Living In The Past

Don’t go telling me this is the year 2007,
I’m not ready for living in a world post-9/11.

For me, the clock stopped ticking forty years past,
And I’m keeping the banners from then flying on the mast.

Rip van Winkle is peanuts next to me,
I follow the thought-patterns of decades ago to a T.

If you think like me, I call you progressive,
And if you don’t, then you’re a reactionary, a regressive.

It’s still the world to which was born Rosa Parks,
The world when radical and untried were the ideas of Karl Marx,

The world where everything could be explained by people’s color,
And all the evil things were the cries of those living in squalor.

I’m a taboo-breaker, fighting all forms of oppression,
Defending women from patriarchal suppression,

Because, we all know, ever looms the threat of the Inquisition.
“Women in the Muslim world”? Stop your racist condescension!

I remember what fun I had back in the day,
When I asked hard questions of that tyrant LBJ,

And now I’ve come to relive that history book’s page,
And take part in a demonstration where everyone’s my age.

“Islamic supremacism”? “Rise of the Caliphate”?
You vile hatemonger! You purveyor of race-hate!

It’s all about the grievances, the brown people’s lament,

And the real danger is the one to our environment.

I have the courage, I have the power,
To take on the primitive Bible a short shower.

Fighting for freedom of speech, liberty of expression.
But I’m sensitive toward the “other” of Arabian desert persuasion.

Tomorrow belongs to me,

Progressive radical that I be,

Or maybe not—my gray-haired cheeks have never felt

The kiss of a child, for I was so concerned that the planet would melt.

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Credits: zombie, Age of Hooper and Urban Infidel (1, 2), for the demonstration photos; Midwest Conservative Journal and a commenter on The Anchoress whose memory escapes me, for the last two, respectively.