Long Suburban Poems
Long Suburban Poems. Below are the most popular long Suburban by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Suburban poems by poem length and keyword.
Suburban Spring
(4.15.10)
Springtime fills the air,
like laughing gas.
(Or maybe more like whiskey.)
The suburbs are drunk on the nectar of it's dawn.
Middle-class houses
are starting to dance.
(Or maybe they're just wobbling.)
They vomit whole families onto their lawn.
I watch them the same way dogs watch TV:
Confused and intrigued,
with a slight urge to pee.
The father cuts grass,
like a sleepwalker.
(Or maybe more like a zombie -
Ravenous for cheap beer, instead of brains.)
A six pack later,
he starts washing his car.
(Or watering his driveway.)
He's spreading on wax so he's set when it rains.
The mother kneels in dirt,
tending the garden.
(More like digging in a sandbox.)
Her spade is rusty. (Figuratively, at least.)
A sunset later,
she cooks family dinner.
(Or maybe orders some pizza.)
(If every mouth is fed, she can call it a feast.)
I watch them the same way dogs watch TV.
The son plays war games,
dying for fun.
(Or maybe more for practice.)
He whines about fruit drinks, as well as the heat.
A full pitcher later,
tweaking on sugar,
(Or maybe just corn starch.)
the war escalates, 'til its time to go eat.
The daughter makes a picnic,
inviting her toys.
(Or maybe not.)
(Her plastic spread can only spread so thin!)
After the tea time,
she's off picking flowers.
(Or maybe weeds.)
(As long as they're pretty, there's a vase that they'll fit in.)
They gather, as a family, at the table to say grace.
They hold each others' hands and say, "Amen."
(And proceed to stuff their face.)
The dog sits by the boy -
Loyal and true.
(Or maybe just hungry.)
He drools as he stares from the corners of his eyes.
After dinner,
he offers to help with the dishes.
(Or maybe he demands it.)
The boy sneaks him a bite. The dog is not surprised.
Bedtime comes soon after.
The kids are sent to brush their teeth.
(Or maybe just to run the sink.)
They put on their jammies, and to bed, they go.
After tucking them in,
the parents watch TV.
(Or maybe they just dream they do,
sleeping in its glow.)
The dog is changing channels,
looking for a better show.
Confused and intrigued,
he pees on the carpet below.
2.
To be alive is to dance with danger.
Both hands off the wheel,
We fly down the icy plane of existence
Trusting our belief in a Right Order of Things
To shield us from the chaos,
The chaos that waits like a hungry beast
Just off the dim edges of waking life.
There is a poison which infects us,
Running through the deep channels of our minds,
Corroding our sense of self-control,
Rubbing raw the frayed edges of our common senses
Making us crave the deadly clarity of the irrational act,
Breeding a lust for the fearful appeal
That lies smiling in the hidden heart of brutality.
He comes out of his home early that morning,
His fiancee' stepping brightly beside him.
They climbed into their truck together
Warming one another with new lovers' looks
In the snapping cold November air.
When they felt themselves readied for another suburban day,
They began backing out,
Never noting the Hatchback's approach.
So, with a little jar and a little crunch,
Their vehicles met in a tiny collision.
Minor damages produced,
Enough for annoyance, no cause for hardship.
He got out to meet the other driver,
Prepared to dispatch with this unfortunate delay
Then move on with the day.
He saw the other driver walking towards him,
Then saw the gun.
In the space of one flashing moment
Another life met its abrupt end.
Without a word, the stranger lifted his gun
And emptied a full clip into his target.
9mm slugs opened round tunnels
In the stunned body standing before him,
Blood rained brightly, roses on new snow.
After the limp form of the newly dead fell,
The killer walked back to his truck
Brought out a fresh clip,
To calmly use it up on the body
That danced under the impacts,
A briefly animated corpse upon the tarmac.
As these things transpired the woman,
The would've-been wife of the bleeding ruin
Screamed in the cab; she screamed and screamed
Like a bird in pain,
Face a vision of horror.
That horror broke itself for a fleeting moment,
Long enough to let panic flood in
The would-be wife took off then,
In aimless, agonized flight.
