American Dream

As you grow, from child to adult

You’re taught the ideal

It’s broadcast through the media

It’s preached with great appeal

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Before long the message becomes your own

You sell yourself on it because it’s all you’ve known

The pattern is there, society set the template

Rung by rung you climb the ladder

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College, job, career…

Spending time with friends

Repeating the same stories over beer

Marriage arrives as a means to an end

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Buy the house you can’t afford

White picket fence with kids in the yard

Annoying neighbors as far as the eye can see

You may not want it, but you asked for it: The American Dream

Suburban Angst

Smoke rises from the grilling domestic symbolism

As rockwellian images frolic in the yard below

Playfully ignorant in the summer sun

Of the metaphysical existence of the modern man

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Quelling over one's purpose and plan

Slices of potential melt over the now

Heat rises and stifles thoughts

Where is your youthful rebellion?

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Acknowledgement bores itself

From the fence not tall enough

Escape is found in the call

Dourly you are kitchen bound

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Existence asks you to pass the ketchup

Purpose is making a mess of dinner

Potential regales in preteen menagerie

Feeling ethereal and connected to it all

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The sun sets and hot is the wind

Kids shuffle off to while the hours before bed

Wife joins you in staring upon this mess

Of suburban angst that has fallen again

K.Keller – ‘10