when rare events are not being perceived vividly through our senses. They are simply ignored! We no longer over estimate probabilities but instead begin to under estimate probability! For example during Hurricane Katrina victims yielded to evacuate due to this under estimation. The probability of the rare event was neglected in part to lack of vividness. In hindsight they seemed foolish for not leaving but in actuality were quite human in their behavior that lacked the emotional experience towards the rare event (obviously the decision was intertwined with a myriad of other individual variables). In the aftermath the vividness of the Hurricane’s media coverage allows the opposite to occur once more---a heavy overestimation of a future storms probability. This produces disproportionate fears for many in regards to actual hurricane probabilities. Leaving the door open for exploitation.

What we see is a human nature that goes extremely over or under in estimations towards the outcomes of rare events compared to the events actual probabilities. The danger is that people know this!! They can pump your head with what they want you to overestimate and be silent on what they’d like you to neglect, all in the manipulation of their cause. The perceived good guy can easily be one in the same with the bad guy. The best sociopaths are quite charming. People can easily be manipulated with the news and Youtube videos for example. Often times the information provided has traces of truth that are used to spark emotions that lead an individual further away from actuality while simultaneously using them towards their own divisive agendas. They will stay silent to other matters---producing neglect till it’s time to play the good guy once the neglected issue (often created themselves) explodes. In the after math the information they provide makes you feel empowered but it's only manipulating you further into their own aspirations--they look like a hero for doing it --again they produce the overestimations of fear where they want while staying silent to what they wish for you to neglect. Whether it’s the government, a conspiracy theorist or a manipulating relationship partner be attuned to how we process information and the susceptibility to manipulation (overestiamation-underestimation). Although not every situation is a source of manipulation from others it would be unwise to neglect the fact that our own emotions can lead us to these same ignorances all by our selves. I give glory and honor to my Savior Jesus Christ for this knowledge in which Faith in Him alone helps me discern and weight the emotional information and there intentions

Stop resenting me
For the way I shop
The things I do
To make sure
My  food is fresh

I confess I feel blueberries
In my fingers
To make sure they are firm
Not too ripe

I confess I shake
Cans of spaghetti and ravioli
So that I know
The sauce is not
Congealed

I confess I pull  frozen waffles
From the back of the freezer
Less likely that they thawed
And refroze into
Oddball shapes

I confess I smell trout
Before I buy it
Placing it against my nose
In the most unabashed
Way

Spare me your hate
About my consumer habits
When I know it has nothing to do with
Food

As long as I bring you warm release
In the darkness of your desires
Pull your tangled hair the way
You like
Bite your darting tongue
In mad hunger
Deep appetite

As long as I reawaken the
Woman
Primal animal hidden
Within
Turn your heat into a river
For a long passionate
Swim

As long as I attend quickly to your
Every ***** command
The craving of your ******
Insatiable
Demand

Then  I can squeeze french bread
In quiet and peace
I can sniff cantaloupes
Without suffering ire
Or grief

I’ll take you tonight
In that filthy way
You like

Until then

Leave me alone

I’m shopping.

