Neighbours. Everybody needs good neighbours to watch
our backs and protect us from the stately mob,
shore up the cracks in the crumbling ancient fabric
of our vicious big society club.
We need good hearted neighbours to turn us in to
lash us fast to the stake and burn us properly down to the
ground.
We need neighbours to bind us in the village stocks and
lob their rotten allotment crops at our bewildered mops.
We need illiterate neighbours to publish our memoirs abroad
and hungry illegitimate neighbours to shout out all about
our goings in and comings out and gorge themselves
on the intimate details of our private lives.
We need trusty klepto-neighbours to spy on us from behind
their rusty iron curtains and line us up
against the garden wall and haul our dirty smalls
back to their lairs to sniff while they type up their reports.
We need a thespian neighbour to enter our home in a mask
of friendship and without letting her commission slip
or even looking slightly shady go back and share
her findings discreetly with the landlady.
We need a nautical neighbour to construct an ark
under cover of dark and the eyesore yellow tarp
in his boathouse yard and help God flush us commies out
and swill us down the Tory spout.
We need psycho-neighbours we can trust to do their best
to slice the tightrope on which we balance
the wheelbarrow of our deep dark fears and rest
the tears we’ve tried to leave behind.
We need engineering neighbours to dig up our drains and summon
all their mates
to view the remains, inspect the goodies and moderate a mass
debate.
We need them to send the not-so-flushed contents for a DNA
test
lest there could be any doubt about our filthy guilty state
and then
to take our cash and use the ill-gotten gains
to draw up diagrams, make plans for our demise
with lies and slander, defaming our good nature
without reserve, without restraint.
We need outstanding neighbours to parade
their smug paper grins at holiday street parties
and crown themselves with the awards they scored
for sticking their antisocial boot up some local arses.
What we really need is a neighbour who will go the third and
fourth miles
to extract the last gobful of bile from right inside our fading
smiles or
how ‘bout a neighbour with a radio telescope trained on our personal
calls?
Or one with CCTV cameras installed instead of eyeballs?
Better yet let’s have a neighbour with a uniform and truncheon
going about our business all legit to verify our organs
function!
Or perhaps a neighbour who will flush himself right down our
loo
in search of the stickiest stinkiest piece of poo?
Do you think this will do, good neighbour? Do you?
Do you think at all or do you just crawl inside your bed
at night and lie there wrapped up tight in fright and hope
your big society dope’s not just a joke, not just in your
head?
What we really need is a neighbour who doesn’t mind
our own business, has no cameras for eyes, speaks no lies
about us, with no ties to big society, big bro; to tell it
true
what we really don’t need is you!
Copyright
© 2012 J A Lee
