#neighbors
These days I know
That need is hard to show
But please dont hesitate
If you need some sugar
Let me know
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 8:16 PM UTC
Up the street,
a family of 4 resides in a small, old townhouse in a cramped neighborhood.
They are asian.
To the neighbors,
That means smelling the strong spices and fresh cooked rice wafting from the house,
Hearing the annoying chatter of an unfamiliar language floating down the street,
Gawking at the small eyes, flat nose and black hair features of them.
To the neighbors,
They were simply aliens
They looked, acted and talked as if they were from another world,
So why should they consider them the same kind as their own?
Mar 27
Mar 27, 2026 at 6:07 PM UTC
Come look at my bush…
Slowly now please do not push
Legendary, fluffy at the base
Be careful or it might hit your face
Why does my bush have to be outside
The neighbors stare—I’ve lost my pride
Mar 18
Mar 18, 2026 at 5:30 PM UTC
Well, I guess we need
To send out the hounds.
For the crafty sheepdogs
To go pick out the bad actors
Hiding among the crowds.
Look over your shoulder,
There's that chill again,
The heat is rising
And you can feel something creeping.
Let it take you on,
Lest it take you over.
We've been
Building momentum,
Silently growing
Like a beautiful lotus
Or festering fungus.
It's just a matter of perspective,
It's only a matter of time.
Give in, or give up.
Fly if you will,
Fight if you think you must,
But listen to your neighbors.
Are you honest?
Are you trusting?
Are you nurturing?
Don't worry, don't stress out;
We're gonna figure each angle,
Lay out all the motives.
It's all there
On the internet,
And freely given!
You had a choice, you made a choice-
You dressed up the bed, now rest in it.
Feb 13, 2025
Feb 13, 2025 at 10:52 AM UTC
I didn’t go out last night, like I was supposed to. Sunday during Labor day weekend, and it’s a return to the long grind on Tuesday for my field. So many unknowns will collapse into certainty in one day, which will impact the rest of my year and beyond. So it goes.
I was supposed to go drink at the bar, an old friend is back off the wagon it seems. Yet, my buddy didn’t let me know it was going down until they were already at the bar. I spent most the day at my parents’ in the countryside and just got home. I was already on my second drink alone, and I sensed they were already farther along than me. Do I really want to drive 15 minutes to nurse 3 beers for 3 hours so I can drive back home? My stomach felt upset, so that was the deciding factor for me.
I let down Chuck Palahniuk in that quote where he says writers need to get out into the world, because nothing happens at home. Yet, I felt like I let myself down all summer by not hunkering down and completing all the esoteric music projects I envisioned. I was too tired to mess with my cables, mics, and computers, so I just picked up my acoustic and played. Sweet ethereal major 7th inversion chords and long forgotten riffs. A couple hours went by. I played the blues riff from “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones better than I remember. I hit those chords so rhythmically and started to sing. I always thought I did good with **** Jagger’s vocals. I even remembered the second verse. I was right in the middle of it, when I hear my screen door open and some quick slaps on the door. My little dog comes barreling down from upstairs, barking. I look at the clock on the stove. It’s 9:36. I guess some people still need to work on Labor Day. Nevertheless, the city noise ordinance protects me ‘till 10.
I go to my front door and it’s a black abyss, save for a street light showing no one across the street in its feeble glow. I go to my side door, and my driveway and neighbor’s house is equally forlorn. I check the door on the other side of my house, off the bathroom. **** I left it open to just the screen door. Surely nobody came into my backyard to mess with this door, but maybe it did let too much noise out. Was it the agoraphobic old lady on this side that came to my door? I never even spoke to her before.
Whoever it was, why didn’t they stay to talk to me? I would give you my phone number to make it easier on you if it ever happens again. I checked in the morning again. No note, no nothing. My mind is spinning with unknowns. Was it someone thinking this was the coke dealer’s house next door? Was it kids, checking if my car was unlocked, but then decided on an impromptu prank when they heard my song? Paranoid, I carried my Shillelagh with me the rest of the night.
I caved in, and got quieter. Switched to a tiny guitar tuned in open D, and stopped singing. I still hope they heard me faintly in defiance. I came up with a cool riff and recorded it in my loop pedal. There was a bit of feedback getting it all set up, and I hope they heard that too.
I’m too dense to take hints. Talk to me like a human being, and maybe next time I’ll know it’s you and what you are looking for.
