Lamarckian Thoughts of the Father

Son-biography: which are deft or lived things
which have jumped from him without genes.
Passions, eccentricities, duty? I don’t believe
Lamarck, but I left his Quiet for her Talk,
nagging the life out of things, worsened it
word-wise, garrulous, and then heavied it
because Saloms drink, his side, but genes,
though he didn’t, and she offered her whole
life to the sobriety of wives. He voted sober
but gave me his black-sheep toss-the-world
bushiness, which I took as city, and poetry.
He said I was a fraud, which meant I didn’t
rhyme, it didn’t mean he knew or questioned
that he didn’t. Being right runs in the family.
He couldn’t make me fish but gave me golf
and cricket until I slid the car, controlled it
sexy-dancing all body and head before sex
is even started, a stiff cock starting in a boy,
so then I wanted racing. He said I could buy
a ‘bomb’ but when I tried he stopped it dead.
Don’t push anything too far, was in his head
if not his genes -I got it instead as migraine
and left it behind when I left home, cured
overnight. Odder things he hadn’t: say an odd
walk becomes a theory of walks, or autodidact
theories of everything and all the facts to face