Author: Nahum Tyte

  • Upon the Circumcision

    Upon the Circumcision

    I know a woman, though I’ve never met her,
    who half a year ago became begetter.
    Rosanne begat a little baby guy
    and slapped him with the name of Malachai,
    which carries Biblical suggestions that
    ring true to such vocabulary as ‘begat’.
    Once she’d secured her little child’s release
    she had the doctor take his frontispiece,
    an act that piqued and didn’t let my ire
    cool till I learned about her Jewish sire.
    As long as I thought Malachai a goy,
    I took exception to his pruned McCoy.

    This pruning, I have learned, is de rigueur
    where no man has a chance to be a Sir,
    not since his nation shed the Hanoverian
    yoke while maintaining yokes for the non-Aryan.
    And yet the other creeds of Abraham,
    the ones that take a dimmer view of ham,
    some doctors treat as gospel to th’extent
    the Jewish schmuck lasts longer than the Gent.
    This fact surprises Christian Europeans,
    whose own preputia have endured the æons.
    Occasionally it goes beyond surprise
    and governments poke around behind one’s flies,
    a point best proven when the bold Icelandics
    voted to enshrine a law that banned dicks
    being tampered with. Let young lads keep the foreskin!
    A bairn is healthier when he has more skin.

    That’s the received wisdom, but what’s received
    can leave recipients the more deceived.
    The snipped man’s tribulations I confuse
    with none of mine, not being in his shoes
    or pants. I query not God’s handiwork;
    mine’s not a personage I want to irk.
    Like Mrs Radcliffe’s monk, he’s darkly hooded,
    and sometimes, if it comes to it, full-blooded.

    But as all Capuchins will tell you, hoods
    pose danger when you’re walking in the woods.
    They catch and scratch on those extruding briars,
    and thus have snagged and strangled untold friars.
    Thorns, naturally, are not a threat in town:
    the denim is what pulls my own hood down,
    or rather, up. Discreetly trying to nurse
    it, hand in pocket, only makes things worse.
    Locate a bathroom, drop your pants as fast
    as possible and then inspect the mast;
    accept it’s likely to require rejigging
    to get the sails untangled from the rigging.
    One envies now American and heathen,
    for anyone who ever sails beneath an
    Islamic, Hebrew or a US flag
    contends not with this unexpected drag.
    Of all the problems a becalmed ship’s cursed
    with, though, the foremost always will be thirst.
    The fabric’s made me moistureless. Are my
    American friends always so bone dry?
    (The men, I mean to say: a woman’s nation
    has little impact on her irrigation).
    Æsthetically, moreover, does my flesh ‘n’
    blood suffer from this general regression:
    it now looks bald, with six or seven chins
    as though in punishment for countless sins,
    an exegesis flawed from the beginning –
    throughout its life it’s done so little sinning.

    So gentile parents of the world, I urge
    you buck the scripture of your demiurge!
    Keep your family’s male members safe
    against the vicious gods of needless chafe.