At the mailbox, again:
“Who loves me, baby?”
Well, let’s see: there’s a flyer from Mercury Insurance,
Reminding me that most middle-income customers
Save an average of $4 million smackaroons when they switch too.
The Penny Saver USA.com is here,
Thank God, almighty!
So now I know that Thomas Roofing & Paving
Is having a special on 20-year leak-free flat roofs;
"All work guaranteed & insured.
No job too big or small.
Free estimates/Emergency services/License # I8U-69."
And thank you, Jesus,
For another $4.99 Farmer Boys 3-Egg Breakfast
Combo with Coffee coupon, and that
Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready, $5.00 cheese or pepperoni,
Mae-West-“why-don’t-you-come up and see me sometime?”—mailer. And, of course, another technology Siren’s song:
Verizon FiOS delivers entertainment this big,
Dish me up some dish NETWORK, $19.99 a month . . .
Are you ******* me?
For 12 ******* months?
AT&T;: whack me off on 120 channels.
DIRECTV.com - DIRECTV® Official Site‎
Worry-free 99.9%  . . . cue Joe E. Brown,
"Some Like It Hot“ Osgood:
"Well, nobody’s perfect!"
Time Warner/Sprint/T-Mobile;
And ******* Leather, Polk Street, San Francisco.
******* leather?
Must be for my neighbor: that ***** ****!
And here’s the weekly 8-page color fold-out from Stater Bros:
Lowering prices every day, large cantaloupes
(Jessica Lange, are you back?)
10 for $10.00, 32 oz. Gatorade
Or 24 oz Propel in 30 assorted varieties @ 79 cents
+ CRV: California Redemption Value?
Nice euphemistic cover-up for a TAX.
Nice, nice, very nice, CA elected state officials;
Nicely done, Sacramento.
Everywhere else in the country you get real money—
A fixed number of pennies, nickels, or dimes—
For your plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
But in California, the licensed recyclers
Get to pull the market price out of their *** each morning.
California Redemption Value?
What ******* genius government kleptocrat thought that one up? Conspiracy Alert: who gets all that CRV money?
And what are they doing with it?
Feeling plain, Jane?
Marinello Schools of Beauty, want you,
Offer you hands-on training in cosmetology,
Skin care esthetics, manicuring and vaginal deodorizing—
Just kidding, Babaloo.
Food tip for the Third World:
Never try to write poetry on an empty stomach.
Sizzler 6 oz juicy & succulent.
RENEGADE DEAL:
El Pollo Loco guacamole chicken sandwich,
Coupon free, small drink and small chips,
When you purchase a guacamole or jalapeno sandwich,
includes pepper jack cheese and a southwest sauce.
Gardenas sandia con semilla, 7 lbs 99 cents.
GARDENAS: “en precios, servicio y calidad, nadie nos iguaia.”
Bud Gordon’s Quality NISSAN:
One at this price after a $1500 factory rebate.
TERMINIX: get them before they get you!
The Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta
Bug up my *** again.
And a form letter from the VA
Asking me to please update my whereabouts.
And a form letter from the VA asking me
To please update my whereabouts.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Bite me, Mr. Frost!

An outing, at last.
I am going for a walk around the inside of my gates.
I live in one of those gated over-55 lunatic asylums.
There are gates. It is gated. Get it?
GATED! We feel safe here.
Probably a good thing at our age:
Self-imposed institutionalization,
Putting oneself in an asylum to ferment and die.
The fact that so many of us
Need it so bad at only 55
Says something itself about the current state of
Baby Boomer metal-fatigue.
I am now standing at the far end of the golf course.
I wait at the far end of the 18th Hole.
A ball bounces past my head and
Rolls off past the green into the far rough.
The 18th Hole is perched atop a small plateau,
Out of sight, far above the horizon for anyone teeing off.
I am Puck, invisible and impish.
I pluck the ball up.
I scamper to the green.
I pop the ball into the hole.
Which is better than popping a hole in the ball,
Surely, kind of a drag,
As we were once fond of saying.
Deflated Ball.
Deflator Maus.
OPERA can be ****.
Bodice-ripping corsets, whorehouses and naked ******!
Hardly what you might expect from
A night with the Welsh National Opera,
But they found their way into this production of "Die Fledermaus."
Ripe language, contemporary jokes and
Toilet humor thrown in, adding immensely
To the pleasures of Strauss’s operetta.
"Die Fledermaus," or The Bat’s Revenge,
Is all about drunkenness and adultery.
Despite being written in the 1870s,
It remains equally pertinent to today’s pub culture of excess.
Daring; Colorful; ****: PGA golf.
I steal a golf ball on the far end of the 18th Hole.
I pick up the Titleist and stick it in the hole
(Steady Jessica, not yours.
I hide behind your bush.
(Cue up PSA, First Lady Bird Johnson’s 1960s
Nationwide Beautification Campaign:
“I want everyone in America to plant a tree,
A sherrrr-rub, or a booosh.”)
The golfer now searching frantically:
Why is the cup always the last place they look?
Then, wham, bam, he looks:
A legend is born.
A hole in one,
His name forever immortalized
On a plaque over the bar, the proverbial 19th Hole.

