I often contemplate maggots—
How they cleans a wound,
and life can look like death at first
when everyone eats.
And when I think about my future,
I can't see a white picket fence
Or two point five kids
Or a wife and dog and apple pie.
That white fence and its broken promises
Haunt me like a specter in the night.
No wife. No kids.
Not a maggot in sight.
Nada más que cucarachas muertas.
I don't want to run the race
If winning is an option.
Look back and see what could have been—
Remember all the losses.
So, if history rhymes,
Then this time,
Say it with me:
Why did they shoot Martin?
Why did they shoot Malcolm?
Why did they shoot Fred?
Why do I feel that if I could make a difference
I'd already be dead?
The revolution needs bread.
Where can we find it?
There is no leader to be found
but where the revolution sounds.
Say it with me:
“I am a revolutionary.”
They CHASE away the red stars
With stars and bars
in clown cars
Driven by green y gringos
Slinging drugs into slums
Of techni-colored dreamcoats.
Toss em all in prison
listenin' to the lie
of the Blackrock crook
And his hook
bout a little red book—
While we fund cartels;
To make the freedmen dead.
Not a tear'll be shed
In the land of red, white, n blue
when Blackwater puts a bullet in the back of your head.
It seems old tales
Won't be heeded.
A new book's needed.
The church of Islam freed it,
but a church is a church,
so why are false prophets
on TV repeated for profits
Like their coffers' depleted?
Don't tell me they need it.
When black and brown
Mothers struggle to feed
Kids while dads concede
To plead guilty to crimes
They never did because
The rich succeeded
In making poor whites secede
To have their status guaranteed
Just above the floor reserved for
Black and brown poors.
How's that working out?
If the masters love your race,
and are saving you space,
then why are you
struggling to save face
like a mouse in the rat race.
The Land of the free—
To buy— unless
You're a guy who was banned by the fed
From straying outside of the red lines.
The man kills who they can't enslave
To save copper and waive
The fourth to stop her,
So she'll never be free,
Never be safe,
That dream is reserved
For the sheep counting
A dime bag to stay asleep.
So watch your back
when you point to the terror we fund
Abundant with death,
Cops, oil and meth—
Don't hold your breath for justice
We say “Never forget.”
Even as we kill
The indigent indigenous.
Know I am not feeling this
No, the feds are stealing this.
The land, the songs, the lives
with words and knives
forced sterilizations on reservations—
and gator merchandise.
So when do we say enough is enough?
When will we hear the dead,
And sing:
Freedom won't ring,
Til we scream:
I am a revolutionary.