The killer roamed free for days.
Well, get up on time,
See your days pass by.
Don’t ask questions,
To leaders of suppression.
Cause court is in session.
Obey this do that,
When you go out,
Don't wear hood or hat.
Ah, eat more Tyson food
City gave us a candle,
Ask for a meal, they might be in a good mood.
Lights, camera, action,
Fake your true reaction.
College teaching us
Basic subtraction,
Wondering if it’s all distraction
To what we love to do
Ah, sulfates in shampoo
Don’t complain about
Government voodoo
Whatever you do
Whatever you see
Don’t take it too personally.
Cause you might change the world
May do what they don't want you to.
Might abolish greed,
And you might uproot their evil seed.
Ads littered on t.v.
It’s bait for the hook
Crooks stalking my Facebook
Someone’s in a fight,
But people enjoy and look look look.
Well, Billy threw up
That corn syrup.
Read your schoolbooks and shut-up.
Rise for the anthem,
Rise for the pastor,
Labeled dumb for not
Thinking faster.
Sally resisted two faced authorities.
Cells are filled with innocent minorities.
Ah, preach it on hills
Lights flashing in Area 51,
They shut down my windmill
I’m faced with a giant and my ammo equals none.
How is my grandson gonna live?
If all he does is forgive
Those who take and do not give?
I’m staying home today,
To relax and pray.
Ah but GMO is in my fruit.
Saw a man trade his soul for a nice suit.
Hypocrites smile with snakes in their boots.
Ben came home with black eye
Then left his mama without a goodbye.
Mamas sittin on the porch only to cry
For her son who is now getting high.
Last week he was a victim in a driveby.
Read all about it in the news.
Single mother of none in suburban town of blues.
Little girl taken in an alleyway,
Policemen said they'll find her another day
Unless the parents have money to pay,
You won't be seein her face, hey!
Little girl grew up hangin by street corners,
Asking for one night for only four quarters.
Meanwhile in Flint Michigan
The water is polluted brown but they ain't listenin,
So the citizens are thirstin’
For some hydration.
Metals in their water
While the mayor counts his dollars
The governors apologize
But it's just more lies.
Read all about it in the news,
Truth is kept hidden in suburban town of blues.
Kids,
like adults,
who become ecologically active,
join in gardening,
urban, and suburban, and rural cooperative farming,
green environmental sciences,
school gardens as group art installations
and outdoor entertainment
and spirit/nature nondualistic humane-divine experience,
tend to be joiners and stayers,
sometimes annoying OpenSpace Occupiers
Who stray away
from competing subcultures
and millennially stray toward
green cooperatively-owned and
matriarchally co-managing climates
of healthy-wealth interdependence--
the opposite of competing encampments
for forced and loathed
compromising Win/Lose codependence.
Ecologically passionate kids,
like adults,
tend to be joiners
and stayers,
but if they stray away
then probably they,
like you,
only have so much time
in any one day
and they have found a more resiliently healthy place
to transparently WinWin
vulnerably, yet safely, play
Where Positive/Negative Energy Democracy
is another way to say
Let's listen Both/And
bilaterally Ego/Eco
Inside/Outside climates together
and not judge ourselves
or each other
as always autonomously Yang-good
or Yin-bad
when we could
instead
invite YangLeft with YinRight
to ecologically with theologically
roleplay WinWin plant planting nicer
as each creolizing
PositivEnergy
Trust-Democratic other
blooms where cooperatively planted.
Kids,
like adults,
who are ecologically active
tend to come from theo/ecological past WinWin joiners,
heading toward Left language for Right nutritional experience
ecopolitical secular/sacred vulnerable transparency,
yet safely protecting past errors
as long transparent,
permeable,
regenerative/degenerative lines
of WinWin Here with Now intent.