As you know, I speak for all mediocrities,
Safe in my 55+ gated-community.
I go next to the Club House,
"The Lodge" as it’s called.
Each afternoon, the usual suspects
Claiming first come/first serve tiered mini-theater seats
Where Netflix matinee gems are screened.
It is two minutes to DVD show time.
I walk to the front of the room.
I stare at my audience.
I count the house slowly,
Making meaningful eye contact with each wrinkled face.
I cup my hands behind my back and speak:
“I assume you are all here for my lecture on Kierkegaard.”
No one reacts.
I turn to leave but do a double-take and smile.
One old woman in the top right corner of the amphitheater laughs, Perhaps the one other human being within the gates
Who has also smoked a joint today.
For an instant, I am overwhelmed with paranoia,
Perhaps I’ve gone too far over the line:
No longer “oh-he’s-a-character;”
I am now “that creep is ******* nuts.”
Is it time for someone to approach my family,
My next of kin, my “who-to-contact-in-event-of-emergency” number? Who will make the call on behalf of the HOA—
The Homeowner’s Association—
The Tsars, the Duma, the Supreme Soviet in these parts?
They are the power inside the gates;
Those who determine the state’s enemies,
Who govern its community norms.
Power within the gates.
Law within the asylum.
Little Hitlers one and all.
Hopefully they reach my sister first.
She’s been briefed.
KEY POINT IN THE NARRATIVE:
The new narrative is non-linear.
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We grow more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen;
We become more intimate with a legion . . .
Did someone say a legion? SPQR:
Am I having some sort of genetic-linguistic seizure here?
Am I channeling Benito Mussolini again?
Il Duce speaks to me from the grave,
Still blowing smoke up my Hopi-Jew-*** ***,
Filling in my insecurities,
Plugging the holes in my character
With delusions of classical Roman grandeur, glory and empire. Hmmmm? Quite an appetizing pitch for the average *****,
A message so completely, so ethnocentrically slick,
Olive oily, and so seductive.
A non-Italian would have thought
American Legion or Legionnaire’s disease,
Or The Foreign Legion, The French Foreign Legion.
The French: a virulent, promiscuous people.
Do you want fries with that, Simone?
No, I don’t get out much.
Only an occasional brisk walk around the asylum,
In and around the golf course, around but inside the gates. (LINKS) Bill Gates. Daryl Gates. Billy Bathgate’s Gates? Ghiberti’s Gates? The Hot Gates? Thermopylae? 300 Spartans/700 Thespians:
“The noun causing idiots to think of
Two girls sloppily eating each other’s mighty vaginas,
When they hear mention of someone being an actor.” http://www.urbandictionary.com
Not even close.
No, I rarely venture out.
This is Hemetucky.
There are methamphetamine-stoked
Teenage zombies at the gate.
Note to costume control:
Perhaps camouflage clothing is the safe choice?
No loud red Hawaiian.
No garish Indonesian batik.
Fleet of feet are these Hemet tweakers,
These cranked up Riverside County teenage barbarians,
These Huns & Visigoths,
These amped up, ravenous jackals.
And why stop there?
These Vandals & Vandellas.
A Motown flashback:
“Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”
With or without Martha—
They remain dangerously lethal.
Yes, let it be camo clothes for me.
Those **** heads may be young.
They may be fast.
They may be able to run me down
On a dry grass dog-legged fairway savannah,
Tearing the meat from my carcass.
But the sons-a-******* have to see me first.
Besides, we know who are real friends are.
Hooray for our media peeps!
We become more intimate with a legion
Of television personalities on 125 different channels.
Most of these we know by name and context.
We know their families, their friends,
Their histories, their tragedies,
Their favored hyperbole and manner of speech.
Sometimes we establish intimacy with celebrities
Strictly on the basis of universal body language.
At times–in the absence of any other
Empathetic facility of identification–
We connect on instinct alone.
Instinct: perhaps animal at its core,
An animal kingdom affinity group,
Connecting on a bio-linguistic level,
Particularly when the Korean, or Spanish,
Mandarin, or Arabic,
Japanese, or even Hebrew language version is broadcast.
All languages cryptically alien,
A dense boundary, a barrio border wall,
Undecipherable, impenetrable concrete.
But we’ve never spoken to our neighbors,
Nor do we know their names.
Celebrities are the neighbors we know best;
Although the intimacy is an illusion,
Permission to invade their privacy presumed,
Tacit in the relationship between celebrities and their fans.
I am an independent contractor now,
An outside consultant to the NSA.
Try as I might I cannot crack the enigma,
Kim Kardashian remains far beyond my code-breaking prowess.
I repeat myself:
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We are more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen; we become more intimate with a legion . . .
Back to you, David Ulin:
“Sometime late last year—I don’t remember when, exactly—I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That’s a problem if you do what I do, but it’s an even bigger problem if you’re the kind of person I am. Since I discovered reading, I have always been surrounded by stacks of books. I read my way through camp, school, nights, and weekends; when my girlfriend and I backpacked through Europe after college graduation, I had to buy a suitcase to accommodate the books I picked up along the way.”
Thank you, David L. Ulin.
I cannot help myself.
I grow more eccentric each day.
My eyeballs glued to that flat screen!

