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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Social Studies

You still can't name your child "Dalton"
Because he won't emerge from your home until university,
Covered in hair gel, thin as a rake, unblinking.

He wants to be first, for no reason.
He thinks only after he begins to speak, in long broken sentences.

They begin with "I think we can see"
continuing much later with "powerful, um, emotion ..."
and inevitably end with
"so we, here, in our time ... cannot ever comprehend it".

My brains shrinks to hear him hear himself
and raise his gangly hands to gesture impotently
smiling, satisfied that he has landed the words anywhere.

If no one objects, then he must have done so very well.
He lies so transparently that people nod and smile, and he forgets that he lied;
he was only trying to fit in.

Wherever he comes from
everyone is named Dalton.

UPDATE:
He stops me after class, saying "I see that you have a class ring now. And that you write with a fountain pen. And your pocket handkerchief. It all goes together." He seems to think these are prerequisites for graduation.

I've finally meet an extraterrestrial who just can't pass for human.
Or I am an extraterrestrial and he is a vapid human, I don't rightly know any longer.