Progeny Of 21st Century 4.28.2009 Poem by Margaret Alice

Oh dear, I’m the victim of patrocliny,
I inherited all my father’s shortcomings,
his genius for creating insufferable chaos
and changing every clean-up session into
a worsening of the situation

His fear of all things mechanic that
communicates itself without us lifting
a finger, the sewing machines in domestic
science class immediately seized when I
appeared; I couldn’t master a computer

Until a blind typist taught me, only she had
an inkling of my staggering degree of stupidity
whereas experts were oblivious of and
impervious to requests to explain really
slowly; she knew about

The scared little alien hanging from the rafters
in my head, I find ATM’s just as confusing as he
does, we hate it when cleaners insist on deranging
us while we’re working, we both get lost while
driving when taking a wrong turn

At least I have devices in place to help me, being
the progeny of the 21st century, but my poor dad
had to help himself all those years ago
when we were small…

Patrocliny - noun: Inheritance of traits primarily from the father
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