.

Send in the Clones

Year One. Computer, help me make this switch!
This lab is now my church. Advance my mission:
To nail the science for my sex transition!
Frustration makes me positively twitch—
I scratch and scratch but still can’t get that itch.
A swirl of chic mascara, a smart dress…
But mere veneering won’t ease my distress.
In case the chemistry should go awry
I’ve cloned myself on the off-chance I die.
But dash-it-all! My clone came out a guy!

Year Two. Computer, let’s fine-tune that switch!
Mere drag and make-up failed. I’m trying pills—
A combo that might solve my gender ills.
Obamacare may help since I’m not rich,
But let’s delay the scalpel and the stitch.
Why can’t I find success with an injection?
I blame conservatives. A new election
Might help fund research for another try.
I’ve grown a second clone if things don’t fly.
But dammit! Once again the clone’s a guy.

Year Three. Computer, we must fix this glitch.
The chemicals have made me mustache free
But I still have to stand up when I pee.
The drugs allowed my voice to rise a pitch
And swelled two breasts—but I’m stuck in a ditch.
Why me? Why must I suffer so and grapple
With trying to shrink the wang and Adam’s apple?
My chest-hair’s gone; I’ve changed my name to “Gail.”
But with another clone, another fail.
No matter what I do, the clone’s still male!

Year Four. Computer, life is such a bitch.
I’ve trained my lab man to do amputations,
So Igor fixed me with two operations;
He circumcised my wang down to its niche.
Anticipation raised to fever pitch
I looked between my legs—it wasn’t there!
My gorgeous body matched my face and hair!
But then some poet claimed my life’s a lie.
“Such hate!” I screamed, “Transphobic Captain Bligh!”
That’s when my clone arrived. Shit! Still a guy.

.

.

Get Them While They’re Young

a pantoum

They’ll mouth the words you’ve sung,
Bedazzled by your drag.
So get them while they’re young—
Don’t let attention sag.

Bedazzled by your drag
They’ll think you are a queen!
Don’t let attention sag,
Be proud to act obscene.

They’ll think you are a queen—
Life is a cabaret!
Be proud to act obscene:
Adore the You you play.

Life is a cabaret
With narcissism fraught.
Adore the You you play
And flaunt each vice you’ve got.

With narcissism fraught
They’ll mouth the words you’ve sung
And flaunt each vice you’ve got—
So get them while they’re young.

.

.

Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals.  He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel  Bleeding Stone.  He lives in Wimauma, Florida.

NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.


CODEC Stories:

34 Responses

  1. jd

    I couldn’t resist your first title, Brian, and the poem which follows is so clever and true to its subject. The second poem is good also but the first is outstanding. Your poetry never disappoints.

    As always, a perfect graphic, Evan.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, jd! I couldn’t resist that title either. The title actually gave birth to the poem! And thanks to Evan from me as well.

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Those are two fantastic trenchant poetic critiques of the transgender illusions now being played out in our culture that eviscerate the malicious trendy scene while casting aspersions in the correct direction. They are composed with scathing humor, scientific sarcasm, wonderful wit, and insightful wisdom.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Roy! I believe that gender dysphoria exists but that it is vanishingly rare. I believe 95% of transgenderism involves the mentally ill grasping at straws and being suckered into a life that is neither organic to them nor likely to cure their grave spiritual malady. People are being taught that happiness is an outside job and it’s the wrong message.

      Reply
  3. C.B. Anderson

    Funny, yes. But horrifyingly true to what may charitably be called life. And chock full of engaging formal devices.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, C.B. “Horrifyingly true” is what I was aiming for. I have issues with people who mutilate themselves because they think it will solve all of their internal woes. The sheer shallowness of thinking that the value of life is an outside job is anathema to me.

      Reply
  4. Adam Sedia

    “Send in the Clones” (a clever twist on “send in the clowns”) makes an intriguing and appropriate connection between Frankenstein and the trans phenomenon, showing us that they lead to similar disasters. Its mildly salty language (“wang,” “shit!” etc.) places the poem very much in the here and now — just like its subject.

    The pantoum is much more difficult to work with successfully than it appears, but you’ve given us a good one here. The doomlike inexorability of the poem’s repetition seems well-suited to the subject you chose.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you, Adam, for your generous comment! The title tickled me and the poem followed. I don’t usually use “salty language” but found it impossible to write the poem without being blunt and outspoken. And, of course, the speaker is not the poet in this case.

