Helmet Pumpkin

You wore your helmet because it was the safe thing to do, not because it was the cool thing to do. You looked up and saw the world with its knife to your stem. You saw the shadows of smiling men, dark as pitch. 

The cautious pumpkin does not roll with fevered momentum. It does not cling to the vine and suckle on the salt of the dirt. The cautious pumpkin stands and plans. It surveys and makes lists of contingencies. 

To be a cautious pumpkin with a helmet is to make a boring steady revolt against the wild violent froth of daily collisions. Stolid sense.

This is not the passion of a red tomato dripping with poison. This is not the rapid decay of a browning banana. This is not anything that you would think is cool or sexy or dangerous or fleeting. Because, isn't that what everything is supposed to be? Isn't that the hot soup we sip to feel the burn on the tips of our tongues?

I give you bland beyond bland! I give you vanilla on white! Tepid and endlessly regressive to the mean beyond all better judgement! No one will have you, HELMET PUMPKIN! You will have yourself and be a hopelessly safe outsider. You know it in your nature to be true. It is not within you to err or fluctuate though we are told this is inevitable.

Content without a cause. A hero without applause! Helmet Pumpkin never thinks twice to close the cracked door without a peek.