The Party House Diaries
Unruly man boys making lots of noise,
Shouting and laughing; they kept me awake,
With monotonous beats, rowdy oi ois;
I lay abed waiting for things to break.
4 a.m. I couldn’t get back to sleep;
"Just shut the fuck up", a woman’s voice cried;
I got up, pulled back the blinds, had a peep,
Saw people in hoodies standing outside.
Somebody shouted, I couldn’t see who,
I wondered, was he yelling at me?
Night was lit up by lights of flashing blue;
Went downstairs at dawn made a cuppa tea,
Took it upstairs, clambered back into bed,
Not before shutting the open fanlight;
I tried to read, but kept dozing instead;
It'll be kicking off again tonight.
Mid-day Monday: it’s presently quiet;
All the tenants must be sleeping sound;
Last night sounded like a prison riot,
Without any prison officers around.
"Be careful sir", I was told by the law,
"There’re some dangerous people in there";
No supervision, no one’s keeping score,
Emailing the council gets you nowhere.
There’s a landlord lives many miles away;
A greedy profiteering millionaire;
As long as he receives his monthly pay,
He doesn’t give a toss about aftercare.
I don’t wanna judge, but I feel let down;
This used to be a decent neighbourhood,
Now it’s becoming the rough end of town,
A meeting place for the up to no good.
The ruckus carries on all through the week,
And the weeks after; they bawl and they shout
Night after night, and it comes to a peak
At 5 a.m. when the rage has burnt out.
And I think, as they finish their carouse:
A halfway house with no overseer,
Is really no more than a party house;
There’ll be no rehabilitation here.
