the place behind my house where i hiked and
climbed and played
where i ditched this noisy century or just hid out
from the decade
m/i homes thought it could stand to be updated
forced it all into a grid til it looked like the funny
pages
with every trace of life, it seems, confined
within a frame
the faces move from day to day but the strips
all look the same
and the punchlines are resoundingly unfunny
to those trapped in the architecture of easy
money
and i feel that this can all come to no good
the kids who populate these cul-de-sacs will
never know what stood
beneath their cookie-cutter houses, the fields
and streams and woods,
they’ll sit and cars and wait for mom to drive
them away from this boring neighborhood…