Preach Baby Preach

Preach Baby Preach

you know

if more people practiced safe sex

we wouldn’t need

all these precautions

it’s the fault of all them damn

fuck happy sluts

spreading disease

making babies no one can afford

wrecking lives

not caring as they go around

merrily fucking

away without a care in the world

with out a worry

for the medical system

for hospitals

that can’t afford a glass of water

unless someone’s insurance covers it

and my taxes go up

every time some horny idiot decided

to fuck without protection

just to suit their momentary pleasure

if you can’t keep it up

because of some barrier

you don’t deserve to fuck

you hear what I’m saying

unless you’re in the right financial bracket

you shouldn’t be fucking at all

taking risks

bringing babies into a world

where you expected others to care for them

to support you

while you stay off work

to bring them up

so use the brain between your shoulders

not the one between your legs

make some sensible choices

that won’t cost me anything

get that baby carriage out of my way

stop blocking the sidewalks

the grocery aisles with it

if you’d used protection

I could go shopping without

having to shove you

and your screaming brats out of the way

my children are well behaved

This piece is both a rant & an analogy. It plays on the paradox of what is being ranted about & the true nature of the ranter – how we use shame as means of controlling the behaviour of others while wanting our own to be uncontrolled. When I first wrote this I had read things about men controlling women’s health & reproductive services – part of which was the notion that if they can’t afford to have children why should the state have to become responsible for their irresponsible actions.

Refusing to fund methods to avoid getting knocked up for ethical religious reasons while at the same time condemning them for not using those methods or by merely keeping their legs close – yet denouncing women for emasculating men by refusing men the right to control when those legs are to be opened or closed. Its all about control not ethics or deeply religious convictions.

As the song says ‘the rich get richer the poor get babies.’ I read a specfic novel in which only those who could afford children could have them. A device was implanted that kept men & women from getting aroused – thus controlling reproduction. It created more problems than it solved. The TV series Handmaiden’s Tale is another take the religious control of women.

There’s also a sense that our preacher does exactly what is being preached against. As my piece progresses the narrator becomes less reliable when its clear its the fact of baby carriages, of his convince that is the issue. It ends with a nod to the blindness of many parents, even pet owners, that their precious one is perfect while others are the problem. My dog would never bite you, less you deserved it.