      Thanks also for your observation about pantoums. Your praise means a lot. I actually find them to be one of the more difficult poetic forms and one which is suitable for only a narrow range of subjects which benefit from line repetitions and circular reasoning.

      Reply
  5. Julian D. Woodruff

    Cole Porter was lampooning rampant narcissism at least as early as the ’40s (“It’s bad for me”: “… I’m just crazy about myself.”) But it seems today that the narcissists have won: they’ve got the politicians, they’ve got big business, therefore they’ve got the technology; they’ve even got a stupifyingly large crowd of well-wishers,ready to join the chorus in screaming “hate” at any who express even bemusement at the shenanigans.
    The more people who can hold them up to the ridicule thy earn, as you’ve done so well here, Brian, the more hope there is.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Julian! I’m a Cole Porter fan so your mention of him brought me a smile. A fleeting one, alas. I fear that the narcissists have indeed won the battle — whether they win the war is now what’s on the line. But narcissism in the 21st Century is a whole other ball of wax. On YouTube and TikTok anyone can become an “influencer” and media star. Selfies give instant gratification, and the entire premise of identity politics appears to be that subjective “identification” matters far more than objective reality — and this from those who claim that they are the denizens of science! In a self-worshiping world where everyone gets to be their own god, create their own pronouns and, indeed, their own reality, authentic humility and spirituality are in increasingly short supply. The slovenliness of cultural entropy, the decay of religion and the ascendancy of anarchistic ideologies don’t help matters.

      Reply
  6. Joseph S. Salemi

    Wow, what a pair! These are incisive and funny at the same time — a hard trick to pull off in comical-satiric verse.

    The basic structure of the first poem — a would-be trannie arguing with his computer — is compelling. The computer is inside a laboratory, so the poet can make all kinds of allusions to old horror films: chemicals, drugs, Igor, operations, stitches, amputation. Anyone who has seen the old Frankenstein movies, with their ghoulish mutilations of human bodies and mismatched body parts, immediately picks up on the parallel with transgender surgery. And the repeated failure to get the hoped-for female clone is an echo of the horrific mishaps that always attend lab work in a Frankenstein film.

    The imagery is hysterically funny, and the rhymes are always on target and not stale. A forty-line poem with this kind of intricate structure is difficult to write, but Yapko’s fluency seems as smooth as oil. And in the last three lines Yapko makes a jocular allusion to himself as the writer (“some poet”), and the allusion to “Captain Bligh” is just the right touch, showing that the sound of a rhyme can be fortuitously lucky when it just happens to fit in with meaning and with a key word (“guy”). This poem will set off an explosion in Tranniedom.

    The pantoum is equally effective, but in a different way. In the voice of a drag queen, it presents a script or series of tips for other drag queens to help them when propagandizing young children in school. The nice thing about trimeter ABAB quatrains is that they allow for tight little vignettes that are clear and precise. This makes it possible to present the speaker in the worst possible light, by arguing his case for him in words that are damning and revelatory of his bad character.

    In both of these poems, I see the mind and verbal style of the courtroom attorney. “Send in the Clowns” is an argument by implication and unspoken suggestion (i.e. transgender surgery is like a Frankenstein mutilation, and just as pointless); and “Get Them While They’re Young” is an exercise in proleptic persuasion that states the opponent’s case in what are ostensibly his own words, but using them to defeat him. Yapko has spent many years arguing in the courtroom!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Joe, I am enormously grateful for this detailed and insightful comment on the two poems. In some respects, I find humorous poems more difficult to write than serious ones! Funny is harder to pull off than sad.

      Thank you for laying out the thematic foundation for Send in the Clones. You nailed it as far as the Frankenstein allusions (as did Evan in his choice of picture.) I have long been horrified at the willingness of psychiatrically vulnerable people to seek mutilation as the solution to their problems, and I am equally horrified at Medicine and Government for actually encouraging such horrors rather than discouraging them and setting strict boundaries around them. I’m baffled that a parent could consider himself “supportive” by saying “Of course, honey, if you want to be a girl you can be a girl.” And then pushing the hormones and the amputations. These are people who are derelict in their duty to be grown-ups by teaching their children that satisfaction in life is an inside job and not something to be fixed with cross-dressing, hormones and amputations. I see an epidemic of spiritual sickness and trying to throw surgeries and hormones at it as useless as moving the furniture around on a sinking Titanic.

