Old 'White' Men, Part Ii
...Poe brought us detectives on the page,
and creepy tales that defy age,
Melville’s whale, in fine fashion,
taught us the danger of obsession.
Twain brought humor and jumping frogs,
dialect, humor, and raft logs,
while Hawthorne peered into the soul
and saw the contradictions unfold.
Can’t forget the Romans and Greeks,
creators of drama, philosophy,
who warned us of defying fate,
and showed the depths of a man’s rage,
taught us how to study our lives,
and ask how best a man survives,
wrote the histories of their time,
giving us an unbroken line.
Dealing with the very same flaws
that to this day cause flapping jaws.
And all of this is just the prose,
not the folks who made poetry flow,
like Frost, Longfellow, Tennyson,
Virgil, Coleridge, and Milton.
The war in heaven, by Milton made,
Tennyson’s immortal light brigade,
Virgil’s tale of Aeneas’ lost,
striving on a sea wind-tossed,
Albatrosses hung by the neck,
Evangeline dying heart-sick,
even the road less traveled by
came from a man pale to the eye,
In truth, it seems our very words
were first forged by these men in turn,
to ignore twenty-five hundred years
of stories, studies, joys, and fears,
because the writers had light skin…
I don’t even know where to begin!
You’d be better off just growing up,
Listen to those who’ve seen enough
to know that wisdom has no shade,
that it’s by truth and trial made,
that it’s justifiably insane,
to reject it based on the claim
that if they do not share your hide,
they cannot speak to you inside.
Such nonsense you cannot afford,
not when it closes useful doors,
better to start cracking books again,
and get to reading those old ‘white’ men.
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