Cosmo Kramer: "The bus is outta control.
So I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat,
I get behind the wheel, and now I’m driving the bus."
Jerry: "Wow!"
George Costanza: "You’re Batman."
Cosmo Kramer: "Yeah, yeah, I am Batman.
Then the mugger, he comes to and he starts choking me.
So I’m fighting him off with one hand,
And I kept driving the bus with the other, ya know.
Then I managed to open up the door,
And I kicked him out the door, ya know,
With my foot, ya know, at the next stop."
Jerry: "You kept making all the stops?"
Cosmo Kramer: "Well, people kept ringing the bell!"
(Share this moment with a stranger.)

I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.
Boom Chaka Laka. Boom Chaka Laka.
Boom Chaka Laka. BOOM!
Isn’t it time Salieri tempted Constanze–
Frau Mozart–with a plateful of Capezzoli di Venere:
“******* of Venus.”
You had me at hello, Kidman.
I know you too well, Nicole.
I knew you from before,
Way before Tom’s Oprah couch freak show.
Listen to me, Nicole:
We are face to face
With the most profound question in American literature:
"What is the grass?
The flag of my surrender?
The flag of my disposition?"
I resort to Socratic maxims: Know yourself;
The un-****** life is not worth living.
Is it stress? Is it lack of conviction?
Everything Jeff Lebowski neither wants nor needs in his life?
I watched you *** in "Eyes Wide Shut," Nicole.
Now I know you with my eyes and your legs wide open.
Thank you, Sidney Pollack.
Sidney knew.
Sidney dealt us cards
From his Hollywood Tarot deck.
We are intimate, Nicole.
I watched you squat.

etymolo gicilato
pervy and scribe
justa lovidactil
otta wormsandside

ima scribble bluey
evological snide
scriptiburgis outcast
meatiyum pride

urdadidafactus sum
party thatribe

looping over cants
and the meaningless tide

looping over cants
and the meaningless tide

In Benidorm there are melons,
Whole donkey-carts full

Of innumerable melons,
Ovals and *****,

Bright green and thumpable
Laced over with stripes

Of turtle-dark green.
Chooose an egg-shape, a world-shape,

Bowl one homeward to taste
In the whitehot noon :

Cream-smooth honeydews,
Pink-pulped whoppers,

Bump-rinded cantaloupes
With orange cores.

Each wedge wears a studding
Of blanched seeds or black seeds

To strew like confetti
Under the feet of

This market of melon-eating
Fiesta-goers.

♀↵ϖ†∅↨⊕☺☼↑↓

Apples will be cantaloupes
depending on their nurture;
and so I cherish rainbow hopes
for our collective future.

Oranges elect their hue
improving Nature’s seal,
while pronouns stifle what is true
suppressing the appeal.