Health-evolving mission statements
free to reacclimate
mutual subsidiary
co-arising dipolar
Left with Right
inside/outside
Ego/Eco
Health/SacredWealth enculturation
of binomial ZeroZone
resilient ego-choices
For EcoTherapeutic revolutionary avocations,
praise,
liturgical dance,
sacred meaning
theological sacraments
for ecological purposes,
ethology of EarthTribe developmental phylogeny
Historical WinWin revolutionary dominant,
occasionally hysterical WinLose devolutionary,
EarthTribe compassionate
becoming WinWin
ego/eco-dominant.
What is time?
But a rotation of the planets,
A love gone to the wind,
Or a setting of the sun?
Sometimes we can’t tell the day,
But by the bottle we drink.
Or the books I read,
…Plato, Steinbeck, and old Walts leaves.
What is art?
But a set of statements,
An aesthetic feeling,
Or a theory on communication?
And other times I sit in the wind,
Nostalgic story’s swim in the chaos of thoughts.
A world of energy measured by mass,
To the speed of light,
…Have you ever seen God?
Or a rope strung to the choking of seeds?
Submission,
Submission,
A world I don’t want to keep.
Do you know what it is to hurt?
Love burnt to a gravitational hole,
Failure that sticks like a parasite
…to the bone.
Loss of light,
Loss of touch,
Loss of comprehension,
It hurts so much.
Here we dwell where time has no meaning,
A court of the gods,
With a promised feast
Consumed by gluttonous dogs.
Out in the hills we roam,
Lost like infantile, mad children.
To a hunt of tragedy,
Is the mistake of Cephalus.
Can you feel the cold chill,
The rains of pain?
The wind is our home,
And a soft mad echo
Speaks to us,
…what is it saying?
What does it mean,
To be?
Standing one with nature,
Crouched by a river,
Can we interpret the drones
Of a suburban family?
They speak of regulation,
And hold a working class hero
As the sweets of moderation.
Doesn’t the road of excess
Lead us to the palace of wisdom,
And can’t we say truth
Is but of a relative nature?
But behold,
I believe in a long
Derangement of the senses
To
Obtain
The
Unknown.
Though, What is life?
Art, poetry, a figment of the imagination.
The skeptic concludes
To a weak will.
The artist spins a love
Of
Degradation.
The contemplative
Reaches the of height of formation.
The meaning,
What is reason for the meaning?
A will, a thought, a spinning of a thread,
Or,
The fabrics of dread.
Two paths, one entity,
A system from a creed of deities.
Can you speak when I say,
“Reckless abandonment,
Deranged lonely nights,
Failed plains inside the mind.
So useless to try,
The common misperceptions of what’s right,
And the twinkle of tears gone by,
…Welcome to life.”
Form:
At one time my neighborhood was new mass-produced little boxes made of ticky-tacky – all looking just the same*
Beautiful affordable, true suburban models, in mid-twentieth century they were truly quite the rage.
But now the then-proud new homeowners have mostly moved to better places
While new ones gladly renovate these aging homes with new rooms and outer faces
When I walk down the street it’s easy to see many of these homes looked exactly like mine
at one time,
before they were distressed and foreclosed
It was a model community that boasted of its clean uniformity, sterility, and safety from those unqualified outside, distressed and forebode
Now it’s a bit grittier yet in my mind much prettier than a planned little row of little boxes where the kids all turn out the same.
It’s a mix of even and odd ones, making for a mix where none is truly plain.
Now the trees have grown so high, and despite the leaves and branches dropped I’m thankful for the breezes
I imagine there are dozens of Spots, Fluffies, and Socks in haphazard plots beneath them
Where beloved pets rest embraced by roots that still grow along with branches
that are strong and large, and now holding swings for another generation of kids and grandkids.
The yards are no longer so clean and shining green, but I focus on a long-gone vine
That left an imprint as it at one time crept up the wall outside my door,
and so artful its design
I want to keep it there forevermore.
I pass added studios for boarders, made from added rooms from added carports,
Basketball hoops at the street side, foot bridges over ditches for bikes, and newly added porches.
With new rooms, rooves, paint, and landscape
Nothing here a mere misuse of ticky-tacky tape.
Even those homes that still look the same outside for their original floor plan
If you go inside each you’ll see windows and walls removed and added
While the footprints are still here, new shoes have stepped in place
All from boots to bare feet to these homes have found their way.
