"suburban" poems
Clock arms ***** upward
while the sleepers lie in their beds
thoroughly wet dreams
soak the ***** thoughts in their heads
Mothers obsessed with 7:00 am alarms
rush their ***** teenagers to designated stops
while a rising yolk shines bright
in eyes of sleepy pupils who wait for
a ******* on wheels
to shuttle them to institutions
addicted to #2 pencils
May 1, 2016
May 1, 2016 at 6:43 PM UTC
Static, memories
Emanating, separating
The postcard- perfect
Still life speaks
From its storied past.
Invisible, to drift
Among
The florid aphorisms,
Ending in
Deleterious debris,
Aftermath of
The inevitable.
Empty room, echo hollow
Tabula rasa -
Carpet clean, quite candid in it's
Return to callow.
Consciousness athirst,
Absorbing phenomena
Effervesce, inquisitive
Ideas foment,
Sealed inside a question.
The what -
Against the narrow
Scarcity,
And fatigue of should.
A tender malleable
Youth,
Betrayed, under
An assumed decorum -
Residue of truth,
Flattened emotion
Privations of a self
Unheard;
Misplaced affirmation,
Buried pathologies
In architecture
Fear manifests symbolic.
Harboring apathy
The lunacy of pious
Pedigree,
Import contagion,
Fetters of benignity
Doubt and indecision
Into ******
Cognizance,
Fallow spirits
Seep fumes of decay,
Credulity bleeds a human stain.
Social edifice, inoculated
Heirs of neurosis;
Palpable, sensual pain
And transience, though
Tacit - remain,
Our haunted history,
The blind hyperbole,
Maudlin
Forbearance, this haven,
A portrait
Of immaculate condition,
Nurtured with precision
Under sterling pretense.
Provincial domicile -
House beautiful,
Savage irony -
Unseen treasure
Innocence unabridged,
Faces, tiny creations;
Compliant vessels
Wounded,
While modernism murmurs
Its promise.
Brave New World,
In a late model sedan,
Domestic ranch on a
Corner lot,
Suburban natives,
Silence means security.
The misunderstood
Speak louder -
Consumerism beneath
Unvarnished ambition,
Never could
Repair the brokenness within...
© 2011 & 2018 W. S. Warner
Oct 20, 2011
Oct 20, 2011 at 5:38 PM UTC
And it is braided with silk, but woven of plastic-
-materialistic; corrugated ridges on burnt iron legs.
But to the streets of suburban deforestation,
Her influential deciphering - infatuated - purged
Of seamless equations and reincarnated followers,
Abides by the diamond-bleach, the sultry circuits,
Poised in the foetal position for the last - yet first -
Time.
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 5:59 PM UTC
The children of the Ghetto
Always in the news
They living in the ghetto
But didn't get to choose
Now they got nothing to lose
And everything to prove
So many people look down
On the children in the ghetto
But if only they knew
The trouble they go threw
But they living their cozy little life
In a suburban town where the crimes are few
But see the children of the ghetto
Didn't get to choose
The children of the ghetto
have nothing to lose
Born at the bottom
So it's easy to see why they feel defeat
Some didn't get to eat
The only escape they have is sleep
The children of the ghetto
Always in the news
Where they only portrayed negatively
So they got everything to prove
Because one can only wonder how the world could be so cruel
The children of the ghetto have creativity
Because in their minds they turned the ghetto into a castle
The children of the ghetto have to be strong
So they are ready for battle
The children of the ghetto
Didn't get to choose
They know what defeat feels like
But they don't like to lose
The children of the ghetto
Don't want your pity
No...
They just going to take over your city
The ones that are always in the news
That has nothing to lose
And everything to prove
They going to take over your city
You can only hold people in oppression for so long
But no matter how much you hold them down
They'll rise up
So rise up children of the Ghetto
Because you have everything to prove...
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 1:35 AM UTC
the magnolia was a bit of a *******
(as far as trees can be ********
and like very many other things—
like japanese candy from the Fugi Mart in Greenwich
(across from the McDonald’s and next to
the music shop where I got my viola)
and like pokemon cards and nintendo gaming systems
and like Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” on a pink CD in a Hello Kitty radio
—that ******* of a magnolia was a distinctive taste
of the years I spent growing up in my house at the end of Wyndover Lane.
the ******* thing was almost perpetually in bloom.
