Life in the Suburbs

A complete and thorough rewrite of "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

Having lived so long in the suburbs of my imagination 

I’ve almost forgotten -- how the gray mists 

of making do, the tidy details 

of mundanity, bits 

of granola, everyday sameness 

of canned soup, are akin to 

the euthanization of the stuffed sockeye

mounted on the rec-room wall.

I remember, vaguely, when 

asked how I’m doing --

the most generally acceptable answer is a Tuesday 

morning calculation of the throw aways 

left at the curb the night before, 

to not zag too far astray from the beige 

line of neighborly consistencies,  

admitting how little I’ve come to expect 

from the birds of paradise tucked behind 

the white picket fences.

While the mind inches along 

waiting on the light to change, 

the liquefying tendrils of a question 

shrivel the tegmentum to a pin prick 

of an idea: the great metropolis

of roiling dawns, rat-hemmed horizons 

licking the blood-rimmed eyelids 

of thin-skinned dukes wafting through 

the sleep deprived eternity of a life 

I imagine I once knew. 

I remember, vaguely, 

when asked how am I doing -- am I unhappy?

No, not so much as 

semiconscious, inured by

the baffle of tongues I suspect 

were initially intended for mimes. 

The dreary 9-5 interstate is a 5-9 

anesthesia, the all day après dîner 

cocktail of settling in, punctuation to 

a mausoleum overrun by crab grass.

It’s a sieve of gyrating multiplications, 

cascading permutations of infinitesimal integers 

meant to cajole the senses to whatever floats 

the boat down the Big Easy. 

Like getting lost in the supermarket 

while on vacation …

too-ra ta-loo-ra …

Author's Note

some might recognize remember bits from earlier Love Will Tear Us Apart. This is much nearer to the initial intentions of suburban malaise. Original concept was never to be a riff on love or falling out of, just sort of got away from me. Now its been brought back to its orbit.

Reviews

[AYVID N]

Life in the suburbs seems almost straightjacketed. The everyday things seem to get to one after a time. Tucked away behind the consistencies, the white picket fences, the mind screams for something different. I love that you describe 5-9 as anesthesia. I relate so much to the restrictive nature of routine and its pitfalls, sometimes going as far as a falling out in relationships. A life tailored to ease but is it what one really wants? I enjoy the wit and wisdom with which you say it all. All the more interesting because where I live there is so much activity and noise, I long for the peace and quiet of the suburbs.

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks for the review D. The poem is really just a metaphor for my dislike for the mundanity of life. I have been fortunate enough to have lived and played in a great many places over the years. Some very beautiful cities, Toronto, Vancouver, and Singapore top the list...and now nearing that winding down phase of life I have a perspective on things. I have never understood, and probably won't entirely, the lives of people who settle for one place or comfort of the known (my siblings) when there is so much to be experienced in the world. And that in a nutshell is Suburbination

[AYVID N]

Oh my god, I relate so much to what you are saying. I'd rather die an unknown, dusty traveller in a distant land with my hiking boots on than in the familiarity of my bed in my family home! I hope God grants me that wish.
Thanks for the word Suburbination.

[Dave Brown]

I am afraid your offerings are a bit too deep for me but this relates to our early exit from neat subdivisions with huge mortgages, to the bare basics of country life where we could stretch our legs and enjoy the scenery
Both age and expanding developments are increasingly invading our space and the future has a very large question mark plastered to it.
I don't suppose this has too much to do with your write, but it is where it had my mind drift.

[Ken e Bujold]

where you mind drifts is ok Dave. for me it is little more than a rift on the drift into middle age (my wife now says almost old age) settling into life in the burbs as opposed to the wild days of youth

[Betty Hermelee]

An amazing description of malaise and life in the suburbs . You bring to life the suburbanites whose routine is so blah it makes one tired just to think about it. Rows of house neatly kept, some with white picket fences and perfectly quaffed bushes and trees. Off on the train at 8:05AM, back on the train at 5:35PM, if it's Tuesday it must be garbage day....those who drive sit on the interstate and blow their horns, even though there is nowhere to go....or read the newspaper...I like the phrase,,,,,"when the mind inches along"..so typical of that kind of life.... I lived in NYC but know many suburbanites who wouldn't think of it.
your poem depicts this mind set so well, I had to laugh, because it's true to life!!!
Best, B

[Ken e Bujold]

yep. i lived both sides of the equation. urban boy by nature, toronto, vancouver, singapore have all been home at one time or another. but was raised in the burbs, and live there now, a slower pace of life more in tune perhaps with what wife and I now need, though at times the mundanity of mindset of my fellow denizens is a language i don't comprehend. this poem just my exorcism of those moments. thanks for the great review betty. best of the holidays to you and yours

ken

[Betty Hermelee]

You're very welcome Ken; have a great holiday and a joyful 2023!!
Best, B

[willweb]

I remember this, not the poem but this, the rows of houses, the streets criss crossing named after universities. Lehigh, Georgetown, Villanova, Cornell. The train station that welcomed men home from their jobs in the city, the bakery and the diner. Sidewalks with hopscotch squares in pink chalk and dogs barking, lawns being mowed and little league baseball. Everyone new everyone and knew everyone business and then the factory opened, shift work began and what was once clean was now stained and dirty. Your poem brought this back to me...I have lived in the country, rural life since.

[Ken e Bujold]

and your review is a poem in itself. amazing review will

[JD Major]

... I lost myself for for a time in this, Ken, in a day-in-the-life-of there-but-for-the-grace of-the comical gnome, go I, kind of way ...which is to say an absorbed and quite good way ...not to mention that I think I've had days kinda like this, or maybe a lotta days a lot like this :)

[W. Barrett Munn]

I can't be sure but I think you are beginning to sound like a long lost cousin of Eliot. Seems a waste but an interesting place to land.

Winston

[Ken e Bujold]

what happens when you read the johns, ashberry and ash, mix joy division and xtc, in between bouts of wandering among my neighbours. so yes, could be Eliot's hood. God knows, no matter what his writing suggests, his home life was as suburbian as one could get