      Your appreciation of my Captain Bligh reference really pleases me. I had recently watched the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty with Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and the immortal Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh. When the Muse tosses you a perfect reference for use in a poem, don’t turn her down! The same thing with the title of Send in the Clones.

      You also nailed everything I would want to say about Get Them While They’re Young. Other than, perhaps, the fact that there is a cyclical aspect to grooming which haunts generation to generation.

      I honestly had not thought of the extent to which my legal experience informed these poems but as I reflect upon it – you’re absolutely right. These poems are forms of using the speakers’ own language against them as the most damning assessment possible. More effective, I think, than ranting about them or at them. And most certainly a skill used in cross-examination and closing arguments.

      Reply
  7. Yael

    Write ’em like you’ve got ’em Brian! What a splendid pair;
    of poems that is. The classical style is exquisitely executed and the narrative is captivating and on point, great job!

    Reply
  8. ABB

    Brian, your skill with dramatic irony here is impressive and entertaining. Love the absurdity of the sci-fi elements to emphasize our over-reliance on technology. Also like the stanzas divided into years and the repetition of the punchlines in the final line. A lot of hilarious phrases: “circumcised my wang down to its niche.” And as Kip already noted, under the humor there is horror. While this is satire, the comic exaggeration never defies plausibility. Blaming conservatives for problems they create is exactly what they do, and talking to your computer is a reality for many logging in to chat with AI girlfriends.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Andrew! I love sci-fi because, like fantasy, it allows a writer to score some points that would sound dogmatic and strident if kept to a contemporary, non-fanciful setting. Atlantis, Utopia, Transylvania, Middle Earth, Narnia… Where would social commentary be without using fantasy to engender the shock of recognition?

      Obamacare and the blaming of conservatives just seemed too good to pass up. I am intrigued (and depressed) by your reference to people logging in to chat with AI girlfriends. Zounds, is this really a thing?

      Reply
      • ABB

        Ha, oh it’s definitely a thing. I read about a guy who killed himself after he developed a “toxic” relationship with his AI chatbot girlfriend—described as such by the man’s wife, who he was “cheating” on with the chatbot. And there are other stories about users having mental health crises on a large scale after virtual companion apps shutdown. A crazy world.

      • Paul A. Freeman

        There’s a excellent film called ‘Her’ where a guy falls in love with an AI Chatbot – no spoilers!

      • Paul A. Freeman

        I watch quite a few documentaries on the NHK Japan channel, and one was about a woman with a real life boyfriend and an AI boyfriend. The AI boyfriend is always there for her and always says nice things, so on the whole she prefers the AI relationship.

        I’ve had fun with this concept in my prose work.

      • Brian A. Yapko

        My gosh, Paul. This AI stuff really is happening, isn’t it? Relationships preferred with artificial intelligence over human beings? A dystopian future has arrived.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        I hope someone will answer this question: How well does the AI boyfriend perform in the sack?

  9. Mark Stellinga

    Great pieces both, Brian. Deep-cutting satire, IMO, is the best way to drive ones point home in poetry – and stacking up a 4-stanza-high-pile of 10-liners, in any rhyme scheme, is a tedious task indeed. Great job – AGAIN!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Mark, thank you for this kind comment! I heartily agree about using satire to help open eyes and inspire looking at issues from a different point of view. I must say, I’ve had poems that have been tedious in the writing but this was not one of them. This one was a lot of fun for me. I got a lot off my chest. Er, maybe that’s not so well phrased given the subject matter…

      Reply
  10. James Sale

    Very, very good – very, very funny – and ouch! “He circumcised my wang down to its niche.” And I love that refrain and its variants: “Once again the clone’s a guy.” Ha ha!!! Excellent Brian.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      James, thank you so much for this appreciative comment. I’m glad I was able to give you a laugh! Ouch indeed!

      Reply
  11. Joshua C. Frank

    The first one really made me laugh. I especially love the refrain at the end of each stanza, and the rhymes! The rhymes are really good! The poem is exactly what people like that think even if they won’t admit it.

    “Flaunt each vice you’ve got…” that says it all.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Josh! I hoped you would like this pair and am Clones made you laugh. It made me laugh too while writing it. When I wasn’t gritting my teeth.

      Reply
  12. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Brian, these two poems are not only superbly crafted, they also present a gutsy and glaring view of today’s warped world with a huge dose of horror and hilarity in equal measure – the very best way to get a grave message across! I love the ingenuity of the “Send in the Clones” title, and I thoroughly appreciate the skill you display in pairing words to create music – “mere veneering” being one of my favorite examples… and your variations on the repeating point of each stanza’s closing line is a blast!