it barged into both spring and autumn
(it didn’t give a **** about timing)
those pink and white spongy petals padding the ground
and at first you think it’s ******* beautiful
sitting in the crook of the trunk where it split into
two large
separate branches
tilting your chin back to catch a glimpse of blue between fat blossoms
then the petals start rotting
water-retentive little *******
and you can’t sweep ‘em away because they stick to the patio
brown clumps slipping under rubber soles
my dad lets loose a string of curses
and the magnolia shakes with laughter
I tried pressing the petals in a notebook once
while I was in that naturalist phase it seems all little girls go through
when you make fairy houses out of bark in the backyard
and put flowers between the pages of books because it feels
oh-so-much-more significant
than picking a pretty thing and showing it to mom
but the magnolia seeped through my spiral ring
and when I opened it up a month later they were dry tan papery things
not at all velveteen and rosy
and there were garish pink bloodstains all through the ten pages
on either side
magnolias don’t preserve well
except, honestly they do don’t they
then of course there’s that childhood tragedy that everyone has
when your dog got hit by some soccer mom’s suburban
or your teddy bear was lost in an airport
or maybe you just liked to cry because some things
were just really worth the tears at the time
but when I came home and found out they cut down my ******* ******* of a magnolia
I bawled
there wasn’t
even
a
stump.
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 4:48 PM UTC
evening loneliness arrives at dawn
and knocks on the dusty windowpane
in the kitchen, i lie — with threadbare arms —
against the shabby wooden cupboard frame
this house is void of all electricity
except for the light bulbs, the fridge, the T.V.
and my steady-beating heart of rhythmic defeat
lying naked across the tear-stained sheets
if you come home and find that i am dead,
perhaps some ***** dishes fell on my head
but most likely, i'll be, in the living room gloom
with a half-drunk bottle of wine to consume
with emergency flares tied to both wrists,
i'll leave you a smile, a sigh, and a kiss
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 7:52 AM UTC
the wild suburban dogs
eat
the leftovers of a tom cat
outside
my apartment door--
the neighbors gone,
they must've done wrong,
the cops keep asking me
where they went--
a bluebird lands
on
a bent limb,
no song to sing
just worms to slurp,
a nest to think about,
and a debt
to me--
for the undeserved attention
I grant.
May 8, 2011
May 8, 2011 at 7:54 PM UTC
Have you heard of the
gardens clandestines grow?
The neighbors have, although
until today the gardens were usual, not a
pastime no one would seriously guess.
The flowers are conceptual homonyms
bordered by Boxwood africans
no breadwinning cardinal would bless
with its roost.
Grass beneath a golden ninebark
is slightly depressed where some pistol was.
For the past few years the neighbors have wondered daily What the hell is it this guy does?
What, with him always vaguely mumbling "...lots of business trips." It's dark
now, blood spatter coagulates on the picket fence.
Four tire streaks on the road,
the responding policemen kept it hushed, speaking in code
to disembodied voices on a radio. Not much more than a glance
and shrug at the neighbors' concerned inquiries.
One consensus formed: he was deep
in consequences from promises he couldn't keep.
This was speculative, of course.
The palm trees
rustled above their heads. "Maybe he was a clandestine,"
one of the neighbors remarked
as another dismissively barked,
"Ridiculous! He kept a garden!"
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 10:26 PM UTC
For every single barracuda smile.
Every apple that we didn't bite. All the dull exotic things I never had the chance to say. The way the ocean is louder at night, the glittering bones of the city, the taste of black cherries. For every paper star, and liquid street, suburban summer mattress like a shrine.
For hands like deep-sea divers through your hair.
The unknown red interior of you, the foreign countries of your thoughts. For every back of matchbook message, every finger tracing up my thighs, and for our reckless lips rubbed raw and red. For all the casual knives of conversation, the snow like stained glass underneath the sky.
For illuminated cities half-submerged.
Every exquisite impulse and grass-scented infidelity. For my heart like glass, like coal, like diamond. The salt and starless seas that crave a sailor. For the hand-grenade of lust and the ugly gardens of regret. For your eyes like earthquakes, like cigarettes, like disaster.
For every dark-haired, blue eyed boy.
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 10:27 AM UTC
the bane of my existence
here
now
is
all of the incessant
noise.
the city encroaches
ever outward,
gobbling up
the suburbs
like the great big
Blob
contributing
layer
after
layer
of noise.
a new metro line
opened last year
disheartened
the morning
realized
it was the trains
i heard
as my puppy
and i
walked so early.
trash trucks,
back up beeping noises,
leaf blowers,
mowers
and trimmers ...
all
conspiring
to drive me
mad.
the birds and owls,
snakes and deer,
hawks and rabbits
toads
and trees
and flowers,
puppies
all other creatures
divine,
tempering
this man-made chaos
this man-made
hell
keeping me hopeful
that
i
will
have some
respite
some respite
from this
hideous cacophony,
this man-made hell,
in the future,
not
too distant.
of course
there are
some benefits
from all
the city life
but i prefer
the silence
the solitude
of nature.
the Taoist recluses
who speak to me,
whose poems
paintings
writings
and silence
are balm
to my soul.
some day soon,
i too
shall join
the recluses
far away
far far away
in the mountains.
but for now,
i am
only a modern day
taoist
recluse
stuck in suburbia,
doing my best,
living in this
noisy hell.
