Another fall back Friday poem from before 2005. A Princess

I am a princess

I don’t hide it

Every one knows

Though they see me differently

That man,

Over there drowned in his

Hip-hop style

That street-talking-no-class-having boy

“What’s up?” he says

I smile

He sees me as some ghettofied Nubian Princess

My waiter

The waiter that has claimed me while I dine here

That dickies-wearing-gang-style boy

Attempting an honest living

He sees me as a puta

When I refuse the tap water he places in front of me

A puta

To some men, even princesses are putas

As the customer

I own him

As a princess

I pardon him

That girl

The one who can’t control her dirty looks

The one with the cheap perfume and

Butterfly wing eyelashes

The one who tries to cover her foul insides with that

Elaborate

Covering. She tries

So hard and doesn’t know

That she too can be a princess

I smile her way

And I don’t care what she thinks

Of me

I know I am a princess