The Evolution of Species (draft)

Love me or leave me
but do not detest me
I am true to my calling
every contraption in the cellar
every trick up my sleeve
I have mastered for your pleasure
you want performance, so I give you
for I delight in entertainment
my shtick is one of three professions
that in Genesis evolved
farming first, mine the second,
Cain's homicide, placing third
than I think came prostitution

Legions of scholars and politicians
owe much to our ancient fellowship
Socrates, Freud and Darwin
especially Darwin whose disciples contend
that because man-sperm resembles wiggly fish
and man-blood in salinity resembles ocean
it follows, then, that fingers and toes evolved from fins
which would explain why once we lost our scales
we became susceptible to leprosy and itchiness

I'll do you better, than the evolutionists
hand me my trunk and high hat
watch me pull rabbits
I'll hold my breath underwater
longer than any fishy could survive the dry
but I won't cheat and call it religion
nor shall I dare to call it science
but what it is is what it is,
purely fog and mirrors
magic tricks like sawing pretty girls in two
and reassembling them anew
without transfusions nor need of stitches,
for life is art and art is trickery