Freaky Eyes

Accomplice (a poem on my father’s prejudice)

He chose his lies carefully
unveiled me, screamed into my memory
in a thousand dirty voices
cramming his communion wafer
he hated all kinds of people
and murdered them in my head.

Was this his endowment
to the World?
Yet another addition
to the insidious bastions
of maniacal persecution?

Was this all he could add -
a violation of my horizons
a strange justice ripping my soul
making me wish to be
or worship the dead?

I would rather be affixed
to the name of someone else, anyone
but instead I was trapped alone
inside a jagged white lie
choking on the stench of prejudice;
the discounted souls he left behind –
and one of them was mine

I would rather be an accomplice
to something better, something
honest, instead of this cold
sickening scheme - someone else’s
cancer incubated in an invisible me.

“If you’re gonna fall”, he scorched,
bellowing words like flame
“do it in a damn straight line!”

My soul lost its voice on every page of this.
If I fall in line, what would that make me?

© Seven, 1997, 2009