The Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Your world is upside-down, your sperm better now
you quit hot baths and Diet Coke, but there is a lot
of paperwork. They take your picture and your license,
walk you to the room, VCR, Ass Angels #4,
Black Queens of Porn with breasts so swollen
they look luminous as deep-sea fish.
No one sets a clock, but there is a sense of time passing.
You get to work and try not to think about things,
just to keep the chair from squeaking. Just to hit the cup.
The worst thing? Failure to produce, they warn you.
Men go in and hours later have not come out.
They’re sobbing and their arms are sore.
There is a request you don’t make jokes at this moment.
Their wives in the waiting room, surly from hormone treatments,
in their lucky socks. Monkeys, ninjas, moustaches on them.
The doctor compliments your wife
on her monkeys. Then, when every dollar has gone
toward a single hope,
it begins to snow.
Posted 10/14/11
A found poem with text taken from "The Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Paul Ford on The Morning News