In popular culture parents love their offspring
-'unconditionally' so the cliche runs.
When the young are cute, easily bent
into submission, they are easy to praise.
The narcissism behind sentiment seems safe.
But when children reason they see
how promise and reality keep separate company.
Then, more than ever, parents
want theirs to only anger in the house
to keep the peace, the better for the children
to sustain the illusion that the parents
have not marked down the children's future,
any more than their own hopes were squashed.
Meanwhile shared affection strains
in mutuality-each family member strives
to agree with what they deeply dislike.
This gets characterized, piously,
as something between familial self sacrifice
and a stale repetitive co-dependency.
At worst it is an unending grudge match
between zombies who don't know how to die.
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