Sep 2, 2024
Sep 2, 2024 at 8:22 AM UTC
Sally would with the wall
Music so shrouded, a hat of compliance
The terror involved
A chance meeting with resolve, that stated intention...
My name is Carlton
Spate energies, and the vague way
A harping halt to better problems
Has saved me from a hateful demon, with it to say:
Choose me over any other, the collapse of vows
Has a futile throw of light, in the remark innuendo made
Salt and harmony, to fetch a liberty without how
Is a door on commonness, that has the shape of futures sate
Lemonade and dickory cookies
Shown the time of their life, a hallway to sigh
Scurrilous was a special man, with a plan, for a dreams ease
With the stone of fending remorse into a corner, of life...
Patiently, the day came to a close...
Proud Sally, or privileged Carlton
A wish adrift in the evening your, the scared host
Of another smile to win, the promise of a stoic question...
Hello, I have the world to sleep longer than me
Simply roles of victory, victimized by a lip of succor
Rhyming and doling the obvious, of a secret means
To an ending for serenity, that knows your craving for ours?
May 8, 2024
May 8, 2024 at 4:01 PM UTC
Y'know the last cat I had wasn't even my cat,
he was the neighbour's cat
Yea! He defected... came over to our house
My neighbours they had a holiday home down the country
and used visit it often on the weekends
So the poor cat would be left behind at home
and he'd get lonely
So he'd come out to us, and he liked us so
much
We used give him a great reception
He'd get so much love and attention, nice
food as well
That he decided to stay with us rather than
go back home
We even bought him one of those nice furry
little cathouse bed type things
Put it out in the garage and he'd sleep there.
But whose cat was he now then, was he ours
or was he still theirs
Did they still have a claim on him
Or was it up to him to choose,
You know it could have caused a
Constitutional Crisis
Could have gone to Court
Who had ownership of the cat
Could have been a real tug of love affair
A bit like that film what's it's name...Kramer
vs Kramer
Luckily the neighbours though they didn't
seem to mind that much.
Of course, the punchline to all this was, one day my Dad was out visiting
my neighbours next door
When who should he see lying there on the sofa looking very contented
and very much at home
Yea! You guessed it.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking
Yea exactly! I bet the cat...our cat the Defector
He was probably a Double Agent all along.
Jan 20, 2023
Jan 20, 2023 at 12:00 PM UTC
My neighbours make love,
oh, so outrageously cheap --
these thin chamber walls!
Aug 10, 2022
Aug 10, 2022 at 3:55 AM UTC
i long for your longing for me
staring across to each other through
adjacent windows on second-floor balconies
our eyes wander but never meet
i call your name through sealed lips as i sleep
i miss you
Nov 1, 2021
Nov 1, 2021 at 7:22 PM UTC
*dear upstairs neighbor,
do you own an elephant?
I think that you do.*
May 21, 2021
May 21, 2021 at 6:21 AM UTC
The neighbors seem so vivacious
As they mull about outside my window,
Sun kissing their skin.
The mothers cling to their children,
And sweat clings to the aching muscles of workers
As they bustle,
Hustling mattresses out of the house
And building supplies in.
We exchange cautious smiles
As I sit here in the staleness of my room,
The monotony of this routine.
They are so alive.
I wish I was too.
Mar 7, 2021
Mar 7, 2021 at 2:34 PM UTC
The rain pounding outside my window
The gods’ righteous anger manifested
Lightning and thunder, their weapons
And I, the victim bested
If I run naked into the storm,
and let the torrent strip me bare,
will the neighbors think I’ve gone mad?
Or will they even care?
Apr 25, 2020
Apr 25, 2020 at 11:54 PM UTC
Not Elves, Exactly
by Michael R. Burch
(after Robert Frost's "Mending Wall")
Something there is that likes a wall,
that likes it spiked and likes it tall,
that likes its pikes’ sharp rows of teeth
and doesn’t mind its victims’ grief
(wherever they come from, far or wide)
as long as they fall on the other side.
Keywords/Tags: Robert Frost, mending, wall, fences, good, neighbors, southern, border, spikes, pikes, barbed, wire, electrical
Mar 25, 2020
Mar 25, 2020 at 12:18 AM UTC
How to leave out hate
Say less and stand out far more
Carve your words with love
Jan 6, 2020
Jan 6, 2020 at 11:03 AM UTC
When I say Zombies ate my neighbors, I'm not talking about a video game.
Zombies ate my neighbors and I'm one of the Zombies who is to blame.
Because my family and I are undead, it put us in very bad moods.
