Poem: 'HERITAGE'

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

Also featured online at:
‘IT: INTERNATIONAL TIMES’
(24 August 2019)
http://internationaltimes.it/heritage/