A Twenty-First Century Keats

Warning: The following ode has no sexual innuendos. This ode has no sexually explicit or implicit content.

ODE TO ANDROGENS

Power! Control! You slayer, you source of testy torment

You pedophile, you rapist, you fucker without consent.

So facile with crime and abuse,

Never willing to consider a truce.

Warmonger, a monstrosity for mankind,

And even more: a horror for kids and womankind.

Yet I will be thy priest, and build a fane

To make your goodness known

When you are here the forests swell, the mountains shadow the plain

The brooks do fill, the barren trees go green, we never feel alone.

Can there be ambition, love, and poesy without thee?

What else will fill all fruit with ripeness to the core?

What can swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells?

What else can set the buds afloat on the wonderful vaginal floor?

Adieu, adieu—I am fucked through and through.

Without thee I am lost, and yet forever young.

Epicene, nothing ever obscene, I give up the profane.

I see creeks all crippled, all the rivers do drain.

Those droop-headed flowers abound.

Springtime for Hitler but where is the springtime for me?

Hast thou forsaken me, O Androgens?

The hormones: Estrogen, yes, but testosterone, no.

Where art thou, brooding hormones?

I am waiting . . . and waiting. Will you come back? Are you failing me now?

Is it Daddy-o? Is it Godot? Is it Androgen-o?

Thou wast not born for death, immortal hormone.

Hungry generations try to tread thee down.

But none of us can forget:

You are the creator of emperor and clown.

The swelling swagger, the babbling blather

The trophies, the towers of power

Joy and Beauty and Pleasure and Delight

Without thee, melancholy—no thrust in our engines, everything sour.

All is indolence without thee—my pulse grows less and less.

You give wings to man and help women flower.

Without thee, Love is worse than dour.

Vanish, ye hormones, into the clouds, but please, pretty please, return.

As you come back—gradual to be sure—

I begin to have visions of delight for the night,

For all the world, everything is set right.

When old age will this generation waste,

You dear hormone will remain both a friend and foe.

And ye will say in midst of other woe:

Beauty is hormonal fullness; hormonal fullness beauty—

That is all ye fuckers and non-fuckers need to know.