Alfred,Our Boy

Ants stabbed and slashed their way compulsively
into this small upstairs apartment single file
through the slit in the living room’s thin skin
like demented birds gone mad on blood rampage

while the fat Catholic boy from across the pond in merry Britain
marches to a distinct and shady drummer on a November day,

one ear smiles cautiously open to a recondite symphony as
the other lonely pink one grins to itself on the left side of his head

screeches and screams stream from behind an unseen plastic shower
curtain and his good less guilty eye spies then penetrates a lofty church
steeple through the din and hazy double cross of New York’s American skyline.

Can any story sate,
what shall save
the future master of suspense
from his vertiginous fate?

Hours later in the deep of dark
he obsesses about svelte blondes
knives and tormenting secrets,
lays immobile on a narrow cot
in the basement of ‘The Young Mens’
Christian Association’,

ants march fixatedly
over the curved dome
of his belly,
strangely here alone
shrouded in this quiet curtain
of foreign time and fog
he finally finds his nerve
begins to feel at home,

prays in his own way
for many plentiful good
revenges,
gratefully he dreams
the sweet shocks and graceful
edges of human betrayal
being artfully unlocked

and finally portrayed.