Synthetic lawn
radioactive pine
With a retractable garden hose
& A 1 car garage
Offset
With pearly laminate
and a bare wooden gate

The doorbell is now
A zoom monitor
& The dog
Is in its plastic hut in the corridor
While
The child in the upper window
plays Minecraft
Alone with the halls silent with decadent dust

They turned my childhood home into a mausaleum,
But the truth is, it was no better then.
We were still suffocating in the immense nothing

blue house
brown house
tan house

brown house
blue house

brown house
brown house
brown house

backyard inside the fence
rocks inside of rivets

dead grass and
rocks inside rivets
rocks inside rivets

bridge over tracks
bridge over trails
bridge over the river
bridge over rails

parking lot
parking lot
parking lot
parking lot

high school called
a dead man’s name

circle
avenue
court
lane

Let's take a dive through my home estate,
a place I've tried to escape since my first brainwave.
I'll show you flat roofs and wayward avenues,
shopping trolleys that become steeds at two in the morning
next to mowed down greenery lying abandoned due to overuse.
I used to deliver newspapers along this route.
This spot, right here, has a great Wrekin view.
Back in my youth, it reminded me of you -
new roads, new horizons, new people to meet.
Let's keep moving to the end of the street
where a house is sent letters from the wicked government,
asking a mother if she's recovered from her own ill head.
Like her bed is four-poster when she can barely pay rent.
Her pathway displays a name written in cement.
Our descent continues with the drop-offs at Maccies.
A clock towers over us while we're waiting for taxis
to take us out of this place and onto higher plains
with house party nights and endless summer days.
But our dreams remain chained like bicycle frames,
The keys are locked away, we pray
in cars under stars, they say
we can be anything we want to be.
Such as royalty, or prime minister of this great country,
if we work as hard as anyone who's born into money.
So we hunt for hidden weaponry, hoping they see our cannon fire
and where spirits only fade, there will one day be a parade.

The sun sinks differently under an undisturbed skyline.

I wonder if it has something to do with my eye-line,
With the way I want things to happen on my time;
The sun should set when I want and rise only when I co-sign.
Here in suburbia time moves slow.

The sun moves at a half-time pace and so do the days.

I wonder if I’m missing out skipping out looking out for what’s racing past.
In New York all time seems to do is pass
But here it moves
Slow.

I wonder if I wonder too much.

No time to wonder or wander in a city too full of too many too much too fast too busy I have to do do do before the day leaves me behind—
Here, I leave the sun behind. Or it leaves me.
Sometimes, time moves so slow I can’t tell if I’m rushing or dragging
But I know that I’m moving and I think that may be enough.

I look up again and the sun has set. Today, it must be enough.

I've lived in the outskirts all my life
I've met in the outskirts my friends and my wife
I've built in the outskirts a comfortable hive
I'll make in the outskirts my kids, four or five
I've been here in outskirts both night and day
I went to school, college, work in the same place
I've never been made aware of any other way
Than the one I've been using in outsirkts again and again
The outskirts are comfortable, the outskirts are safe
Nothing's ever going down there, neither good nor bad
There is no grand ambition behind its bland face
No life goals or life to love behind its made bed
In outskirts I've lived, loved, ate, ******, slept, dreamt, hated, berated, been bored and amused, adored and abused, depleted, exhausted, destroyed and rebuilt, encouraged and spewed, all encompassing comfort of life's dullest views
The outskirts are comfortable, they are always secure
In outskirts I've lived my whole life and more
All outskirts look the same, but mine is the best
For my outskirts is where my humble home stands

85 and off the ladder

picking leaves from the gutter

Wife soon after

They found her dentures

on the kitchen tile


A few weeks later the neighbor

still in her sunhat and green gloves

hose running in her hand

Felled by a bee hiding in her marigolds.

Then her dog,

Went to live with someone else

But wouldn’t eat.

Wasn’t long before the flowers went too.

Eaten up in the dried, cracked soil.


The houses went up for sale

Little signs sitting innocently

In the front lawns:

“So & So Realty”


Pretty soon

some lovely young couples moved in

Had children

Bought a dog

Cleaned gutters

Planted more marigolds

Watched the rain run down

The window

And the reaper grinned

A little More than usual.

Gravel mounds in the mist
Are the mountain ranges of fantasy,
Spring green, eerie seen
Through commuter train windows.

Pitched roofs recede
Into infinite distance,
And junkyard parking lots are legion
In the gray suburban obscurity.

Factories and landfills loom,
Monuments and mausoleums,
The labor and the leavings
Of the little colossi.