Fruits may choose to change to nuts
and fowls select their plumage.
Why settle in Tradition’s ruts?
Such rigid roles do damage.

Nuts in turn, may feel like flowers,
picking how and when to bloom.
So ambisexual thought empowers
androgynes to court their doom.

A leopard, too, may change his spots
(or turn into a vegan bunny)
No law’s tittles, neither jots
make Speciesism funny.

If you decide to see it so
the sky above is yellow.
Perceive as pink the grass beneath
and better times must follow.

Gender? Merely social constructs –
preach it to the masses
until tradition self-destructs
and *** takes off her glasses.

Babies need no Dad (nor Mother):
sexist labels, obsolete.
Love is blind. There is no other.
Bats must bark and chickens bleat.

Integrated water closets
show how far we have evolved:
urinary bank deposits
(with no member account involved).

Foolish thinking from the past
(like water being wet, and such)
calls for re-education, fast.
The State will lend its human touch

compelling all to sing the hymn
with genderfluid motions…
so birds can preen their scales and swim
in dry and waveless oceans.

(Yet “hymn” sounds sexist said out loud –
we ought to sing a “her” instead…
no – make that “us”,  since we are proud,
lest misconceptions be misread.)

Shake a healthy dose of salt
upon this strange post-modern food.
May God re-set us to default
with human common sense renewed.

It was in a musky instrument shop
that I found myself hungry, so hungry.
I didn't know any Russian.

I told the old cashier,
a small woman with a brown bun-top,
that I'd really like some food.

She cocked her head,
shook off the dust, and jarbled back at me.
"Please," said I, as dough-eyed as one could muster.

She pointed to the door.
My belly grumbled.
I fell away sideways, walking out all lowly-like.

I began through the doorway
and the shopkeeper woman screeched.
I heard a moan come from above me.

There stood a 9-foot-tall, Slavic boy,
plagued with acne, hooked nose, and sallow cheeks,
with a metal clamp around his neck, right next to the door frame.

I thought he was drapes, ragged window drapes,
but he existed there and then with hands the size of cantaloupes.
The shop keeper whined and pointed at the boy.

I looked up at him,
and he, down at me.
She spat into a tissue and then shooed me again.

I grabbed his chain off its hook
and stoically proceeded out the door.
The boy dragged his feet behind me, begging and crying.

on a hot summer day of popsicles and cantaloupes
we're on the asphalt playing tag and pushing swings;
my pigtails bouncing from skippers and jump ropes.
i'm wearing suspenders and a bow tie
and you're in a baby blue dress with sunflowers in your hair
and there are gems in the corners of your eyes.
we're walking across balance beams and meeting halfway
but the sound of 80s music blaring
from the windows of my mother's voice is calling me away.
i look into the young sunshine in your eyes that lured me to stay.

on a rainy spring day of dr. seuss books and board games
we're under a blanket fort making shadows and telling secrets
with our minds getting so lost in stories until we forget our names.
i'm clenching my pink teddy bear, in love, yet in fear,
and you've glow sticks and their light in your hands
let's dance and go crazy, you whisper in my ear.
we're singing into hairbrushes and playing dress up
but the sound of the doorbell ringing
from your father's door taunts us, saying we obsess too much
but we don't care.
you kissed me for the first time and i knew without it i'd be messed up.

I saw the way your expression would change when I would talk about a ****** act I’ve committed.

You wanted me pure
You wanted me whole

Hearing the ring in my ears when you’d speak of how many girls souls you’ve laid to rest.

How they were propped up and popped open.

I was next,
But something told me not to be another victim.

How he cut them open and dug them out like cantaloupes.

He dug into genesis and didn’t know he killed creation with every lick.

He committed genocide with no remorse
And wiped it off as satisfaction.

Apple my favorites’ fruit of all apart from grapes,
I like them to, but they are too small
Cantaloupes I like they are a juice  orb
But an apple I can carry in my pocket.

I like to hold it in my hand and looking at it,
Trying to recollect any figure I could recall.
Sometimes it reminds me of a red leather ball
Sometimes it reminds me of a ****** rose with stick and all  
Sometimes it don’t look like that at all

I look at it with great heed, it isn’t circle, it isn’t oval
And it most definitely not square at all.

