My Neighbor to the South

Posted on 14 November 2009

I haven’t known him well,
the chocolate man
with his caramel freckles
and sugar plum hands,
weeds dancing in the exhaust
of his pick up as it backs up
to his green garbage cans
at 5am.

Does he feed on his rage
that I sensed that day
offering our gardener
(”Slave” he called him)
to take his garbage cans too
to the top of the hill?

He wouldn’t be unhappy
if he heard I were dead
having told me already
that my wife was shit
that my life was shit
that I cared about no one
but my own fucking self.

And the funny thing is
I didn’t punch him out
or smash his face right then
instead I offered him my gardener

free of charge
so he’d never have to do
this lifting garbage cans again
in the pitch black night
that we both live in.

We could’ve slept in,
woke up clean at 8am
instead of this awful
crawl and scrape
across his hard concrete
and the whine of his engine
and headlights up the hill
as I sit in his shadow,
afraid I always will.