His conception
“My son,” says the man, looking down at the boy,
And gives his thick mustache a twirl.
“Papa,” cries the boy, “take your hand off my stash!”
“I’m just making sure you’re not a gwirl.
“Your mother, my son—” “She a son of yours too?”
The boy laughs and makes repartee.
“O, damn you, appositive phrase!” says the man.
“Tua mater, mi fili—
“She promised to give me a son when we met,
But when we met said ’twas too soon.
I had to make love to her first, she ordained,
So I fucked her from morning till noon.
“At lunch we’d some beef, then she broke a few plates
And left me to live with her dad.
So he and I picked up the shards, while she fled
The damned country with that goddam lad.”
“Did Ma have a beau?” asks the boy. “Yes, she did,”
The man says with tears in his eyes.
“A pity she left all her arrows behind
On account of the shaft tween her thighs.
“She rivaled Diana in archery, though
That’s all she could rival her in.
For she was a celibate and she was not—”
“Was she both?” asks the boy with a grin.
“Of course,” says the man, “for all women are chaste—
That is, till their cherry is popped.
Your mom’s no exception: she was a pure maid
Till I fucked her brains out and she stopped.
“Nine months went by fast, then she gave birth to them—”
He points to two girls with his thumbs.
“Why not use your forefingers, Pa?” the boy asks.
“Two’s enough,” the man says, “for these bums.
“She gave them to me—” “But I thought she had left,”
The boy interrupts him to say.
“She’d left,” says the man, “but she had every right
To come back, if she found her own way.
“‘You promised,’ I told her, ‘to bear me a son—
A son who can carry my name.
You know Merkwürdigliebestodundteufel
Is too weighty a name for a dame.’
“That night we had sex—” “Tell me more,” says the boy
And slips his left hand down his shorts.
“The fuck!” cries the man, “you a lefty?” “Why, yes,
Mine’s a liberal lifestyle of sorts.”
“That night,” the man says, “we had sex, and what’s more
I hardly need tell you, my son.
I shot my rich semen in your mother’s womb:
The proverbial oven and bun.
“The rest of the story you know all too well,
Because I’ve told it many times.
I’d love to retell what I’ve already told,
But just now I have run out of rhymes.”