The Sugar People:
We are here because of sugar.
We made the world taste sweet.
The ingredient was our ancestor's sweat.
We are here.
What is sweet about it?
The world powers fed sugar showers
mixed cocktails of our sorrow
to the point where today
Black people
White people
are still sugar high.
Give us something, anything
to make this sorrow go away
because we're right next to each other
and we still feel lonely
disconnected from each other
severed from our ancestral land
despondent.
Our heights are rooted in low earth
that gives way to flood waters in
New Orleans
Jimani
waters that bring dengue
and disease.
we fear and respect our Mother, water,
the fertile creation force,
Pain and All
she is our mother
She cleanses us
from a sorrow that swallows.
Waters drown it out loud
and surrender straight into her.
Mother
make sense of this sugar sorrow.
Saliva push back the yearning for
the sweet.
Sugar cane, stand up straight and take me to the sun.
