He lived in a room with no windows
He hung pictures on the wall
Of driveways, cars and hedgerows
Of redbrick homes and even a town hall

But soon he began to miss a view
That offered some variety
Nothing breathed and nothing grew
At the centre of his dead society

So he moved a couple in next door
And an accountant the other side
An old lady got the house with the green front door
A large family had the garden with the slide

The postman liked to come at noon
A bus passed on the hour
He saw children playing in the afternoons
And lawns brighten under spring showers

It didn’t exist beyond his doors
This idyllic, sunny street
But now that he had some neighbours
His new home felt complete

But like all things of beauty
The cracks began to show
Reality likes to exercise duty
Down to the smallest bungalow


One day the silver car was missing
And, when watching the road for more
He the saw the man next door was kissing,
Mrs Across the Road, not Mrs Next Door

A while later, there came the shouts
And the gasps of laboured crying
The street knew what the row was about
And so Mrs Across the Road was caught lying

The kids were put in the car, confused
Bras were strewn across the front lawn
She begged him to stay but he refused
And an ambulance was there by dawn

Mrs Across the Road was dead
They found her hanging from the ceiling
And Mrs Next Door had a cut on her head
That gave him a queasy feeling

Vandals came, the police followed
The old lady’s front windows were broken
The had tulips wilted and the people wallowed
He watched the decay, alone and heartbroken

He decided to move away from this street
The sobbing through the walls plagued his evenings
A new set of windows, new neighbours to meet
The real world could be conquered by leaving


But when moving day came, and he arrived
He felt suddenly much less sure
When he noticed that, well and revived
Mrs Across the Road living next door

From then, wherever he went they came
His neighbours’ rows and cries were haunting
He moved some more, but it was always the same
His world was inescapable, the fiction taunting

Eventually, his patience snapped
Which led him to a more physical hell
Windowless once again, he could never adapt
To the bars on the door to his cell