This bitter sweet world—
if I had known
I wouldn’t have come.
But yet here I come
in this wide, wild world
clothed with the shadows of leopards.
I walk up
and move forward.
Last night
on the crucifixion of religion
fears hold me back.
Cries of owls in human flesh
hunting me;
alas, I can’t will myself to sleep.
Feasting in front of starving masses,
like the vultures,
like the vultures,
I am flying, looking for carcasses
to feed my lost self esteem.
I feed my soul from wasted life,
shuddering the long, long, lonely path
I tread
till death invites me
to its cold bed.
The Bitter-Sweet World and the Violence of Arrival
The opening lines — “This bitter sweet world / if I had known / I wouldn’t have come” — reject the sanitized narratives of arrival that dominate American mythology. Sammy does not pretend that migration is a clean escape from hardship. He knows that the world is already carved by violence long before one steps into it.
To be “clothed with the shadows of leopards” is to arrive marked by histories of predation — colonial, economic, racial. It is to walk into a nation that has perfected the art of appearing benevolent while feeding on the labor, land, and lives of others.
Sammy walks forward anyway. Not because the world is safe, but because life demands movement even when the ground is hostile. His arrival is not triumphant; it is sober, alert, and unillusioned.
Predation, Spectacle, and the Starving Masses
The poem’s central indictment — “Feasting in front of starving masses” — exposes the moral architecture of global capitalism. Sammy refuses to pretend that the United States is an exception. He sees the same pattern he saw across continents: abundance built on deprivation, wealth constructed on the backs of the hungry.
But he does something more courageous: he confesses his own entanglement.
“Like the vultures… I am flying looking for carcasses / To feed my lost self esteem.”
This is not self-condemnation; it is structural truth. In a world where survival is tied to consumption, even the oppressed are forced into the logic of the oppressor. The vulture is not only the corporation or the empire; it is anyone trying to survive inside a system that rewards predation.
Sammy names the obscenity of a world where luxury towers rise beside shelters, food is thrown away while children starve, and markets celebrate profits while workers bury their dead. “I feed my soul from wasted life” is not a metaphor. It is a global indictment.
Religion Crucified and the Insomnia of Conscience
“Last night on the crucifixion of religion” is a line that belongs in the canon of global dissent. Sammy has seen religion used as a weapon — to justify war, to silence the poor, to bless the powerful. He has also seen religion as a refuge for the oppressed, a source of dignity and resistance.
To speak of its crucifixion is to declare that religion has been betrayed by those who claim to defend it.
The insomnia that follows — “I can’t will myself to sleep” — is the insomnia of conscience. The “owls in human flesh” are not creatures of the night; they are the agents of violence who operate in daylight: police who kill with impunity, governments that bomb in the name of peace, corporations that starve nations while preaching charity, bureaucrats who sign policies that condemn millions to slow death.
Sammy refuses the comfort of sleep. He chooses to remain awake in a world that rewards blindness.
Death, Dignity, and Being Buried on Crutches
The poem’s final movement — “till death invites me / to its cold bed” — is unromantic and unflinching. Death is not a release; it is a cold witness to a life lived under weight.
The title, “Buried on Crutches,” is a political accusation.
To be buried on crutches is to die still wounded by systems that never allowed you to stand upright. It is to carry into the grave the evidence of a world that breaks people and then blames them for limping.
The crutches become testimony: this life bore burdens imposed by empire; this body carried injuries inflicted by inequality; this death is not natural — it is political.
Sammy refuses to let the world bury its victims without their evidence.
Conclusion
“Buried on Crutches” is a first poem on American soil that refuses assimilation into the myth of arrival. It is a global-South voice speaking from the Bronx, naming the world as it is: bitter-sweet, predatory, crucified, sleepless, and unjust.
Sammy does not separate the personal from the political. He does not pretend innocence. He does not hide behind abstraction.
He stands in the world as he found it — wide, wild, wounded — and tells the truth.
This poem is not merely a record of arrival; it is a moral stance. A refusal to sleep. A refusal to lie. A refusal to let the world bury its victims without their crutches beside them.