El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)

 O masks and metamorphoses of Ahab, Native Son

I

The icy evil that struck his father down
and ravished his mother into madness
trapped him in violence of a punished self
struggling to break free.


As Home Boy, as Dee-troit Red,
he fled his name, became the quarry of
his own obsessed pursuit.


He conked his hair and Lindy-hopped,
zoot-suited jiver, swinging those chicks
in the hot rose and reefer glow.


His injured childhood bullied him.

He skirmished in the Upas trees
and cannibal flowers of the American Dream--

but could not hurt the enemy
powered against him there.

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