$7 cups of coffee, paid for with $100 bills.
Everywhere is SAFE
thanks to friendly familiar franchise.

A conspicuously inconspicuous plain white moving truck
idles by, blaring some strange and terrible local remix
of a rightly forgotten disco hit.

Even the birds are unafraid;
demanding their share of reduced-fat blueberry muffin crumbs.
I poke at an overstuffed dove with a barely used pen,
but it doesn't seem to mind, and neither do I.

Everything vaguely in its place
because it's all always the same.

Memories surround me here--
some blissful, some sad, most too mundane to bother to recall;
but maybe those are the images that count.

A youngish older man OWNS "business casual,"
reading the front page of the joke we call the "news,"
while eating an overpriced meat/cheese/bread mess
and idly kicking at the feathered beggars dancing about his loafers.
I sit here rather sloppily,
having failed shamelessly at finding the dress code
between beach wear and night life,
but luckily it doesn't matter even slightly
because the only people who notice
are two retired sightseers who have "tourist" down to a lost science,
planning the day around their next trendy meal.

The clouds say "it's okay,"
that now is the ideal time for an agenda,
but I still annoy myself every few moments
when I glance at the clock,
wondering what it all means.

Somewhere, everywhere, we're all worshipping numbers.