Circumcision, aged Twenty

there’ll be no reminiscence

of our coexistence

as you kept me distant

from my pump and piston

teenage ambition,

thwarting all my exertion

with your inertia,

striving like a researcher

or a tough-nurtured

street urchin

to keep me a virgin.

Rot in hell! Or a surgeon’s

pickle jar. An emergency,

it was. I was in purgatory,

like nature had erred with me.

Life was absurdity.

I preferred it

and could applaud it

once that sordid

operation I rewarded

myself with was all sorted

and I floated

like a slow-moving boat

down the road

with a load

of cotton wool stowed

in my pants, and I woke

each morning fit to choke

from pain, penis poking

heavenwards, groaning,

for two weeks postponing

the sin of Onan,

but free from that moment!

You cruellest of opponents,

lower than rodents,

goodbye, good riddance.