Universal Laws

"There comes a time when silence is betrayal." 
                       - Martin Luther King, Jr.


Not to belittle your pain, my pain,
but none of this is even original 
anymore: the world (suddenly, again) 
a window-box sprouting every 
variety of that noxious flower  

called despot. Astounding how so many 
come from humble beginnings (clerk, 
schoolteacher, cobbler, cook), then 
turn. What was it: abuse in childhood,
beatings from alcoholic fathers, 

abandonment by their mothers? They wore 
a sense of wounded humanity as if it were  
a scar inflicted on no one else but them, ever. 
After seizing power, some became so paranoid 
they hired lookalikes, or had body doubles 

surgically altered. Not a morsel passed 
their lips until food tasters swallowed first, 
without falling down dead. As history does, it runs 
its course, including punishing years of massacre, 
purge, brutal torture. When history catches up 

to them, it's astounding, too, how terrible 
yet ordinary they look in those final closeups. 
Rotting teeth, ashen thumbprint of hair above 
the lips, bloodshot eyes; their bodies hung 
upside down, or pressed into a wall by bullets.