JOEL ALLEGRETTI

BILLY THE WHORE,
AN ENCOMIUM IN 9 INFECTIONS

I.

Stars shine out of organic imperative.  Unlike the stars, a man possesses the gift of choice. One may opt for a career in medicine.  Another, the fish market.  Our boy majors in the purple-black night streets.  In dalliance under sick tenement lights.  In metered trysts in factory cellars amidst the shattered glass and rat prattle.  Slipping on the rot in the backs of vegetable trucks.  A college professor will teach quantum physics or Jacobean drama, but not both.  William has his specialty, too.  It hurts like hell and stains his clothes, but it’s a living.
 

II.

Personal Profile

• Name:  William a/k/a Billy a/k/a Sugar Hole a/k/a Bitch Boy.

• Age: 19.

• Height:  5’ 9” (upright)
          4’ 2” (on his knees)
          0’11” (lying face down)

• Weight:  The sum of his days.

• Eyes:  They have seen as much.

• Hair:  Yes.

• Teeth:  Three loosened by the trick in the motorcycle jacket.

• Distinguishing Features:  He dreams of being Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.
   

III.

Home is where the heart is.  His heart is in a third-floor walk-up where the stove and bathtub stand side by side like groggy morning straphangers itching to be elsewhere. He has roommates who contribute nothing to the upkeep, but you can’t expect too much of rattus norvegicus.
 

IV.

Blake (whom he has never heard of) saw a world in a grain of sand.  The other William sees it in his bedclothes.  It’s all there for inspection, dyeing the fabric into a brand of flophouse motley.  Coffee … Hair grease … Lotion … Mascara (his) … Semen (everybody’s) … Blood (not sure) … Brown splotches on the pillows … Black granules that scurry down the mattress.  As long as he lives, he will never visit Brussels or Edinburgh or Thessalonike or Montevideo or Baton Rouge.  This has never occurred to him.  He has no idea where these cities are.
 

V.

Our Lady of the Leather Boys, pray for us.  Our Lady of the Oh So Pretty Boys, pray for us.  Our Lady of the Sweet As Whipped Cream Boys, pray for us.  Our Lady of the Boys Who Cruise The Docks For Belgian Sailors, pray for us.  Our Lady of the Master And Slave Boys, pray for us.  Our Lady of the Disease Ridden Crack Head Five Dollars Will Get You Anything Boys, pray for us.  Our Lady of Those Who Were Beaten Within An Inch Of Their Lives, pray for us.  Our Lady of Those Who Were Beaten to Death With A Lead Pipe When Their True Gender Was Found Out, pray for us.  Our Lady of Unidentified Young Male Bodies In The City Morgue, pray for us.
 

VI.

If you wish to live in peace and harmony with others, you must learn to discipline yourself in many ways.

                                    Thomas a Kempis        

For an extra twenty, I’ll swallow it.

                                    Billy
 

VII.

If you seek the path to redemption …
 

VIII.

… a little dirt under the tongue may speed your way.
 

IX.

As meaningless to him as the Dutch word for amphibian.

(Which I don’t know either.)

I got it all wrong, he’d tell me.

It’s always about one thing.

A solid roof.

Joel Allegretti is the author of The Plague Psalms, published in 2000 by The Poet’s Press. He has work forthcoming in Rattapallax and Anglican Theological Review. His poem "Saeta" was a quarter-finalist in the 2002 Lyric Recovery Festival. Allegretti has been a featured reader at the West Side Y, Cornelia Street Cafe, the Museum of the City of New York, CB's Gallery and many other venues. He has also read his work on radio and television. A musician as well as a poet, Allegretti was twice nominated for a Garden State Music Award, co-sponsored by BMI.