There was a criminal in-- well, there are criminals all over,
but this particular criminal blamed his crime completely
on his parents giving him some name.
I forget what the name was, but I based a poem then on it
called, "A Name."
And being a parent, you realize how you're not
responsible for many of things your children do,
and not in control of them.
So this is my in defense of parenthood poem called "A Name."
"Suppose your parents had called you Dirk,
wouldn't that be motive enough to commit a heinous crime?
Just as Judys always become nurses, and Brads florists.
After the act your mom would say, "He was always a good boy.
Once on my birthday he gave me one of those roses stuck
in a glass ball, you know, kind that never gets soggy,"
her exhibit A. Exhibit B, a surprise corpse,
sharing a last moment of Dirk with the mortician.
And dad would say, "Dirk once won a contest by spelling
the word Pyrrhic."
And in his alcohol dream, he sees
the infant Dirk, all pink and tinsel,
signing his birth certificate with a knife.
Still, Dirk should have known better.
He could tell you that antimony is Panama's most important
product.
He remembered Vasco da Gama and wished him well.
Once he'd made a diorama of the All-American boyhood,
a little farm, cows the size of nails, cotton ball
sheep, a corncob silo.
But when he signed it Dirk, the crops
were blighted by bad faith.
And don't forget exhibit C, D, E, the stolen eclair,
the zookeeper, the taunting of a certain Miss W,
who smelled of fried onions.
It was his parents' fault, they called him Dirk."