By Jacob Saenz
As a boy I bicycled the block
w/a brown mop top falling
into a tail bleached blond,
gold-like under golden light,
like colors of Noble Knights
’banging on corners, unconcerned
w/the colors I bore—a shorty
too small to war with, too brown
to be down for the block.
White Knights became brown
Kings still showing black & gold
on corners now crowned,
the block a branch branded
w/la corona graffitied on
garage doors by the pawns.
As a teen, I could’ve beamed
the crown, walked in w/out
the beat down custom,
warred w/my cousin
who claimed Two-Six,
the set on the next block
decked in black & beige.
But I preferred games to gangs,
books to crooks wearing hats
crooked to the left or right
fighting for a plot, a block
to spot & mark w/blood
of boys who knew no better
way to grow up than throw up
the crown & be down for whatever.
Source: Poetry (August 2010)
Poet Bio
More By This Poet
Holding Court
Today I became King
of the Court w/out a diamond-
encrusted crown thrust upon
my sweaty head. Instead
my markings of royalty
were the t-shirt draping
my body like a robe soaked
in champagne & the pain
in my right knee — a sign
of a battle...
More Poems about Social Commentaries
From the Sky
When I die,
bury me in the sky—
no one is fighting over it.
Children are playing soccer
with empty bomb shells
(from the sky I can see them).
A grandmother is baking
her Eid makroota and mamoul
(from the sky I can taste them).
Teens are writing love...
Poem with Human Intelligence
This century is younger than me.
It dresses itself
in an overlong coat of Enlightenment thinking
despite the disappearing winter.
It twirls the light-up fidget spinner
won from the carnival of oil economies.
In this century, chatbots write poems
where starlings wander from their murmuration
into the denim-thick...