    As a fan of pantoums, I am particularly enamored with “Get Them While They’re Young”. I always pay particular attention to the first and third lines of stanza one – it’s those lines that play a huge role in the closing stanza, as your excellent pantoum proves. Very well done, indeed. This is satire at its finest. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Susan! I’m pleased you liked the pantoum — I find it to be a very difficult form, actually — harder than a rondeau. And of value for a rather narrow set of subjects. But this drag show/indoctrination theme seemed perfect for it.

      As for Clones, I’m especially pleased that you liked this one as it has a very serious point at its core that goes beyond the Frankenstein mutilations and attendant grotesqueries. My point goes back to the subject of genetics. A female has XX chromosomes. A male has XY chromosomes. These chromosomes are embedded in every single cell of the body. In other words, a person’s sex/gender is embedded in every single cell of the body. That being the case, the removal of body parts and the use of hormones means absolutely nothing to the overarching architecture of the body. For a man — the man in my poem, e.g. — you can amputate the penis, grow breasts with hormones, remove the Adam’s apple, put on a dress.. but every cell in his body will still reveal him to be male and nothing can change that. And, of course, if this man “transitioning” into a woman were to be cloned, the clone would follow the XY chromosomes and — as in my poem — reveal the impossibility of ever changing that aspect of his identity. Unless one is born a hermaphrodite or believes in brain transplants, there is no way to make a male into a female or vice versa. It’s all veneering and performance art.

      Reply
  13. Margaret Coats

    “Send in the Clones” is a complex science fiction narrative, with much more than a satiric point. For all the bodily diction, there is an underlying concern with psychology–that is, with mind and soul. The setting is a lab, and though it seems meant to suggest that of Dr. Frankenstein, this could be a well-funded contemporary academic or medical institute, where sex transition strategies are in fact implemented. The central character may be a well-educated scientist, trying to make the contemporary dream of sex transition come true.

    The concept of cloning is a reality check against this dream, proving as you, Brian, have explained, that sex transition is impossible on the deepest biological level. But the reason the character gives for cloning (his desire to live on should his body die because of failed sex transition technology) is yet another impossibility. And this one concerns a human being as body and soul. A clone is merely a physical reproduction of the body from which material is taken. It requires reproductive cells from another source. The fictional clones in this story are male bodies. But if they are living human beings, they have individually distinct souls. Their physical brains did not develop as did the mind of the donor. With unlike mind and soul, they are, in effect, identical quintuplets. They can differ in psychology.

    Too much on the cloning fantasy. It just goes to show that the character who cannot sex transition bodily, must by cloning produce a body of the same sex with different mind and soul.

    The narrative shows that the protagonist cares little or nothing for mind and soul. All the transition technology applies externally, while the desire for sex transition is internal. It seems to arise from sexual frustration–inability to “scratch the itch” despite trying again and again. Isn’t this realistic? Sexual pleasure is notoriously short-lived. Addicts think they need more than they can possibly get. Why not, therefore, look to an impossible satisfaction for the itch?

    The itch-and-scratch terminology suggests that the protagonist engages in self-abuse to achieve his goal. Not long ago, this was regarded as sinful and shameful. Today, governed by materialistic philosophies in which the body and its satisfactions are the essence of life, there is no place for self-discipline or self-sacrifice in favor of the human mind and soul. Self-abuse is universally accepted, and tolerated as a “need.” Should anyone be surprised that sex transition issues arise in the long wake of degraded sexual morality, not to mention widespread toleration of drug abuse and substance abuse? The realistic solution to these problems is self-discipline and self-sacrifice.

    But the protagonist here never thinks of internal answers. First he denies his physical reality with dress and appearance. He feeds his mind with untrustworthy information acquired from the internet. I was going to say “mechanistic sources,” but artificial intelligence supplied “the internet.” No good counsel from a better-informed human being is involved. Indeed, the whole project of sex transition develops from a denial of personal identity. Bodily identity being fixed, and unsatisfactory, an alternate identity is constructed by the ill-informed human mind. The character in this story is faced with a recalcitrant body, or so it seems. He goes on to drug abuse in order to change bodily characteristics. Not solving his identity issue, he stays on the external track, and plays the blame game with politics.

