The audacity of hope… to be black and president of these united states of white folks, where blacks and ethnic non-whites crouch on the margins of carpeted dancehalls praying for a song… the audacity of a flag of fifty white fire flies fluttering nonchalantly above the grave of my sires, blue placid Atlantic, turquoise shards of broken dreams and unsuspecting lives callously shattered at break of dawn – eternally spumed Atlantic, Africa’s epic morgue, salt-bleached bones of those strangled amidst the sardined lot, those brave ones who had wrestled against Stygian odds, dared to resist and thus keep their dignity and ours intact – fetid crime against humanity, blue-eyed boor who insists the middle-passage was a peaceful pact between good-natured pimps and calculating johns for the common good; kinsmen both, I am suspended beneath autumn twigs, poised for an escape route back to where it all began… 11/21/10 By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.