
the average boy or girl
has a vocabulary of
seventy five thousand words –
if that’s right
how come my son
can’t form a sentence without using “like”
at least once or twice
and he can’t seem to limit
his use of “innit?”
no matter how hard he tries –
and if I hear him say “bruv” one more time
to anyone other
than his actual brother
I’m gonna go nuts – I’ve had words with his mom
she seems to think it’s a fad, a phase
that he’s going through and that
all of a sudden he going to start
spouting off verse like wordsworth or coleridge
and riffing on tolstoy with his head in the fridge
i’m not as optimistic as my spouse
because i’ve heard the crud that drops from his mouth
when in the company of friends
when it’s all “rad, yeah, totally” and “d’you know what i mean?”
Well, i’d know what you meant if you enunciated better
and didn’t confuse me by forming every sentence
with a question mark at the end(?)
i know that language is alive
therefore, it must evolve
a new word is invented every ninety seconds
or so i’m told
it’s just that at school, i had grammar class
and yes, it was dry and uninspiring
all gerunds and subjunctives, naming words
passato prossimo and reflexive verbs
but most of it went in
and now i’m glad that i know where to place
apostrophes’ (joke) “and” parentheses
and it’s with this wisdom
that i can commit the greatest parental
cardinal joy, that of projecting my childhood misery
onto that of my favorite boy