This Poem is for the John Bunns

In a black neighborhood

Stands a black boy.

He may have a face but that never matters.

He looks up at the stars.

Perhaps noticing how they need darkness to sparkle.

He lives in a crime-filled neighborhood 

Bursting with broken homes

That seem to hide the possibilities.

He wants to be something when he grows up

But that something is only on TV.

Blue and red lights parade around his neighborhood as usual

The badge has a sinister flicker in its eyes

A blink that transforms black boys into men.

The black boy can share his sad story.

Perhaps speak of how he was fostered in violence

And marinated in trauma.

But his story is too similar to the other black boys.

Tired of black tribulation, they change his chapter with a sentence.

They tattoo false truths all over his adolescent body.

They make a cage his new address.

I suppose the black boy wonders if he’s even a black boy at all.

Maybe he is the animal they insinuate him to be.

Or maybe those two things are interchangeable.

If I could paint this story

I’d paint you blacker, black boy

Give you a bag to carry all that pain

And the anger that comes with it.

I would paint you a face they can’t ignore.

With lips bigger than badges

And a nose as wide as sunsets.

I’d make your eyes a pair of stars

So you don’t have to stare at what you could never touch.

You can be, black boy.

You can be.