Aug 8, 2015
Aug 8, 2015 at 2:37 AM UTC
A feather
gently pats the broken roof tops
in hopes of
Clinging to the suburban warmth
of illuminated glass.
I can see that this feather
(For a single second)
subtends by the chipped door
But even time is not strong enough,
For slowly that feather
falls prey to the enchantment of
A breeze.
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 3:39 PM UTC
under this suburban sky
red stain on the dull gray, when you move away to your elsewhere
you revive
as a fish returning to the water after a short yet intense pain
for you I'm the bait
and the hook
and the fisherman too,
not in that order
in the order you decide
since you decide
you are elusive, you always look away and tighten your eyes
your words are lashes
I feel weak in your presence,
at the same time your fragility confuses me and it moves me
as a boat adrift in a lonely sea
...................
sotto questo cielo suburbano
macchia rossa su grigio opaco, quando ti muovi nel tuo altrove,
tu rivivi
come un pesce che ritorna in acqua dopo un'agonia breve ma intensa
per te io sono esca
amo ed anche pescatore,
ma non in quell'ordine
nell'ordine in cui decidi
e tu decidi
sei inafferrabile, distogli sempre lo sguardo e stringi gli occhi
le tue parole sono staffilate
mi sento debole in tua presenza,
allo tempo stesso la tua fragilità mi confonde e mi commuove
come una barca alla deriva in un solitario mare
..................
bajo este cielo suburbano
mancha roja en gris opaco, cuando te alejas a tu otro lugar,
tu revives
como un pez que regresa al agua después de un dolor breve pero intenso
yo soy cebo para ti
y gancho
y también pescador
pero no en ese orden
en el orden en que tu decidas
y tu decides
eres evasiva, siempre mira hacia otro lado y cierras los ojos
tus palabras son latigazos
me siento débil en tu presencia,
al mismo tiempo, tu fragilidad me confunde y me conmueve
como un barco a la deriva en un solitario mar
Sep 11, 2018
Sep 11, 2018 at 9:05 AM UTC
Each generation’s majority makes choices that usher change
Lost pined for simple peace
Depression lived for human survival
Silence spoke for equality in a civil voice
Hippies fought war with flowers
Boomers drove for mad knowledge of self
Grunge nodded honesty from suburban garages
Y baptized Science as god
Mobs then anointed Orange Man as king
Down at the crossroads as means to their ends
For taxes, for borders, for babies, for guns, for Right
Trading truth, communal values and united dreams for their causes
How will we be remembered
As we watch this Heyday bloom
What will be this generation’s rallying cry
Will there be one
A culmination of past generation's trusted change
Lost, depressed, silent, free, self-aware, honest, doubting
Us
Here now
Strong
Watching the flames
Will we quietly turn away
As our world burns
Or will we tap a new strength
To face the fire
Together
© 2019 MJL
Apr 1, 2019
Apr 1, 2019 at 8:40 AM UTC
What sort of lean-to
is habitat to your humanity?
Is it an apartment, bungalow, flat ,
or a cozy cape cod
or perhaps a suburban ranch?
What sort of lean-to
provides those inches and flames
that shield you from
hypothermia and death?
Is it a Georgian Mansion by the sea
or cardboard boxes stacked
beneath the interchange
on the far side of town?
(How many lack even that)?
What sort of lean-to's
will suffice
to shelter the family of man?
December, 2013
Dec 15, 2013
Dec 15, 2013 at 9:46 AM UTC
I was a child of the river. Always living within walking distance of the restless water, the uneasy docks, and the anchors that kept the boats steady. Even as the current smacked against the starboars, the sailboats would waiver but never fall. I admired their tenacity. A child of the river: strong but restless; the anchor and the starboard; a suburban sadness-- a yearning for something beyond the river, but too weighed down to sail. A child of the river, stuck in a stagnant town.
