Sailing from Plymouth

“Tenant Lived With Body
Under Sofa for Ten Years”

Let’s read about the tragic lives
Of weirdos, drunks and “queers”.
Our taste for the bizarre outweighs
Our horror and revulsion
So we soak up every detail
Further feeding our compulsion.

Must I write about it, though,
Instead of reading and forgetting?
Yes, I say to Mr. Murdoch,
I’ll be aiding and abetting.

Thus the facts: a Mr. Derrick
Used to drink with Mr. Pring.
One night D. went out drinking but
“I don’t recall a thing.”

Mr. P. lay on a sofa
In old Derrick’s grubby flat
D. came home and turned it over
Then passed out, and that was that.

Derrick, so you DID recall;
Or was that lager talking?
Didn’t threaten or dismember
But your senses went out walking

For old Pring became a dead man
At some point that fateful night
And drunk Derrick, you did nothing
In the cold, harsh morning light.

Not just that, you let Pring lie there
Undisturbed a decade long
Seeming not to care a firkin
What was right and what was wrong.

True, we’re sorry you have issues
With the voices in your head;
But not one of them made mention
Of the fact that Pring was dead.

Then the coppers came to see you
As the neighbours smelt a smell,
But they thought it was the toilet;
They had not heard Pring’s death knell.

Only later did they find him
With the rubbish in your flat.
He was busy decomposing,
You were “shocked” and that was that.

But we must not be judgemental
At what lies behind the doors;
Life is messy, tempermental:
There are corpses on our floors.