O masks and metamorphoses of Ahab, Native Son <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />The icy evil that struck his father down <br />and ravished his mother into madness <br />trapped him in violence of a punished self <br />struggling to break free. <br /> <br />As Home Boy, as Dee-troit Red, <br />he fled his name, became the quarry of <br />his own obsessed pursuit. <br /> <br />He conked his hair and Lindy-hopped, <br />zoot-suited jiver, swinging those chicks <br />in the hot rose and reefer glow. <br /> <br />His injured childhood bullied him. <br />He skirmished in the Upas trees <br />and cannibal flowers of the American Dream-- <br /> <br />but could not hurt the enemy <br />powered against him there.<br /><br />Robert Hayden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/el-hajj-malik-el-shabazz-malcolm-x/