So as I walk down the street,
At least I have a little hope right now
For despite how bleak the times may be,
At last I can believe everyone is allowed in Levittown – for now.
*Apologies to Malvina Reynolds, Little Boxes (1962)
The heavens brush by her fingertips
as she reaches for the sky
but her feet stay nailed to the ground
when she stretches past those pearly gates
catching a shooting star in one hand
while grabbing Orion’s belt with her left
to wrap around her waist
when she gets home.
Down she shrinks
until she is the size of a firefly
blinking on and off
to the beat of their hearts.
She smothers her light
as the demons emerge
from the depths of the burnt lake
and they search in the dark
for something to clamp
their steel traps around.
As she is finally found
she is pulled from all sides
by good and bad alike
and only at the break of the sun
when light pours out from two grinning halves
does the tugging on her spider web soul cease.
And the struggling plants fly by her window
as she makes her journey around the world
though it’s only around the block that she flies
for the umpteenth time
and as the clouds decend
to meet her feeble plane
she wishes the land beneath her
didn’t seem quite so far away.
She jumps out, parachute-less
and tries to run away
on those stepping stone puffs of perspiration
to meet her so-called destiny.
But as she is running she is sinking
and the hands she reaches for
only throw stones to build the wall
that she resides within
effectively putting blinders on all five sides.
All she sees are feet pounding air
and now she is jumping
red-tiled rooftop to red-tiled rooftop
a suburban myth in the making.
Sparrows swoop in to chat
sharing their piping hot tea and sympathy with her
but her appetite is destroyed
by the sight of the endless abyss
that stretches out before her
surrounded by the cliff
she now teeters on the edge of
one leg in the air, dancing gracefully
as she tries not to fall.
And as she blindly reaches all around
she realizes that no one is behind her
to grab her waist and save her
so she takes a baby step of faith
and finds the blackness holds.
Already she is walking quickly
so fast she doesn’t realize night is coming
until the stars put lights in her eyes
and the shadowed blue cloaks her shoulders.
But nails don’t pierce a nothing
so tonight she does without
her winking and twinkling accessories
and hopes to anything that’s listening
the demons can’t find her here.
Reporters swarmed, the rabid jackals,
around my house they made a big crowd,
even harassed my poor old mother
to the point she could barely go out.
I growled loud at more than a few,
got one locked up for trespassing,
thankfully they found other nonsense
and the frenzy wasn’t long-lasting.
But the damage had truly been done,
the internet will never forget,
I was practically a murderer,
commenters publicly wished me dead.
My love life soon faded to nothing,
barely went on two dates in three years,
more than one time, I'm ashamed to say,
I wondered why I remained here?
With people just judging by the group,
and my ‘group’ was my family ties,
condemned for things that I never did,
forever doomed to be despised.
Until one spring day this Christian girl
saw my profile and then swiped right.
I didn’t have high expectations,
but decided to go out that night.
Her name was Ester, when I saw her
I decided then on a new play,
told her about me, all right upfront,
then waited for what she would say.
She just smiled back, a knowing grin,
said,”I knew who you were from the start.
Had worries at first, then I recalled
the memories that plague my own heart.
“You see my father is a bad man,
used his fists and caused me to despair,
beat up my mother so very bad
she is forever bound to a chair.
“He is in jail now, for forty years,
but I am not to blame for his sins.
So who was I to disparage you?
I have no idea what lies within.
“No one should ever be held to blame
for something that's beyond their control.
I’m not my dad, and you’re no tyrant,
what you are I’d like to get to know.”
For the first time in so many months
I felt new hope spring up in my mind.
I’m Ester’s husband, seven years on,
no finer woman can you find.
We have two kids, a suburban house,
a big one with a three-car garage,
when media comes, I let her loose,
they go scurrying from the barrage.
I no longer worry all that much
about what other people say,
I am no killer, just a father,
so let the useless talking heads bray.
They all just see my evil grandpa,
and never truly will understand,
maybe I was born son of tyrants,
but I myself am a good man.
…and they will not take that from me.
