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There was a criminal in-- well,
there are criminals all over,

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but this particular criminal
blamed his crime completely

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on his parents
giving him some name.

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I forget what the name was,
but I based a poem then on it

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called, "A Name."

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And being a parent, you
realize how you're not

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responsible for many of
things your children do,

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and not in control of them.

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So this is my in defense of
parenthood poem called "A Name."

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"Suppose your parents
had called you Dirk,

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wouldn't that be motive enough
to commit a heinous crime?

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Just as Judys always become
nurses, and Brads florists.

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After the act your mom would
say, "He was always a good boy.

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Once on my birthday he gave
me one of those roses stuck

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in a glass ball, you know,
kind that never gets soggy,"

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her exhibit A. Exhibit
B, a surprise corpse,

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sharing a last moment of
Dirk with the mortician.

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And dad would say, "Dirk once
won a contest by spelling

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the word Pyrrhic."

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And in his alcohol
dream, he sees

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the infant Dirk,
all pink and tinsel,

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signing his birth
certificate with a knife.

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Still, Dirk should
have known better.

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He could tell you that antimony
is Panama's most important

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product.

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He remembered Vasco da
Gama and wished him well.

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Once he'd made a diorama of
the All-American boyhood,

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a little farm, cows the
size of nails, cotton ball

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sheep, a corncob silo.

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But when he signed
it Dirk, the crops

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were blighted by bad faith.

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And don't forget exhibit
C, D, E, the stolen eclair,

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the zookeeper, the taunting
of a certain Miss W,

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who smelled of fried onions.

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It was his parents' fault,
they called him Dirk."

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