Background: Today’s post is, in that phrase beloved by Radio DJs, “a blast from the past”. It’s nearing the 23rd anniversary of the poem’s existence and the lines still roll on the tongue, to use another cliche, “as good as new”. And now, a blog post via my dad, for the menfolk!

It hangs daintily
Yet in all density
On every inch of the face
Except at the functionaries
An impregnable shrubbery
A forest of hair
Jet black and glossy.

Many consider it a mark
An insignia of non-conformity
A protestation against the norm
Foisted on all by a few
Consciously or inadvertently
An archetype of political dissent
Either of Fidel or Biafran order

Yet fidelity must be maintained
In the cultivation of it
Not to become deciduous
A Brother Jero with a staff
And a tangled hair to match
Prophesying to the consternation
Of a slumbered dogmatic orthodoxy
Or yet a socio-mental rebel
Of incurable desultory disposition
An unconfined inmate of this open sanitarium

For what man if none
Would celebrate his head on his face
In all its density
Yet of them none he is
For he is apolitical
In ideology he has no belief
Too irreligious to venture apocalypse
And a sociable gentleman he is

Yet this façade of deception
(A familiar mask that belies
The unknown face of a stranger)
Stands him out of the crowd
Effusion of noble comportment
Admirable and trustworthy

Let men grow beard and flaunt it
For this is the duty of all men
Plain face is for women
For their rouge, cake and powder
For a man without beard is a she-man
A treacherous, timid “woe-man”.

—November 26, 1989