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Guest Writer


Death in suburbia
by Ray Solar


orn as a maggot in the city dump,
Force-fed burgers and fries,
I escaped the germ pool
Of societies' capitols
To the wholesome predictability
Of suburbia
With my favorite "mart" stores all around

My clean manicured neighborhood's
Spacious layout helps me
To avoid unwanted human contact
Fences and alarms keep the city's hoodlums
Out of my surveillanced backyard
Where the bar-b-que on wheels
Is the centerpiece
Of the social circuit

Garage door openers purr
Like dear old house cats
At the arrival of suited homeowners
Designer arranged lofty units
Keep us digitally well tempered
Car worship eradicates the need
For a deeper spirituality
Relatives hang in framed pictures
From stenciled plaster walls

Nothing disturbs this illusion
Of tranquility
Only noisy lawnmowers interrupt
The sleep of the just
The dangerous life in the big cities
Is watched on color TV screens
With surround-sound systems
Projecting the evil horrors
Of a faraway dangerous world
To reinforce the notion
That the right decision was made
That WAR in the name
Of a utopian democracy
Can be just in the eyes of
A born-again Christian

Suburbia equals a slow silent death
Monotony feeds the righteous beast
The illusion that we have control
Over our lives lingers in ignorance
While the shadows of dead soldiers dance on
In the dark corners of our graveyards
I see them only in my dreams
Because the corporate media
Has whitewashed the blood stained screens
Not to disturb our mass consciousness

My neighbors' sons are gone with the wind
They died like heroes in foreign movies
For a country where people are afraid
To talk to each other
About the reality of a life
Lived in fear of an interchangeable evil
Hand picked by our commander in chief
Hail to America
Land of the paranoid children
Of a right-wing God


See more from Ray in our archives.



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