The father of the Alpha Male
Wished his child would die.

The term, that is.

First coined when watching wolves meet wolves
And minuting their meetings.
Only.

That was in the seventies.
It was different in the seventies.
For one thing, it’s got easier to sneak up on a wolf.
You see, that guy who watched the wolves
Used a controlled environment.
One built so he could see all the insides.
A panopticon.
No one needs a panopticon. Not now.
Not with the range of cameras these days.

Wolves watched in the wild, he found,
Don’t have Alpha Males.
A wolf pack is a family.
Sort of led by mum and dad.
The wolves he watched way back, meanwhile,
Were not a pack.
Were specimens.
Met strangers just as scared as them
Suddenly not in their world
But one too small that didn’t have
Familiar smells
Or family.

He had discovered prison gangs.

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Neil Rhind came to Edinburgh to study literature, but they made him leave university after he got his doctorate. He is a previous contributor to The Scottish Literary Review, The International Review of Scottish Studies, The International Journal of Scottish Literature, and even some places that don’t have “Scottish” in the titles. He commits Ritually Significant things in Edinburgh, and is into the Fall (season) and the Fall (band) but not the Fall (existential state of Damnation). Since lockdown, he has been punting film-poems onto his YouTube channel.