The Last Neanderthal's Love Song

Fourth installment of a set of children's poems I wrote a dozen years ago.

The Last Neanderthal's Love Song

O ancestors! Please hear my cry.
I'm eighteen summers old.
I need a wife, but evolution's
Left me in the cold.

I'm the last Neanderthal.
I have some woman friends—
Nice-looking, others tell me—but
They're Homo sapiens.

I'd like to meet a girl like Mom
With a rich potato form.
These sapiens are willowy;
They don't look very warm.

A woman looks her best, I think,
With low, protruding brow,
But the female forehead fashion
Is high and flat right now.

A lady's lower jaw should sink
Delicately in.
Beneath their lips, these girls have got
A pointy, prickly "chin."

A sideways egg's the pretty shape
That suits a female skull.
But modern girls have heads as round
As the moon does when it's full.

Alas, O ancestors! Alas,
Our race will not survive.
I'll never wed, and I'm the last
Neanderthal alive.

Comments

[Bruno Navasky]

O, the tragedy! Your best yet.

[Chris Duffy]

I fondly remember the Neanderthal one. AND the fly. But Nother Dog is the best.

[Diana]

Very nice.
My only question is, what are the chances that an old-world Neanderthal would know what a potato was?

[Tom Malmin]

Don't know much about prehistory.
Don't know much of anthropology.
Can't remember all those books I read.
And can't remember what the teachers said.
But I do know that I liked your poem.
And I know that if you wrote some more,
What a colorful world this would be.

Seriously, though, your poem put me in a good mood.

[Brian Yates]

an instant classic. Straight out of Gilbert and Sullivan.