Black people rule! Because all around,
they're in charge of everything. Oprah,
Tyra, Tiger, Obama, Kanye, even Beyonce.
They're black, they're proud, they're here to stay.
I'm neither one, but I don't want to go!
They have street smarts. That means common sense,
plus coolness. All this pasty nerd fool knows
is a few stupid books, books about faggoty things,
but there are more streets than books! And
I live on a street too! So what's the deal?
And they can use the N-Word.
I covet them and their vital, juicy culture
(he says, fangs gleaming in the moonlight—I'm sorry!).
But I wouldn't want to be the victim of black-on-black violence.
I heard that's almost as big a problem
as black-on-non-black violence, you know?
I'm upset at my vocational–school students downtown,
who text in class and don't seem to pay attention,
who write business letters in bold scattered CaPiTaL LtRs.
What kind of role models are they supposed to be?
If they're so street-smart, why aren't they famous?
Sun of the present disarray,
teach us the pleasures of the slim wallet squinting for bills,
the hot round pocket ghost-pregnant with pennies.
Bring your people to the dollar menu, the budgetary board.
Face your other children, no, by the seesaw, stare them in the eyes,
and bloody their lips with the rebounding plank of wisdom.
Shine and blind until they taste themselves.
They know. They know where the iterations lead,
the ceaseless rash as you chafe against the coarse sky canvas.
They call you yellow, a coward.
Why do you drink all the water from the reservoir?
Why do you hide behind pillow forts of clouds?
Why do the golden arches you describe seem reconstituted, processed?
Come back and fight like a man.
I apologize. My tone collapses in anger.
My words' angular momentum skids and wavers.
I know familiarity should bring not contempt but shame.
Save my face and my name beneath you. And some fries.
Born in Flint, MI, raised in the Detroit area, and ripening in California since the fall of 1992, John F. Buckley lives and works in Orange County with his wife, teaching at local colleges and chasing the poetic dragon.
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