Natural Childbirth is a Must

Think of Zeus.
First it starts as a headache,
as if his brain is a fetus trapped in his skull.
Wombs, for the most part, survive birth-trauma.
Eggs do not. The real story (no one told)
climaxes with Athena
cooing among the shards of her father's skull,
something grey and bloody leaking through her hands.

You can paste a skull back together again
if you are gods. You can stuff
anything that happens to be lying around
into the skull cavity and the result will walk.
But despite the semantics of the word,
there are limits to omnipotence.

The official story is that she didn't have a childhood.
But in point of fact the intellect will feed on anything;
and the cynical and uncaring gods laughed
when they watched her cling to his chest like a leech,
cute as a button with teeth,
the gore dripping onto the thick rug
as he shuffled back and forth.
(He giggled vacantly
whenever he touched something metallic)

Years later,
stories circulate of a demented rabbit
vainly hopping up under a woman's dress
or a divine idiot raping a scarecrow.
"He moves in mysterious ways,"
peasants chortle. Meanwhile gods die
under peculiar circumstances: A flayed Pan found
hours before Athena wears her new fur; Poseidon
drowned; Hades
buried alive; Aphrodite...
details are sketchy.

Centuries pass and we don't hear much
except for occasional hints: a god
who sires himself on his virgin mother
(under suspicious circumstances),
a cosmos haunted by a holy ghost
(whose? we wonder).
Meanwhile, desperately secular,
we use lightning to run egg-beaters
and hope for the best.