Aug 5, 2014
Aug 5, 2014 at 12:31 AM UTC
it was the hooded-sweatshirt, sit-close-and-pretend-you’re-cold, bleacher-seat,
whiskey-and-coke homecoming that you never had when the leaves changed.
but the leaves changed anyway.
the damp grass smelling vaguely like your fireplace as the world got quieter,
your nose in your precalc and your foot tapping and how-many-years-left
of solo fridays, you counted the suburban stars but didn’t tell anybody
how ******* beautiful they were above your head, because they were yours.
when you wore your high school colors, you were cold for real. no pretense
in your shivering, no flutter in your abdomen because he wasn’t gonna talk to you,
and you didn’t really care, you shrugged. but the leaves changed anyway.
and you changed, slowly. grew taller and smarter and prettier and then the
remaining solo fridays shrank to none, and you left. big sweet snowdrifts turned to spring
and you shared whiskey-and-coke with the city, your stars dimmer but abdomen
finally fuller, and limbs warmer and no sweatshirt because you didn’t need one,
and hands all over to hold and feeling all three kinds of love at once.
and then the accidental homecoming, and the changing of the leaves
and the hooded-sweatshirt shivers and knowing you’re so much bigger now than the
suburban stars and the backward glances of the bleacher-seat kids, but the damp
grass still smells like your fireplace and suddenly you’re small again, just for a
second but god that second, you shiver and turn around again. you’re so much
bigger than this but homecoming, this whiskey-and-coke homecoming still isn't yours.
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 11:58 PM UTC
It's like this, and then there was total recall. Fast like a safety plan made wrong and then bouncing in and out all the way down the hall. Up through cable cars, Korean fast food market, wet fish, soupy street, concrete cracks filled with crab meat and **** heads. Just a square, a five block, two street, sideways quadrangle, beat of the Tenderloin, hour of the dove. Every one's dead on these loose ends. Hills of the back of her backside, skin of the back of her neck. Rapture is the grave of the sunset, memory is that thing that I said.
No one cans in carnivores, no one runs moves like a shepherd. Sunday, daft as candy, luck in the ways of the prophet. Canon of the blaze of every woman that died today. The sleep setting, the motorcycle bending the hollow, the ravines noisy interlude, up through the rough and the tangles, huddles in a six pack, three or four walking up the block to meet the rest of them.
The skin doesn't fit right, it wears wrong, the shoulders stiff, the masseuse excuses himself. Buckets of flowers hang from the ceiling like stripped cat christmas decorations in suburban mastermind serial killer resort town. Everyone is quiet because they gotta. They move their feet like they were hurrying death into a red volcano, like they were the errand of red from the top bell to the bottom of the town.
I sit on a roof top, baking in the noon day sun. Stripping sticks and stems off the side to sideways, just roasting away, laying, low in the afternoon light. I see a girl with her hands on her skirt, wobbling, scooting a priest card on a periwinkle terra-cotta. I move my head, turn it upside round to take a better look. No one counts to ten when they see me. The gangster that woke up isn't the gangster that went to sleep last night. My wickedness ended my words mean your bright decay. So I ride the pavement exhausted, burying my coughs in an L-shaped arm
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 12:32 PM UTC
If a world is known by its ideals
Let mine be known as sanity
Let all men be infertile
And all women, stale
Let streets be known for sanitation
And all babies dipped in chlorine
All talk, sterile and sufficient
All excrement concealed
Let the youth of my predecessors
And their mocking vulgarity
Drown in a town of minimal design
And shocking similarity.
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 6:40 PM UTC
I am no princess
I am no royalty
This is no fairy tale
No Prince Charming for me
I don't live in a castle
Just a house on a suburban street
I am no princess
But I feel like a queen
Apr 23, 2021
Apr 23, 2021 at 7:20 AM UTC
I am a bird chair
Bird chairs may have not caught on yet
but I promise you
they soon shall
I work well with a bird lamp
Wave at Window and Book Me
a How-To-Encyclopedia
of bird chairs and lamps
Chapter Four is all bird flags
You know how hot suburban jungle gets
Stringing lights around moon
is not so difficult
When wind is at your back
much easier in a bird chair
And with a bird lamp
Shoe painting is mentioned
in the glossary
just in reference to
sadness your bird chair
might be experiencing
If you wish to re-floor carpet bag
bird chairs are perfect
accompaniments
Big things are happening in bird chairs
Look out for bird jet next
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 11:00 AM UTC
I am lost for words, as I am empathic with the planet.
Although we truly stand in line for death and the afterlife, it is important that we mother our young.
I do not deny the allurement of sociopathic inclinations and I heartily validate the sexuality of suburban expression.
But, we both know – politicians rise like winged beasts from the murky depths of sociological oceans.
Can I touch your skin and give you compliments?
I love your being, just as it is.