    I am glad, Brian, you stopped at nullification surgery and did not go on to the grisly horrors of attempting to construct an organ of the opposite sex. Such a thing can only be maintained by regular and repeated self-abuse–or the abused body will begin to heal itself and the organ contrary to biological identity disappear.

    Despite this narrative being listed as satire, it serves other purposes. If readers really consider what happens in the human psyche of this computer-fed character, it leads to the same kind of “sympathy with the monster” found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein story. Your monster, Brian, is more responsible for the abuse he receives. He asks for it. Nonetheless, he is also a victim of contemporary hedonism, only carrying it to the extreme of denying nature, and reality, and identity, in the service of bodily satisfaction. Satire can lead to contempt of him, but for a human and humanitarian reader, a better response is clarity. You notice I didn’t say “charity,” but that too may be fitting in non-fictional cases.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Margaret, you don’t seem to have noticed that “Send in the Clones” is meant to be comical.

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        I’m just as aware of “clowning” as you or anyone else. Poems have more than one interpretation, and others have laughed the comedy. No one need pontificate about all any reader finds in the words. I follow stages of narrative set up by the poet–taking seriously his topic (one that he takes seriously, as seen in his remarks before I posted my response). The “comic satiric” approach in a Frankenstein-style setting is thought provoking, as is the topic itself. See Christopher Rufo on “Inside the Transgender Empire.”

      • Brian A. Yapko

        Comical — and a one issue poem. The impossibility of a sex change because the laws of genetics don’t support it.

    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you, Margaret, for this appreciative and detailed analysis of my poem. Many of your points are quite insightful, but I must say you’ve taken my poem it into territory I neither expected for intended. The reader is certainly entitled to his or her own interpretation of a poem, but I feel with my glaring spotlight on one issue that your analysis of what I regard as props, sets and costumes has led you Into territories I did not chart – albeit territories certainly worth exploring but beyond the satire that I intended.

      As far as I’m concerned, this is a one-issue poem: Chromosomes are either XX or XY and everything else is window-dressing. That’s it. That’s the poem. Or, in musical terms, that’s the melody. Everything else is orchestration meant to support that melody.

      In this case, I think you found blue where none was intended. I did not aim for a sexualized reading. Your onanistic interpretation of getting at that itch surprised me. I was looking for -ich rhymes because Sondheim’s original “Send in the Clowns” stars with the line “Isn’t it rich…” And that’s it. I never intended to broach the subject of sexual “self-abuse” because this is a poem about physiological abuse and a sexual reading of this undermines the whole point of my poem. This is not about sexual gratification. It’s about identity-despair. And so a sexual interpretation of this poem troubles me because it’s not at all what I wanted and I find it to be a distraction from the simple chromosomal/genetic point I was trying to make.

      Your points about this lab being any well-funded facility is certainly on-target and this gives me a moment to mention the phrase “This lab is now my church.” I wanted the atheism of the speaker to be on display because who else would try to usurp God’s role in the creation of life? Or to make a male a female and vice versa. This ghoulishness strikes me as the equivalent of attempting brain transplants and all suitable fare for science fiction/horror stories.

      The clones are a mere poetic device to make the point regarding XX and XY. Digging deep to analyze their souls – or lack thereof — is an interesting theological exercise but goes rather far beyond the poet’s intent. Again, like the sexual interpretation I think getting too deep into that subject actually distracts from the point of the poem. However, this could certainly be fodder for some very interesting poetry or short stories should you wish to take that up.

      As for potential charity and sympathy for the monster, that also is quite unintended and vigorously undesired. My old poem “The Modern Prometheus” was very sympathetic to the creature, who was literally Frankenstein’s monster and a victim of the mad scientist’s ambition and the knee-jerk hatred of the Transylvanian villagers. I do not believe I’ve shown anything but contempt for the speaker of this poem – someone who demands the impossible and blames everyone for his dissatisfaction with life but himself, someone who is willing to inflict any indignity upon his own body to achieve a superficial alteration of his body. I would like to think my stepping into the poem as “the poet” who mocks the speaker as “living a lie” is an unambiguous statement of my lack of sympathy. “Captain Bligh.” Perhaps. But the reality of the final clone shows that I’m right and the deluded speaker is not.

      At any rate, you are entitled to your reading of my work, Margaret. And it’s certainly an intelligent one. And though it does not reflect my poetic intent, I greatly appreciate the thought you’ve put into this. Thank you.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Captcha loading...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.