No, I Don't

No, I don't want a daughter.

I do not wish for her to be the victim of a beguiling Casanova, promising her the world but leaving her with unwanted progeny.

Dodging would-be suitors because she wants to make a better future for herself.

Shamed into acquiescence, lest she is called a whore.

God had a painful plan, so she avoids a baby.

But many men avoid her because of it.

No, no daughters for me.

No, I do not wish for a daughter.

Ravaged by rapists and warlords of a pillaged piece of land.

Mutilated and eviscerated, her body desired yet her pleasure is scorned.

I do not want her to be told she has to be a wife,

or else she is a pitiful waste.

No, no daughters for me.

No, a daughter is not in my plan.

I do not want her to feel the pangs of parenthood, birthing another crying vestige of a life, that will suffer and waste away; a slave to the king that is entropy.

No, no daughters for me.

Absolutely, I wish to avoid fatherhood of the daughter.

Afraid she is going to be carted off to be some plaything of a dirty dastard.

Her will and womb are broken down,

for the grotesque amusement of some lord.

No, no daughters for me.

No, I don't want a son.

Emotionally scarred and scared of the world around him.

The knife of manhood constantly at his throat,

ready to assassinate him if he doesn't obey.

Like a tyrant of testosterone,

questioning his very being and cut down at a moment's notice.

No, I would hate to have a son.

Living in a world, where his finger is forced onto a trigger.

Killing other boys and men like him, hoping to prove his worth.

This "son" of mine is so beaten and so deranged;

his mind tattered and bewildered by the guilt and unforgiving gusts of the whirlwind in his psyche. His only hope is at the base of a bottle.

No, I do not wish for a son.

Placing cold steel at his temple,

for the burdens are too great.

His plaintive cries reach out to the sun, but in a language nobody understands.

A rope tightens around his neck, for the shadows of grief cloud self-preservation.

No, my dear "son" please keep away.

When your body is a plaything, the world laughs.

Wondering why you "allowed" it to happen.

Your virtue, a cruel joke when it is torn asunder.

Your manhood, constantly in question if you refrain from promiscuity. 

No… No, I do not wish for a child.