When I sat across your street
in a tutu, ululating,
waving chunks of ostrich-meat
at people and impersonating
Lenin through a megaphone
in a disabled parking zone,
I looked up and caught sight of you,
your freckly arms stirring a stew
of memories of tender sex.
Your head shook, Ginger, for you knew:
Alfie is one psycho ex.
I told your aunt a parakeet
had chased you during roller-skating,
pecking both skates off your feet,
so you’d required resuscitating.
I left, in a dull monotone
each morning, on your answerphone,
the word “blancmange” seventy-two
times, dressed as a cockatoo
outside the High Street multiplex.
By now, Ginge, it was loud and true,
Alfie is one psycho ex.
Perhaps one day you’ll ask to meet
and talk of our love’s terminating.
We’ll stroll beneath the jackdaw’s tweet
and sycamores all germinating,
and you’ll demand that I atone
for all my sins, leave you alone,
forget the fact you tried to glue
my scrotum to a Hasidic Jew,
then ran away. Why should that vex
my brain as though I’m loose a screw,
like Alfie is one psycho ex?
That’s the last time I go through
a love affair with someone who
a therapist fruitlessly checks.
I must be cock-a-doodle-doo,
Alfie is one psycho ex.
