The next-door neighbour’s laugh
doesn’t mean to be violent
It sells houses
cleans the car
each weekend
and seems content with that
The next-door neighbour’s laugh
enjoys barbecuing
painting fences
chatting
Plays golf once a week
Fucks the wife on Sundays
hungrily
The next-door neighbour’s laugh
would be kindly
if it stopped at the fence
But to them it feels like an attack
That raucous rattle
rips through their careful
clipped-conifer defences
and flails at their frail flesh
It tears at their tattered truce
and lashes their lonely lives
with a lead-tipped levity
that leaves them limp and lost
They never acknowledge it
But the mirth shreds them
in their sodden trench
Boom, boom
The guffaws rain like mortars
on the barren no man’s land of their home,
cratering the places no one dares to go
pummelling the unspoken mud
scattering remains long dead
When it’s over
reproach falls coldly
from the sky
Hangs over the scene like gas
All is smothered
He tuts and returns to his book
She to her television
In a house nearby
someone turns up the music
inkyjim 