Blinded by the dim light, I sniffle and watch the curtain move. The flowers are dead, their petals mostly on the floor. Even if the most beautiful women in the world walked through my bedroom door wanting to do anything I had on my mind, I'd just roll over and go to sleep, hoping I wouldn't have to tell them to leave - that they would figure it out on their own.

I'd be happy I cleaned the room and maybe wonder as they left if one would stay behind, part of me wanting to be tempted. But I've been sick before. I know how useless it is to want with no energy to enjoy. It makes being sick even sicker.

Maybe the phone would ring and the love of my life would be on the other end. She'd tell me that she misses me and quiz me about what I've been up to. I'd almost tell her that I wish she was here, but realize there'd be nothing good in that. I think we've gotten stuck in what we're used to from each other, so I've grown comfortable fantasizing about things I'm resigned I'll never have.

Sometimes it sucks being in love. Like laying in bed at the hospital - and finding out they're going to have to take your big toe, or your foot, or even your leg. Life won't be the same, but it's better than dying. Life won't be the same - and sometimes living feels like too much trying.

So the bedroom door is closed, and its only me in here. The sun is playing hide and seek and I'll fall asleep before I count twelve hours worth of numbers. And somewhere in a bed I've laid in before, my lover is drowning in her dreams, no different than she'd do if she were here.

It's midnight now. There's some humming somewhere outside. There's some creaking in the walls and in the attic. The computer fan is the closest sound to me. The heat just came on and the curtain's moving again. Tomorrow's not so far away - I should close my eyes soon.

Cleveland, Ohio, April 5, 1968

Robert F. Kennedy
Cleveland City Club
April 5, 1968

This Web version of this speech was made for the convenience of readers and researchers. It was produced from a press release for the speech, which can be found in Robert F. Kennedy's Senate Speech Files.

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by his assassin’s bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we known what must be done. “When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our bothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember – even if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek – as we do – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Link

flower
In the thick dark
air of night
My head rests comfortably
upon the pillow of youth’s memories
Dreaming of love
and dressing you in its sentiment
conjured by
Familiar rhythms and melodies
My love being a reality which still dreams
Resigned to inhale those rare scents
of an imagination that would bathe you in its heart-warming incense
And see you in the glow of its candlelight
Though I know your undressed beauty
And marry myself to you with every