It took the killing of Dr. King to waken me
To the fact that even my dad could be a bigot.
It took the murder of Bobby Kennedy to teach me
That even a lawyer can be blind to justice.
These deaths were not just emotional --
They closed roads to me surely as a roadblock,
And guided me to reject surface smiles,
But to seek unspoken truths hidden herkos odonton,
Behind the hedge of the grinning teeth.
The love of my life, or so I thought,
Took her own life and I feared I'd join her.
I gave up part of myself to endure -- a part I thought
I could not do without -- but I recognized
That she only proved to me my own mortality.
My mom died of cancer -- it hit me hard,
Not because I could not live without her,
But that her death left a sense of failure
Impossible to rectify -- and made worse
By the series of miraculous synchronisms
Which surrounded our errands setting up her funeral,
And assured me my deficiency survived her passing.
Finally, my dad, leaving on Easter, took with him
All my desires for material gains, and, it seems,
My ability to court favors from strangers:
My salesmanship turned to dissonant prattle
In my need to seek the mantle I had failed to assume.