Some apple’s are sweet some are not
Sometimes i peel of the skin and other times I eat them raw
I sink my teeth in it and bit out the biggest morsel of them all
Shredding it to its bones in not more bite then bite number 3 or 4

And then looking at it trying to recollect any figure I could recall
Sometimes it reminds me of a sand clock,
Sometimes it reminds me of a crescent moon, two in all,
Sometimes it don’t look like that at all

But whatever shapes it may take no matter what texture  
Apple will always remain my favorite fruit not the green ones they are bitter
I like deep coral color apple, kind that my father bring they are softest & sweetest of them all

In the park, soft-study of sands and swings,
Where the birds while away the unabridged air
Like rains on green, copper roofs ~ their wings.
So I have touched my rainy fingers on the fountain’s surface,
And tum-tumed at the dumpy belly of a dog,
So I have felt the vendor’s balloons like cantaloupes for freshness,
So I have a pocket-change of smiles for all.
At the fountain’s edge,
Like green-molded quaystones feather-singed
By the touchstrokes of the arcing wings of the sea,
Or like a saucer of warm milk
For the alley-cats to drink the milkiness of sun
And then with their paws,
Plink at overturning the day into porcelain shadows.

Her name was this unforgettable charm
I was overwhelmed
By her sky like beauty
Ever widening
Into separate heavens,
Her voice
Will promise you
The song of forever
She is enigmatic,
Pressing into my ribs
Like a ghost does
When it flies back home,
She was firm
As two cantaloupes
Dripping and dripping
I love her;
Her core to her sky
Once, twice, into eternity
There’s a crater
That matches her hand
Scarred into my heart
Maybe and often entangled together
She appear as daydreams
But she is real,
I feel it more
Then I care to admit,
Like a Plath’s poem
She pinches the heart
Of her reader,
She can lick the truth
From your false face
O’ her eyes,
Can start a drama,
As her friend Isabelle says,
She reads books
Of only dead people,
So does she talks to their ghosts,
Slowly she moves
Like a never fading colour,
Filling up your tea cup
Maybe with something more than tea,
You’ll know her more
When her honey dripping voice fills your ears,
Nothing is new
Nothing is mystery
Apparently
She is
Fragile
Fervent
She is unskinned
And
Red

Lips of intrusion and confusion
Concubines and cantaloupes
Sometimes it all goes south
Coveting our pleasure
We destroy our souls
Branded with talent
Love is rare these days
I used to run from my own desires
Now I face the fire with a steady gaze
Come bless my heart
We define the sounds of silence
And are minding our own eyes
As Pharaohs moan
Far away the vultures wait
I place my nose in your open mouth
And hover in the sunset
For now we call each other names
And say the things
Of which we won't be proud tomorrow

How much will you bid for this rotten cantaloupe? A million dollars! I have 2 cantaloupes! Can I have it the second cantaloupe for nothing? No. What'cha doin'? Shaving my legs like a maniac. You're not one of those leg-shaving maniacs, are you? Eating cookies in the bathroom is no less nutritious than eating them anywhere else.

Antelopes dancing
on cantaloupes while gazelles
are jumping through hoops

                                                Kelly McManus

A million dollars! I have 2 cantaloupes! Can I have it the second cantaloupe for nothing? No. What'cha doin'? Shaving my legs like a maniac. You're not one of those leg-shaving maniacs, are you? Eating cookies in the bathroom is no less nutritious than eating them anywhere else.

It hits you when you’re not looking.
By the cantaloupes, maybe.
Or in the cereal aisle.
Life’s absurd, isn’t it?

A stranger’s kid is crying,
and the old man next to you
is staring at the ingredients on the soup can
like it holds the secrets of the universe.

You’ve been there too—
in the waiting room of life,
looking for meaning
between aisle four and five.

You buy the bread, the milk, the eggs.
None of it will last,
but you tell yourself it will.

And on the way home,
the sun will break through the clouds
just for a second—
and for once,
it’ll feel like enough.