Outdoor-Living-Room-Day

this is one of those poems when you just say something and it gets stuck in your head until you do something with it. hope you like it!

Outdoor-Living-Room-Day

today is outdoor-living-room-day, and
participation is mandatory, so everybody
grab an armchair or your loveseat
haul it out into the streets, and set it down
on the sidewalk, next to a stranger,
someone who has been your neighbor
for nearly a year, but whom you have never
spoken to, and say hello. it is 90-plus
degrees outside, so the temperature
should melt the ice before you even
have to think about breaking it.
unplug your television set and
bring the kids, let them rediscover
baseball, and kickball, and stickball
and every game that you can
possibly play with items purchased
at the local dollar store,

ladies and gentlemen, it is called
a community, and not from any
affiliation with the soviet government
of the last century. that is so last century,
yet your bunker mentality is still building
barriers instead of bridges, believing
you are only safe inside your house.
you are not safe inside your house!
there are millions of americans with
credit cards and the ability to climb
your fences, lets be realistic for
a second, i personally could purloin
all your possessions in the inside
of an hour, but i have no desire to,
except, maybe out of curiosity,
a desire to know the eyes always
peeking out from behind the blinds,
i would slip into your window like
an archeologist, unraveling the
mystery of what made you so damn
scared in the first place.

so instead, let's have a holiday,
a day of open doors, all of our
bodies and belongings strewn
across the streets, and lets stop
traffic with a celebration of
perfect strangers being perfectly
comfortable with each other.
wouldn't that be weird?
wouldn't that be wonderful?
wouldn't that be just so
easy to accomplish?
ladies and gentlemen, today
is outdoor-living-room-day,
I will see you on the sidewalks.