Neighbours

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