Poem: "what the Xperts did not know"
This poem came out of the June 7, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from minor_architect. It was sponsored by Shirley & Anthony Barrette.
what the Xperts did not know
the secret Xperiment
came with instructions
in which the Xperts explained such things
as how to raise a genderless child
and how to dress one
and what kind of toys to buy
but the parents and the Xperts alike
were all grown up themselves,
divided precisely into men and women,
who loved each other enough to make babies
but had no way of knowing
what was about to happen
so the babies grew up without gender lines,
without limitations on their powers and perceptions,
so that they held all the cards given to boys and girls
plus the ones that had fallen out of the deck to be ignored
plus a few new ones that nobody had seen before
plus a few blank ones just in case
and they thought rings around the men
and they felt rings around the women
and they perceived rings around everyone
when they hit puberty,
they all fell in love with each other
all at once, and all over,
and they did it without getting jealous or anxious
or confused or accidentally pregnant
while the Xperts stared,
and mumbled,
and finally admitted that no,
they didn't really know what they were doing after all