Do They Hate Their Children?

Refusing to vaccinate their kids against

deadly diseases, they send them into schools --

cauldrons of contagion, plagues, and pox; vessels

of viruses that deform, disfigure, and

disable; that befuddle and bewilder --

rather than endure their children’s constraining,

confining, stifling, suffocating presence.

So many seem to have so little regard

for the health, safety, and welfare of their own

progeny (even less for those others bear),

clinging to their implements of war rather

than accept any restraints which could prevent

future school shootings; caring not that climate

catastrophes will make their world discrepant

with human habitation and survival.

They brainwash their babies to believe “others”

are monsters worthy only of contempt and

condemnation for their skin color, gender,

sexuality, religion. They disown

their Queer and gender non-conforming offspring,

splintering them from siblings, heaving them in

to homelessness, knowingly abandoning

them to the anguish of starvation, sickness.

Desperate youngsters turning to sex work to

survive; disguising despair, desolation,

desperation, disabilities with drugs.

Enduring life on the streets without shelter:

cold, wet, sick, crippled, maimed, and mutilated.

Craving comfort, persecuted by police,

and vulnerable to victimization.

Prey to panderers, pushers, traffickers, thieves.

Parents wonder why those they misgender and

dead name refuse to participate in their

lives. Beyond using their children to create

crude cyberspace content that generates likes,

comments, shares, do they even appreciate

their progeny? Do they see them as young folk

who bring color and vibrancy to their lives

or just as self extensions to enhance and

exalt their own egotistical worldview?