#suburbs
I don't want to live in a daydream
Scraping my hands on suburban kitchen tiles
Repeating the same delusional point, dumb pointless fantasies
Neatly compartmentalised, perfectly narcissistic
I thought this rollercoaster ride wasn't happening anymore
Always crashing in the same car, circling back over the same forgetful insights
If it's any consolation, I'm disappointed in myself too
I love you, but I'm just not tall enough to go on this ride yet
And maybe I never will be
We are small, we are exasperated and broke together
But only one of us isn't inarticulate or delusional
And it isn't the one seeing me for who I really am in the present
Sorry. These feelings are gross and vain
I want to banish them, cut them out of me and plant them back in the ground
This is the stuff that ruins marriages
I love you
I love you
I love you
But I'm not even good at writing poems.
Mar 22
Mar 22, 2026 at 8:52 AM UTC
This isn't a change in structure
It's barely a change in style
Is this all we have?
Won't you give us a smile?
Exile on main street
But only for a while
I thought it would last forever
We're so upwardly mobile
Our paths of glory
Have been wrecked with war
There's no more safety net
History's obscured
A haunted building
A has been hotel
The paint is cracked and dry
Bullet holes, oh well
I thought I would grow old here
Privilege has downsides
I don’t want to be rich
I’m institutionalised
Goodbye Riverlea
Hello suburban silence
And bye Eldorado Park
Quiet can be violence
Please don't be so loud
I don't feel at ease
Two cars just passed my gate
Think I should call the police
I just can’t konnekt
All I see is the future
Another lost flyboy
Looking for a culture
I know once it's lost it's never found.
Jan 5
Jan 5, 2026 at 2:18 PM UTC
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
Sep 18, 2023
Sep 18, 2023 at 5:48 AM UTC
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
Apr 13, 2021
Apr 13, 2021 at 9:33 PM UTC
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.
Sep 8, 2020
Sep 8, 2020 at 2:53 PM UTC
at a bend in the night
(early in your sleep program)
our vermin stained rancor
batters its ****** limbs
upon your double glazed windows
we kick a thistling up your vents
putting 'the ghoul' up your lightly clothed backs
and disrupting your 'conditioned' environment
scattering the lawn toys
our demented energy
aggressively makes collage
the muted spirit
of your suburbs
all of your 'homeware'
ignites nothing true
just taking options out
on your own life packaging
our baying notes
our rapid chatter
reminds the family homes
that they are only snug for now
for they remain subject to nature
and due reprimand
our message :
conclude evacuate
and leave ruin
Feb 5, 2020
Feb 5, 2020 at 10:41 PM UTC
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.
Jan 3, 2020
Jan 3, 2020 at 2:50 PM UTC
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
Aug 8, 2019
Aug 8, 2019 at 4:57 AM UTC
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.
May 14, 2019
May 14, 2019 at 6:35 PM UTC
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.
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 9:50 AM UTC
The day of the site visit
I hurried out at six fifteen to wait
For a train with a waning moon,
Bright Venus and Jupiter hovering
Above the skyline. The amber horizon
Turned to orange and pink
As scattered stars went dim.
Misread the schedule and arrived
Downtown three quarters of an hour
Before my Electric District connection.
An accidental gift to self.
I ascended, ate two breakfast sandwiches
I got for one dollar with a coupon,
Warm in my hands on a blue picnic table.
The sky grew light
Above the Lake and I wandered
Through Millennium Park. It was empty
Or nearly, which felt the same.
The sun broke the bent horizon
In chrome and ice. I took some pictures,
Then descended to find Track Five.
The day's light revealed
Hollow houses with cartoon stone applied
Like paint, unable to compete
For preeminence with two-car garages.
The newest were bigger and offered
In different colors, but all the same.
Driving conditions were excellent.
At sunset I stood on another platform
Above a busy highway. The last rays came
Through tree branches and melted
Into the pale sky as they left my face.
I had witnessed that sun's birth,
It had warmed me while I waited for my carpool,
Rested with me on a concrete planter after lunch.
I entered the city in darkness
A second time. Changed muddy boots
For clean shoes and hurried to the museum.
It was a free night, overcrowded
With families and children, so difficult
To find a quiet corner for contemplation,
Any sanctuary for my own small soul.
I descended, discovered the typewriters, then
Realized you and I were already there, just
In different colors, using different words,
Spending school vacation to view old paintings
And the Holiday Miniature Rooms.
It dawned and the future was brighter even
As I left the city in darkness.
Jan 15, 2019
Jan 15, 2019 at 3:29 PM UTC
The problem with people-watching
in the middling suburbs outside Pittsburgh,
is everyone looks like they’re related,
a little too similar, bad photocopies
of the same dull morality.
The girls have similar haircuts
and the boys wear similar shorts.
The men and women,
they cannot stomach the ‘F’ word,
but they adore efficient order
enforced through totalitarian violence.
Chemical air fresheners are pumped
through department store ventilation systems.
