Neighbours - Everybody Loves Good Neighbours

I

Cancer? Cancer?! I dream of cancer -

Cancer can eat my bones:

O, lucky I would consider myself

To be racked by cancerous moans.

A fate more evil, a life more lost

The Devil for me foresaw:

Imagine the day I woke to find

The Milats had moved next door!

II

Was I a man of the bourgeoisie?

Ha! Of course I was more than that!

I was a latte drinking, clever thinking

Documentary making pratt.

I ran my own film company,

I was an artist, I was sure.

Then I heard my neighbour say:

"I'm Alex Milat. I'm in next door."

III

My films explored the evil side

Of Mankind's unknowable self;

My kids all went to private schools,

My wife, she bloomed with health;

The critics applauded my visual style

And my dissection to the core

Of the Freudian, Jungian evil id.

Then the Milats moved next door.

IV

Ivan, of course, was doing time

But his brothers are all free men.

"There's me, there's Walter," said Alex Milat,

"And Richard - in all, there's ten.

Me and the wife moved in last week,

And when Richard's coming we're unsure.

You like films? Well, I'll bring over someÂ… shots.

Wink. Wink. We only live next door."

V

A shadow, a pall, hung over my days

The first weeks after I found out.

The bruchutto was off, the antipasto stale

At the cafes where we'd all hang out.

"It's good for your art," said my cameraman,

"They're just the sort your films explore."

"Fuck my films," I told Toby, "you pretentious git -

My fucking films don't knock on my door."

VI

My wife was a painter, sculptor too -

Her studio was set up at home.

"I can't stay here," she'd scream at me,

"It's impossible to work alone."

Her exhibition was coming up soon -

A review in the Age for sure.

"Just stay calm," I'd scream - so loudly, too,

I bet you they could've heard next door.

VII

A couple of months after they came

I got a call from my children's school:

"Your daughter's been caught smoking pot,

And your son's started playing the fool.

The counsellor's asked them both to say

If their home is quite safe and secure."

By his tone I knew straight away

He lay the blame right at my door.

VIII

My next film was a critical flop

For the first time in my career.

"He seems to have lost his ability

To show evil up close and near."

I read that review, and gave a laugh -

Critics always think they know more.

Fucking critics should try living up close

To the people who live next door.

IX

Toby left me the very next month

To shoot a Gillian Armstrong flick.

"You know," he told me when he left,

"I always thought you a soft cock prick."

Funding dried up; grants turned down;

My wife couldn't take any more:

"I'm leaving," she said, "I'm getting out.

I can't live here with them next door."

X

But the way she said it, how she left,

I knew the Milats were her excuse:

She married a successful film artist,

Not a failure. The final proof

Came when I heard three months later

She'd moved in with some director bore

Whose film was at Cannes. She was gone -

But I couldn't blame the people next door.

XI

My children went to some alternative school

Where all the hippy children go;

After that, we sort of lost contact -

I last heard from them two years ago.

I got a job in advertising

Shooting commercials - on video, what's more.

No super 8, only mainstream crap

Designed for the people who live next door.

XII

And yesterday came my greatest shock -

Oh, Truth comes bound in Pain:

I went to next door's intercom

And asked for Alex Milat by name.

"Who?" said a voice, incredulous.

"Why, they're not living here no more.

They moved out nearly two years ago.

Hey, aren't you the weirdo who lives next door?"

XIII

No matter how easy or sweet life is,

Be sure - your life will change;

There is a shadow hangs over us

That leaves none of us the same.

There is another person waiting to come

Buried in your deepest core:

You'll be found out. Who you really are

Lives behind your very own door.