UPON TH E KNOWLEDGE ONE IS GOING TO RECEIVE A MASCULINE CHILD

One must Xerox in black powder toner
all the names of the bullies that loved
pummeling sordid molestation totems
in the savage saw grass of their
middle school parking lot.

One must flagellate in India ink
the names of those that have died before their time
victims of a rock to the forehead from a slip in the canal
motoqueros with strawberry-plated ligaments, road-rashed eyelids,
those who were given speed metal traps by their parents
when they turned mere driving age.

One must put those names in a hat,
but not just any hat. It has to be one of the hats
that hung from your wall when your realized anthems
cost a push pin, or that passions lanyard
a coil which makes latter days tolerable.

Once the names are collected,
once the scriptures of the signatures in the names are strata
then you can begin to split the Adam, so that your liege crews nations
of those heart-bent on deriving the mystical integers
of an equation which has more than one inequality sign.

One grapples with the consequences of anonymity
only when sired by the inconsequential. One's parents
before him a despised autumn of solemn hard work, lexicon
of perspiration in your grammar per hour. In many ways,

the arrival of a masculine child is a meteor which brings
with it the only antidote from a nova of murderous cerulean.