Tintin’s Further Adventures
inside the frame is a succession of frames
in which the oil freighter’s captain dead
drunk if the dead soldiers
around him offer any clue bellows
apoplectic gibberish at clouds
darkening they swell as he rattles his fist
right before the crash
baghdad falls the headline of the daily
the cross-legged stranger hides
behind exclaims slowly he turns
the page the encaged enraged baby
elephant in the park provides a different type
of frame stopping stooping the emaciated elderly
professor listens with an ear trumpet
so it’s funny likewise the ineptitude
of interpol literal nazis own
the streets but its bold bald agents
who share the same name same inky suit
are drawn instead to dogged pursuit of
the rebel leader stirring a nebulous
pot of beans & trouble & so on frame
after frame until reaching the bottom
of the page where the doughty reporter
moans a smoke-like string of o’s
as he rouses rubbing his brow after
conked unconscious by a shadowy figure
who got away but even so we have
a pretty good idea who it was
don’t we snowy