Perhaps the compound is designed
to induce complacency for the status quo
and suppress everyone's style
or sense of fashion.
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 12:12 PM UTC
4 days in the suburbs
everything I utter
has the same cough
every itch
remains hidden
there is this thought
stuck in a glass jar.
these days
an image of her eyes
and 25 dollars
can make me run faster
than any automobile
but no one here runs anywhere.
what is that song
I used to listen to —
the one about stillness?
It exists here
on a slow suburban morning.
May 13, 2018
May 13, 2018 at 3:58 PM UTC
We climb power lines and play Titanic.
We go to parties, but only for the free food.
We sneak out to people watch at Walmart.
We're the whirlwind couple everyone dreams about.
We're what they don't show in movies.
Apr 11, 2018
Apr 11, 2018 at 7:05 PM UTC
Suburbia greeted me with pale hands in my late teens.
She was a wasteland in a mini skirt; in its’ own right it could be called a Cave with Plato egregiously driving his brand-new Prius 90 miles an hour saying “this is really living as long as you don’t look back” and all you can do is nod your head vigorously because the twisted **** that had settled surreptitiously in your baby lungs was giving you daylight hallucinations. My endeavors didn’t end there when they should have.
There was something uncanny about the way streetlights gave you the eternal glare. Of creating ordinary neighborhood streets appear like you’ve been there before in a dream, in another body. In a dazed stupor the sounds of a television and a light coming from a garage is forgiving in your misguided attempts to be comfortable in a foreign space. It could almost feel like home when your repressed trauma keeps resurfacing while you’re trying to introduce yourself. Almost.
In these polite badlands with everything uniformed the people I met were always trying to stand out from the serene landscapes. Sitting in plaid couches I was giddy playing the nihilist. Rerun episodes of Portlandia playing but all I remember from that smoky room were brown pants that looked extremely crisp to the touch and I wanted to reach out my hands and see if they would crunch under the paperweight of my heavy palms. I didn’t but I’m sure they would’ve emitted the sound of potato chips being eaten in a frenzy.
When I wasn’t walking through dark rooms feeling through what could have been hallways, a family’s living room or the cool gates of hell I was meandering my way through drowsy parties where boys with the names like Dusty and Slaughter were prevalent. Each with their own bizarre story about how they stole their parents’ money one night and took off spontaneously. Driving all the way to Nevada with nothing but half a tank of gas and one pack of cigarettes. You could almost pinpoint their personalities by the type of cigarettes they smoked. Most of them holding different colored American Spirits. Had I been smarter I would have asked for a light and a smoke. Never mind that I was always deadly afraid that I had some undiagnosed lung disease and that asphyxiation was my biggest fear or that I had a pack of Marlboro black menthols in my purse that were over a year old. I found my corner sitting in a worn outdoors chair. The ones where the armrest comes built in with a cupholder. My beer ice cold sitting awkwardly sideways while I tried to consider why the host of the party was wealthy yet so hostile. My favorite party game was the one where I took hit after hit of joints being passed around until I was crazy glued to my chair and my brain started to feel like a lagoon that continued to melt into a Campbell’s soup I once had as a child. Everyone completely unaware of the horror that the house had become to me. Somewhere in the distance I was acutely aware of who I would go home with, why my ventures into the suburbs had sparked my intrigue in the first place. The only reason why I had endured feeling like a spider watching a **** film and why I had lost my virginity just a day before. I was a displaced specimen thinking about her ***** in a room of 30 people or more.
Oct 16, 2017
Oct 16, 2017 at 2:20 PM UTC
There’s a horror in the city
but it’s always Halloween in someone’s basement
in the suburbs the closets are inundated with skeletons
each dressed in friendly attire
but never opening the door
the neighbors always watching through sheer curtains
binoculars at the ready
instead of candy on doorsteps
there’s signs of beware of the maniac with the pistol
locked and loaded watching the 6’oclock news
no apocalypse is breaking into our windows tonight
there’s a hum and it’s making all the locals go mad
they still haven’t figured out it’s the cicadas
not demons in their trees looking for a discount lunch
the desert is a harsh place when the sun is
drawn sloppily on the right hand corner of a page
the houses all uniformed for the drought to come
each manicured lawn is a haunting for the
unemployed drunk in the nearby trailer park
the ghosts of those whose Christmas
doesn’t come in stockings but stalking
and restraining orders
the spookiest part is not the
slasher hotels or the creature feature
shows at the bars and clubs
but the calm, serene and unsettling
manner in which everyone congregates
on Sunday morning to be cleansed
of impurities, each smile stretching farther and farther
until the seconds drip into communion wine
until the hours dissolve in one’s mouth like god’s flesh
reinvented, resuscitated, resurrected
Arise, my brothers
for the pastor is watching
there’s a twinkle in his eyes
and there are boys missing after every ceremony
but no one questions why
Jul 14, 2017
Jul 14, 2017 at 11:45 PM UTC