Hmm...What Discursive Poetic Theme Shall I Write About...
Today (a rather brisk, chilly,
and otherwise sat
tiss factory twirly delightful
December 18th, 2018) matte
her of fact quite
refreshing noontime, while this fat
tend plot of Earthen surveyed terrain
situated over scat
herd modest suburban tract,
(actually yours truly some watt
urbanely sprawled out) at
Latitude: 40.2538 Longitude: 75.4590,
where I sit pat
and think to write
about some reading material flat
touring my "FAKE" status
as king of agitprop for chat
hurrying class gussied up with
artistically crafted rat
tilly done up snazzy razz mutt tazz
(approved by Willard), this expat
lapsed Peterson harried tailored script,
asper previous peculiar
swiftly styled idée fixe
literary unnecessary, rat
tickly tawdry superfluity)
interspersed with dollops of splat
hard logophile, nonetheless gentle
on the eyes, yet feeling totally flat
and devoid of meaning, and quite
convincingly desperate idea this pratt
tilling far amore in the dell doth
expatiate, expound expressively, gnat
cheerily witty, (i.e. hint- please
pretend these humph fat
tickle lee meandering, rambling,
and warbling words) taxing
on mental faculty as bat
tan gruelling death march
physically, when circa
April 1942 Japanese forced
76,000 captured Filipinos,
and Americans Allied
soldiers to march about 80 miles across
Bataan Peninsula (province
in Philippines), where they died
enroute to...during World War II
on island of Luzon, espied
as a spiritual sanctuary hosted
by a knowledgeable tour guide
named Matthew Scott hood dons
genuine (musty smelling)
Tory wig to hide
as an alien alias (from the outer limits
of the twilight zone) incognito
even to himself, and especially the bride
of Frankenstein, who evinces a strong crush
toward said nondescript gentrified
vested gentry groundless thinker with pride
though, dirt poor (at least on the surface),
but deep down rich with
Schwenksville well watered
history harkening back to 1684,
when hoodwinked, jilted and lied
Lenni-Lenape Indians got fleeced
then taken for a ride
this land ceded to (stolen from) William Penn
nestled along the Perkiomen Creek.
Harper Lukowski paced down the sidewalk,
the day was done, he was on his way home.
His fried Jaquan, twenty years his junior,
chattered with him as the two did go.
They both worked at a nearby factory
manufacturing high quality knives,
the best in the land, if you ask Harper,
as a craftsman he did his work with pride.
Things were going very good that fall day,
management had just hired on twenty more,
a president who had kept to his word,
Harper had never seen that before
As he came up to his small, suburban home
he spotted his son kicking back on a chair,
asked,”So how did the job search go today?”
Said his son,”There is no need to despair.
“I’m having trouble finding work I like,
I want to enjoy it when I make my pay.
Rather than rush, I signed up for welfare,
and I just got my first check in today.”
Harper went quiet at the young man’s words,
and said,”Have you gone and lost your mind?
If you even think of cashing that check
then you are no longer a son of mine.”
His son Ted then froze, there on that spot,
a surprised look etched deeply on his face,
Harper continued,”Never did I think
you would fall so easily into disgrace.
“You think that check can do no real harm,
but I have seen the effects of the dole,
your own grandfather lived off of hand-outs,
he died a drunk, only forty years old.
“And every day I walk to my job
I see the wreckage of people on the street,
mad at the world, helpless and cruel,
devoid of the slightest dignity.
“Is that how you wish to spend you hole life,
as a dog on the government’s chain?
Voting for whoever throws you more cash,
regardless of the evils in their brains?
“Have the schools polluted your mind so much
that you can’t see any job has honor?
Will you live like a leach, draining the cash
that’s been built by the hard work of others?
“If you value your freedom and your manhood
you’ll destroy that small and unearned check,
and if you don’t then you can kiss goodbye
all your dignity and self-respect.”
Ted’s mouth hung open at this diatribe,
even Jaquan looked utterly stunned.
Ted crumpled the check and slinked away,
Jaquan said,”You were real hard on your son.”
CONCLUDES IN PART II...