SACRIFICE

You can't cash hope
like a cheque

(Obama did!)

Four seasons of hope
as singular currency
lie buried
beneath the bleak, grey
blistering cold of Syracuse

i believed
i could stand for more punishment
far greater than this shit-hole of
nature's wrath

but that was before 2009

four seasons of a mirage
is all i now hold
in these frozen hands
on this blizzardy wintery morning

'thrive' stands superior to 'survive'
how could i embrace the former
when my heart,
torn between Afrika and America
bled always for a return

Yet for this survival
for this sacrifice of self and other
i lost both future and past
precious inheritance
irreplaceable legacy
swept away by the power to read

how 'disempowering!'

what then, is sacrifice
when it consumes us in its wake
our unbeing there at the end of it all
when the villagers dance and women ululate?

what is sacrifice?

© May 2011