Mark Ethridge Week 110: Everything’s The Same

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Mark Ethridge’s Picture Choice: One

Title: Everything’s The Same

Everything’s the same.
Every time I take my walk,
The houses I see
In the neighborhood
All look the same.

They’re mass produced, I know.
So there’s only a few models
In the first place.
But.

They’re all the same few colors.
They all have the same fence.
They all have the same flower beds.
The same lawn.
The same cars.
The same porch.
The same curtains.

It’s as if
The same person
Owns everything.
Everywhere.

I know.
I know.
People tell me,
A Ford is not a Chevy.
That’s not my point.
That’s not what I’m saying.
Not at all.

How many copies of that Ford
Are out there?
How many?
And how many of that Chevy?

Why do so many people
Who never haul anything
In their trucks
Have such stupidly big trucks?

Is it some kind of status thing?
Some social symbol I can’t understand?
A “My truck’s bigger than your’s” thing?
I don’t know.

But I can’t help but ponder
What it means
When I see one, or two,
Or sometimes three or more
Trucks in one driveway.

All of them full size.
With eight foot beds.
Half of them with four wheel drive
That never finds a use.

And there’s not a scratch on a single one
Of any of those trucks.
Not one scratch.
What do they use those trucks for anyway?
Driving to and from work each day?
‘Cause they sure don’t use them
As trucks.

Look.
Look.
Another perfect yard.
With a zillion blades of grass.
That can’t survive on their own
In the local climate.
No.
A zillion blades of grass.
All a perfect shade of green.
All the exact same shape.
And size.
Cut like a putting green
On a golf course.
Kept alive by consuming
Countless gallons of fresh water
And piles of fertilizer,
To give them what they need
To survive in the wrong place,
At the wrong temperature,
With far too little rain,
And dirt that would choke them dead
If it wasn’t chemically transformed
And enhanced,
To include the nutrients they need.
Nutrients that just aren’t in the dirt
Around here.
Anywhere.

Don’t you love it how,
Every Saturday,
You can listen to the sound
Of a thousand Briggs and Stratton
Internal Combustion Engines
Running for hours on end,
While everyone’s outside,
Mowing their lawn.
So it looks just like their neighbors does.

Have you ever noticed
How almost everyone these days
Has a smartphone of some kind?
And always has it out,
Scrolling around the screen,
Keeping up on Facebook,
Or Twitter,
Tumbler,
Google+,
Instagram,
Pintrest,
And half a million others?

I can’t help but wonder.
Does any of them notice
How they’re all the same?

How everyone,
And everything,
Everywhere,
Is the same?

And people wonder
Why it is
My soul cries tears of pain.


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Mark woke up in 2010, and has been exploring life since then. All his doctors agree. He needs to write.

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