Neighbors
The shack, an eyesore, stands arrogantly nonethelessOn long, unpainted stilts
Vulgar against the landscape.
Garbage spills over the hillside.
No grass or shrubbery is found--just beer bottles
To decorate the muddy lawn.
No plumbing exists within the house or without.
The inhabitants, as grossly incongruent
To civilization as their dwelling,
Spill out its doors the first of every month
To collect the government checks that will
Finance the next few days' reign of terror.
The wretched, worthless little man exists to torment.
Twenty eight years of age and no ambition
Beyond the next bottle of tequila,one-night affairs, and
Harrassing the neighbors, mainly me. Stealing gas for his car,
Stealing coal to heat his house, because to buy coal
Would cost him a few drinks. Stealing anything that can be sold for tequila, beer.
Fighting, boasting, vandalizing.
I regard his ridiculous antics with impotent rage
And swear to myself the devil is his sire
He lights firecrackers--even dynamite, while I am sleeping.
Brings me startled, awake.
Punches his pedal, roaring in mufflerless annoyance
As he passes my window at 3 AM.
Then, knowing he has woke me, does a tremendous final
U-turn on my lawn, roars his engine in a last burst of defiance
Yells a few savage obscenities, goes on home
To rest for tomorrow's rerun.
The wife upholds him in his atrocities
Although he makes her and the children suffer too.
I cannot pity her. But the children-
Some days my heart drips sympathy for them
But on days such as this one, I can only count them the spawn
Of a roach, a devil. Are they innocent or are they apprentices?
Waiting to fill Daddy's shoes?
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