Progeny (offspring)

Us kids that do eventuate

wave chubby fingers digitate.

Our little feet folks titivate.

We squirm and squeal and cachinnate.

052

Our parents note each unique trait

and each one they enumerate.

Our comfort they facilitate.

Their lives to us they dedicate.

056

Our first names we abbreviate.

For Katerina call me Kate,

Ignatius is condensed to Nate

or Iggy should you be a mate.

060

Our birth records they laminate.

Our nurseries they constellate.

Against most germs they vaccinate.

They’re thorough to inoculate.

064

We each become a state inmate.

We’re sent to schools that educate,

though some would say indoctrinate,

and with peers we confederate.

068

Chrome braces for our mouths dentate.

To stop decay we fluoridate.

Pains our mums ameliorate,

abrasions they iodinate.

072

Each year we grin for our portrait

to document our fast growth rate.

Fad diets to control our weight,

replace sugar with cyclamate.

076

For culture one trip to the Tate.

In sport some bones we dislocate.

Take tests teachers invigilate

and learn how to procrastinate.

080

In English told to lucubrate,

instructed when to hyphenate,

in math we’re taught to tabulate

and times-tables ingeminate.

084

Learn languages we mistranslate,

in history events that predate,

in chemistry lixiviate,

in music how to syncopate.

088

Boys weird out with skulls cucullate.

For A.D.D. we medicate.

Stray cats we like to lapidate.

Frail weaklings we excruciate.

092

Meanwhile young girls start to pupate

till we emerge as ripe jailbait.

By twelve it’s time to menstruate.

For forty years we’ll ovulate.

096

Safe sex pamphlets elucidate

about how we should conjugate.

Our parents we alienate.

We seek to individuate.

100

Into adults we’ll graduate

and in most ways just imitate

the homes where we originate,

so, cycles thus perpetuate.

104