56/365 - Suburb
It’s planned.
This entire town is like an octopus in a cookie jar. Out here the flies wear helmets and smash through the cellphone signals, handing out whiskey-soaked business cards before they dive too deep into trouble. Bearskin rugs wear crowns and dream of burning-castle screenplays and far-off forests. The ugliest angels you’ve ever seen plummet down to earth, making acne craters in the driveways. Each feather a razor, each halo a carcinogen.
The small white houses in this suburb are measured and pristine. They don’t betray the sharks that swim inside. Dragons with delusions of fireworks and connections to drug dealers stay up late trying to set milk on fire. All they find is that blood makes horrible shampoo. This is a suburb lost at sea but the oars are being ignored. Every bathroom cabinet here is stuffed with orange pill bottles the size of beer cans. The cupboards have enough canned food for the apocalypse but it’s barely touched. It's the liquor cabinets that need constant restocking. All the basements hide blind identical twins hugging each other and crying. “Hyde seeks Jekyll” personal ads are tattooed on the eyelids of every plastic-surgeon promise. The children are pretending to be children and the parents are pretending to be parents.
Snails can be just as awkward when they pose in front of a mirror. In these houses, even the televisions ignore each other. The downtown core is hours away, a series of sandwiches on the horizon. A moustache breeding skyscrapers far away, infested with commerce, excitement, and crosswalks.
Out here, in the manufactured desert carpeted with lawns, marriages become neon signs and the bored pray for any excitement at all. Hypocrites with zombie intentions hoard steering wheels, brake pads, and airbags. Their right arms are longer than their left arms so it’s easier to stab each other in the back.
Every stuffed animal has arteries. Every husband screws the babysitter. Every summer there are a few hunting accidents. And no one reads the paper.
tags
This entire town is like an octopus in a cookie jar. Out here the flies wear helmets and smash through the cellphone signals, handing out whiskey-soaked business cards before they dive too deep into trouble. Bearskin rugs wear crowns and dream of burning-castle screenplays and far-off forests. The ugliest angels you’ve ever seen plummet down to earth, making acne craters in the driveways. Each feather a razor, each halo a carcinogen.
The small white houses in this suburb are measured and pristine. They don’t betray the sharks that swim inside. Dragons with delusions of fireworks and connections to drug dealers stay up late trying to set milk on fire. All they find is that blood makes horrible shampoo. This is a suburb lost at sea but the oars are being ignored. Every bathroom cabinet here is stuffed with orange pill bottles the size of beer cans. The cupboards have enough canned food for the apocalypse but it’s barely touched. It's the liquor cabinets that need constant restocking. All the basements hide blind identical twins hugging each other and crying. “Hyde seeks Jekyll” personal ads are tattooed on the eyelids of every plastic-surgeon promise. The children are pretending to be children and the parents are pretending to be parents.
Snails can be just as awkward when they pose in front of a mirror. In these houses, even the televisions ignore each other. The downtown core is hours away, a series of sandwiches on the horizon. A moustache breeding skyscrapers far away, infested with commerce, excitement, and crosswalks.
Out here, in the manufactured desert carpeted with lawns, marriages become neon signs and the bored pray for any excitement at all. Hypocrites with zombie intentions hoard steering wheels, brake pads, and airbags. Their right arms are longer than their left arms so it’s easier to stab each other in the back.
Every stuffed animal has arteries. Every husband screws the babysitter. Every summer there are a few hunting accidents. And no one reads the paper.
tags