My Neighbour the Alcoholic

My neighbour, the alcoholic

Knows everything but remembers little

She eats good food, pickles it herself

She won’t let anyone see inside

Privacy glass covers her soul

It’s dead in her triple-glazed eyes

When we meet I don’t know who I’ll get

A seething fork-tongued lash

A puffy, grinning, purring cat

She won’t remember our conversation

Each day liquidised and added to the rest

On a shelf that will grow heavy and one day crash

Time is unlined like her face

Pink and stretched often sparkling

With love and hate and a veil to shade her lies

She just needs a little blur

A little sleep and then a little blur again

There is no day or night, she mows the lawn at 5am

My neighbour, the alcoholic

Functions well as long as she is kept basted

Her oven is getting hotter, she’s at risk of crumbling

Her family stay but also stay away

It’s the status quo but imagine her liver, dark and warty

Her brain is still so cunning, what can they say?

My neighbour the alcoholic follows a routine

Of inner chaos, we’re all out to get her

She rents a safe crowd to garden, iron and clean

She’s frightened of everything, jumpy

But children know and the dog that bit her in the street

The people who are meant to care are mute keepers of the peace