The arrogance of hope

Sabreen Sudan-Jolley
Sabreen Speaks

sabreenspeaks96@gmail.com

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47106/4rwj.11.11110190

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This poem explores the depths of the black experience. It expresses the connection between all things and how we have ultimate control if we understand the powers we possess; as above, so below. We are inherently fighters, warriors and creators. Thee creators. In the same breath it talks, satirically, about the arrogance of hope; the hope of possibly changing these things we face without first looking to the source... within.

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The trees don’t sway the same no mo’
They have sort of a lilt in their song, an altar of hip joint swaying in their dance. 

A melancholy hmmmm in their score.
They kind of creep to move now days. 

But there is an all too familiar reaching of limbs looking to hold tightly enough to wring 

and crush and rinse any form of hue in sight. 

Some things stay the same; some things repeat like hymnals long enough to remember that there just might be hope here 

The grass aint green over there no more, but it is here, so I hide in her hopes cause’ I know that there 

is promise here 

Though death lingers in the air, the arrogance of hope still lives in my heart knowing the spirit lives on 

And if I can keep it hopeful and prayerful then maybe I can leave my door without the possibility of 

being swallowed in the crypt of circumstance because shit happens. 

The air don’t pull through my lungs with power no more I gotta breathe quietly now a days (inhaling and exhaling deeply but quietly) 

I have to keep my distance lest I be swallowed in the agenda, but I’m too wise for that, I am too fat back and chitins’ for that.
I’m too whip and castrate for that. I’m too black for that. 

I’m too familiar with overcoming to let something so trivial yet so powerful consume my being like 

that 

We are the salt of the earth and the bearers of hope unborn dying And living
And dying
And breathing 

But dying so
My canal don’t drip the same no mo’

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She has sort of a drainage from all the crying she has done. 

Watching the world come to a halt and the air turn sour like strange fruit at the tip of an infectious 

agent’s barrel. 

This world aint gone continue the same no more.
We’ll only be less sensitive to touch... more sensitive to touch... 

screens are going to divide us where we’ll have more face time and less time to face books and 

learn that this world aint the same no more. 

We’ll only be less sensitive to touch... more sensitive to touch... 

screens are going to divide us where we’ll have more face time and less time to face books and learn that this world aint the same no more. 

Taste the air... don’t it taste like caution? 

The trees are not going to sway the same any more
They’re going to have sort of a lilt in their song, a tik-tok in hip joint swaying in their dance. 

A melancholy hmmmm in their score, but there is some hope... some-wear it on their face to see their loved ones. 

Don’t’ touch that! Don’t run there! Don’t breathe too hard! You might find yourself eaten by the arrogance of hope 

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