The new crop of good dudes
is sitting in the summer cafe
talking nerdcore and geekery
while struggling with beards
that, as the old song says,
have all grown longer overnight.

Rising from those beards:
the perennial incense,
the fuming intoxication of patriarchy.

The dudes know that smell
but this unfamiliar feeling
of safety, the sense that the newly hip beards
give them cover?  The rationalization
that their ethics are slipping but it’s OK,
they’re good dudes
and they vow they will get back
to the struggle
tomorrow?

It’s new to them,
but they’re getting used to it —
they ogle baristas and customers
as secretly as they can,
thinking it’s easily hidden —

fooling themselves,
if no one else.