HERITAGE

old men with white beards

stand on podiums, pontificating,

pay attention, we can benefit from

their wealth of life-experience

and accumulated learning,

old white men with beards

lecture interminably, listen,

we are fortunate they deign

to gift us with their wisdom,

tell us how to think and behave,

old white men with white beards and

portly waistlines, poets, professors

curators and clerics, novelists,

critics, politicians and historians

pause for power-point punchline

punctuation and dramatic effect

as we hang on their every word,

these venerable old custodians of

whiskery white male cultural values

fixed ideas, intractable philosophies

and academic elitism

everything we reject

and don’t need to learn,

listen, I’ll tell you

how to dance in sunshine

 
 
Andrew Darlington

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By Andrew Darlington

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5 Responses to HERITAGE

    1. Yes!

      Comment by Mike McNamara on 1 September, 2019 at 11:07 am
    2. Thanks Mike, your appreciation is appreciated…

      Comment by Andrew Darlington on 11 September, 2019 at 7:15 pm
    3. Grand stuff, Andrew! Jesse

      Comment by Jesse Glass on 14 October, 2021 at 1:25 am
    4. Thanks very much for the positive responses, which are very much appreciated.
      With the acceleration of recent events, I get an increasing feeling of the precariousness of things. There’s a sense in which we ride a generational raft, surfing decades in a kind of collective togetherness, those we interact with directly, and those whose lives we brush against in brief virtual ways, we’re all a part of that same turbulent tsunami of time-space, we share the same trip through the same span of years, when one of us falls off that imaginary raft, we lose molecules of our own being too, and we feel pangs of loss, there are rocks ahead, the raft will founder, so we must cherish one another, each of us, every last one of us, and value this uniqueness while we can, for this pulse is a one-off…
      Life Is Groovy -Andy-

      Comment by Andrew Darlington on 14 October, 2021 at 7:51 pm
    5. Andy, yes with covid, climate change, wars, and incipient wars (one of which may be developing in my back yard with the China-Taiwan and other provocations), and wide-spread political insanity, I certainly understand the concern you express, and I do indeed value your friendship whatever the future might bring. Jesse

      Comment by Jesse Glass on 15 October, 2021 at 3:24 am

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