My family and I croaked because our neighbors poisoned our food.
A big corporation was going to pay top dollar for every house on the block.
But when my family and I refused to sell, the neighbors were angry and shocked.
I wouldn't sell the house that I've lived in since I was five.
And that is why my wife and kids and I did not survive.
Our neighbors had a barbecue and my family and I ate the food that they grilled.
But we wouldn't have touched the food if we had known that we would be killed.
My family and I have risen from the grave, we have green skin and are zombies.
When our neighbors saw us, they ****** their pants and cried for their mommies.
Our neighbors killed us because money was something they thought they'd gain.
When we had our homicidal neighbors for supper, we started with their brains.
Our greedy neighbors killed us and we returned the favor.
Stay away from my family and I because human flesh is what we savor.
Oct 19, 2019
Oct 19, 2019 at 12:49 PM UTC
The Home Owners Association
Came by again today
With open glares at
The green crawling across my chestnut walls,
Blocking out my view of
Their pale tan plaster and
Baby blue curtains.
Fees clutched in hand
Eviction notices in their prayers,
They march up to a house,
Existing outside of their domain,
Bought by a grandfather
And never sold to no developer.
I watch with arms crossed
As they step past tomato plants
Whose fathers I planted with mine long ago.
Pleasantries exchanged
Mean nothing combined with
Cold eyes on me as
I politely tell them that their nobility
Has no jurisdiction.
Later when,
One let’s his dog dig up
Pieces of my lawn-less garden,
I stare from my curtain of leaves
At exposed roots,
The veins of a child’s loss reaching into air.
Tears will do no more than moisten the corners
As I walk outside
Camera in hand
Staring at a man
Who slowly droops
While shame dribbles back into his eyes.
Nothing is said,
Even when he turns and quietly walks away,
Leash held slack in hand
And dog loyally trailing behind.
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 30, 2019 at 1:05 PM UTC
sometimes I wonder if the time we use
trying to understand the world
by listening to all the media
might not be better spent
with talking to our neighbors
in the pub next door
over some hearty food
a pint of beer
just let the permahype of news
dissolve with a good joke
and a nice glass of wine
that makes the friendly spirits shine
Nov 19, 2018
Nov 19, 2018 at 10:49 AM UTC
In my neighborhood
Your hedge presses against my hedge
In my dreams
Your leg presses against my leg
In my neighborhood
People hate me
In your mind
You overrate me
In my neighborhood
****** burns the sorrow
With you
There's always tomorrow
Neighbors are the worst
They unquench
Labors of thirst
They're also the best
When it comes to people
They're the rest
If you could do me a favor
And not be my neighbor
I need you in my house
You're stuck in my head
You're my louse
Then the neighbors foreclosed my home
Morphing me into the roaming gnome
Does a homeless man have neighbors?
Like a wild dog
With no bone to savor?
It just breaks my heart
When people run each other off the road
With their hate filled cart
In my mind the roadblock is your face
Through the window I see the hate
We'll use my roadblock to erase
May 26, 2017
May 26, 2017 at 4:37 AM UTC
Another Night Here
Yelling in the Hallway
Can’t make all the words
Never can when they are drunk
A knife was involved
And a chain of some sort
Cops come
They are pleading their cases
Pleading their sides
Cops patiently listening
He pulled knife on me
She’s a *****
Sir please calm down
He’s a drunk
He stole my chain
Now I get the picture
I’m peeking out
I’m a peeker
Goes on for a bit
Ma’am Did he hit you
He pulled a knife
I was cutting something
Sir did you pull a knife on her
No
He threatened me
Did you threaten her
I threatened to throw her out
It’s his place
When this is figured out things calm down
Cops leave
She stays
She just wanted to be heard
She just wanted to be loved
He just wanted to be left alone
Don’t we all.
Don’t we all.
Sep 18, 2018
Sep 18, 2018 at 12:52 AM UTC
Clings of metal, pots and kettles.
Trumpets of laughter, drumming of tables,
planting of cables.
Sounds of games, clashing of swords, narrator's voice saying "game on!"
Quiet dim lights. Sounds in sound played in rooms, as people bring dishes out at noon.
Walls of cold separated speakers, waves of warmth shook the walls.
Crying in Midnight's, cats at 3, pens clicking at half past two.
Computers locked open.
Music of this neighborhood rang in my ears, as I stand by the door, paper wrapped in hand. Looking to the lights of another home...
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 7:25 AM UTC