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 11:30 PM UTC
Enter the dragon with death and disruption
Pride and tradition cataclysmically thrown,
Magnificent structures reduced to rubble
Distraught people bereft of their homes.
Chasms of heartache with bodies of babies
Strewn with the bricks in vast disarray,
Dust in the air and the howl of the sirens
Shouting police on a horror filled day.
Christchurch is bleeding, her confidence shattered
Our keynote cathedral is lying in shards,
Vacant eyed people are clinging to strangers
Jagged black holes in suburban back yards.
Christchurch is bleeding, our torn, gracious City
The nation arises in hurt and alarm,
To face the challenge with strength and resources,
To nurture our sister with healing and balm.
Sympathy shown by the myriad faces
Racing to help from all parts of the globe,
Expertise offered with money and labour
Students with shovels and priests of the robe.
Sadness and torment for kin of the missing
Frustrated rescuers work till relieved,
Moments of triumph with lost resurrected,
Agony felt when the dead are retrieved.
Led by the strength of the Mayor of the City
Courageous citizens help where they can,
Moments of bravery, moments of agony
Inspirational feats of elan.
Poignancy shown by the sad Maori Warden
Guiding the aged through the strewn broken glass,
Aiding the ambulance crews in their labour
Proud to be Kiwi as folk show their class.
Christchurch WILL arise from the death and destruction
Once again people will overcome grief,
Pride and resilience will triumph with the passing
And time will repair with deserved relief.
Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
AUCKLAND
25 February 2011
Feb 25, 2011
Feb 25, 2011 at 8:26 AM UTC
I am a humming bird with a broken wing forming a geometric fall.
I am a conjoined twin with a foot in heaven and one in hell.
I am a geyser spewing out echoes from a stonewall well.
I am an open road stretched for miles paved with a murderous smile.
I am a man with a firm handshake who stands still on top of an earthquake.
I am a visionary man who slipped on fate and fell in love.
I am a preliminary hearing fallen on deaf ears.
I am the contribution to your retribution.
I am a person of depersonalization.
I am a one man army minus one man.
I am the desired taste of orange juice and toothpaste.
I am concentrated concentration.
I am the formation of your imagination.
I am the comma for your introductory clause.
I am the cause for your sudden pause.
I am the spatula that stirs up your anxiety.
I am the reaper who never leaves a clue.
I am the lace that always chokes the shoe.
I am the light that finds its way thru helping the little shrew.
I am the suburban white boy who sings the blues.
I am consistent inconsistency.
I am your assigned tour guide for your expiration exploration.
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 5:42 PM UTC
Xeroxed vitals on paperplanes
Crashing into window panes
Broken-heart blisters and voyeuristic veins
Appear and create transparent glass stains
Blue-Green grass on the other side
Laying there, our fathers died
Dreams and streams of alcohol
Run from their mouths with no control.
Shaking, breaking, no where to decompose
Skin peeling off of worn down toes.
Tell me where their love goes
Tell me where their love goes
Everything turned into gun-shy eyes
Blue-lipped Sunday surprise
Bodies breaking into waiting
This is nothing but carbon dating
Bottles breaking of ***** that's so clear
That I won't see until they're near
God and Jesus in picture frames
Suburban families with jungle brains
Broken homes and replacement Brad's
401 k's and missing ads
Finding our homes that aren't so black and white
Let us sleep in our dreams tonight
Validation through our existence
Is dead but still our resistance
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 8:21 PM UTC
my turtle doves are pondering the broth of my head space.
tingling.
they gibberish the nest and lay eggs of dragons that still believe in dragons.
they wish for thick lightning in the lustrous void. they beak the shell of no made thing.
the Eternal Hum.
the one Always that had Never Begun.
Only Ever, Ever Been.
and That's It's
Name.
my turtle doves are robbing the bog of it's undead wyrms. they swoop in the morning.
down down down
to the gamma ray golf course lawns
of our suburban necrophilia. the one with the empty dreams in their peanut butter stars.
the one
with the eggshell Camary Toyotas and the delinquent epiphanies.
n' more ice cream than Ben n' Gerry's Wet Dream of Selling
More ******* ice cream
than You
can Imagine.
Plus One.
my turtle doves are holding me hostage. in the dizzy breach. of god's contract.
a damp shade of misspent youth. the Old Way.
seasoned by the Eons
and the swollen Love of the First Love.
engorged in the Kingdom of Desire
like a fat mosquito. Sated on Cyclopian forearms.
and the shoulders of Giants
on a small blue world
in your mouth.
just sayin'.
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 11:16 PM UTC