42. Back Talk
To stretch or not to stretch:
that is the question mundane.
Too mundane for my Big Daddy
forebears who, non-nurturers they,
one and all, could only glorify
their Little Boy choice between
blowing brains out--either their own
or the world's. Sissy art,
the only penis-born consolation
and soultenderizer, was left
to, well, mostly sissies.
Watch your dumb dog, dumb cat,
dumb plant long enough, say one
or two millennia, and that crusty
either/or begins to seem irrel
avant: stretch, and the world
stretches with you. Fight, and though
you be surrounded by a million
other angry phalloi, you fight,
and die, alone.
Somewhere way out east, though, the
lonely few gentle men watched
the way of dogs and cats and plants,
and realizing imitation is
the sincerest form of education,
stretched, and stretched, and reached
and poked a hole in the starry tent
itself, together. And in the manner
of mothers, left behind simple
instructions for the one percent
of their sons' sons' sons'
who might worry themselves near
to death about the vicious, garden-
destroying ways of unchecked,
stiff-backed, stiff-necked
testosteronic manliness, so-called.
