Suburbia

The backdrop was, in fact, a little overdone.
The backyard boys were still
laying in the grass, staring at and bottom of the
trampoline. Their mothers sat upon the patio
with their middle-aged spurts of laughter,
started out of politeness
to the uninspired gossiply stories they
told each other
in the boredom of the evening.
Their fathers, burly-like, stood
around the barbeque on the
cement pallet by the bungalow's kitchen window
discussing sports and politics
which they knew nothing about.
The girls stood inside the screen door to
escape the bugs and the boys, who
frightened them out of their socks at times.
Not literally, but...

The yard itself was mediocre. Flower beds
dying in the summer heat, uncut grass
long enough to sneak inside the top of your shoe,
and the broken gas pipe
by the beginning of the alley,
that daddy, in all of his brilliance, began to dig beside,
(unknowingly, of course--he isn't a jackass!)
damaging it a bit, because he didn't call before he dug
like the little flag that flew away in the wind had said to.
It smelled a stench there because of that,
and the gathering went on uncomfortably,
hamburgers and potato chips passed around,
left unfinished, wasted upon also wasted paper plates.
While poor Bill, standing naked behind the ol' shed
really could have used a hamburger or two,
and they would have given him one
if they'd known he was there. But they didn't
as he was trying much too hard, rather successfully,
to keep silent while bawling upon all his
skinny, pale body.