Listen (Metamorphosis)

LISTEN (METAMORPHOSIS)

Urban-ghetto landscapes scraped me early in my youth
Mama kissing those wound with
Supreme loving
But there I was again
Off and running
Ducking crooked cops
Sworn to put a stop
To young hard rocks like me
Sporting our caps cocked
Deep to the right
Creep through the night
Stomachs uptight
Seeing with no sight
Blind, in other words
Lifestyle absurd
“GD ‘til the world blow up”
Was our plighted word
Fighting in herds
And never landing a solid punch
Systematically subjugated
In Chi-Town
Segregated
Never knew other races ‘til a visit
To the Audey Home
Butt-naked and dethroned from our project zone
And Saint Charles could not sanctify
Or provide
The fear of god
Times of living hard left too many battle scars
Not all times visible
We lived no principles
Simple ghetto motto:
“Get that money nigga”
So the counselors figured
We’d never stand and deliver
Blew the brothers up with potatoes and liver
Shivering in summer
Sweating in winter
A lifetime furlough from realness
Is what we knew
Returned to the street
Burning envious heat
Every brother we meet
Automatically suspect
Before automatic gats
And technology of death
Our paths were chosen to keep us frozen
Stuck on stupid
Man
We’d bum rush cupid
No love we exhibited
That shit was prohibited
Only visits off the block
Were excursions to the Loop
Picking pockets for loot
Feathered hands to salute
Tripping over vital points
We landed in the joints
“Bottom of the World Ma”
As if by appointment
Learning disappointment when girls broke bad
Never knowing what we had
We were on a mad dash
Cash ruled the subject
We knew no economics
Trapped by reaganomics
Shit became hectic
Life so frantic
Narcotics became medicine
Trees our herbal remedy clearly defined insanity
Vanity Fair in Fox Brothers’ suits
Tailor-made for our pursuit
Of the American nightmare
Shooting dice in stairways burning out days
Dazed in this maze to old folk amazement
Blood on the pavement from brother I ran with
Young sisters having shorties
And the parents never planned
The seed was conceive to Roger Troutman’s
“I Wanna Be Your Man”
But kid what’d no man
He a dysfunctional boy
His father he never knew
So ‘ol girl was his toy
How are you to be responsible
When your ability to respond
Had never been cultivated?
Educative measures designed to bury our greatest treasures
And an entire childhood spent
Desperately trying to recover it
Discover this
Enter the Phoenix
Precious Black Jewels we found in the dismal crypts
Osiris-Jesus mix
Proving wrong this whole establishment
Locked in this cell with nothing but books to read
Breaking down every word of the Chairman’s Creed
My Soul began to bleed
From the Bible to the Qur’an
History and archaeology
My self started rising like Kilimanjaro
Over African plains
The frame in my mind I shattered
Then constructed one anew
Learning who’s who
In regards to who am I
Questioning why so many had to die
So I write and I read
I write and I read
I write and I read
I Right and I Bleed
Words
Being emitted from this punctured soul
Each vibration awakening you to let your story be told
Don’t let your Blackened Blues ‘cause you to misconstrue
Your affinity to the
RED BLACK AND GREEN
Or deferred dreams drowning in spoiled American cream
Niggativity holding us down like gravity
It takes the Divine in you to restore your sanity
Peace to Larry
Chief Malik
And all the voices that I speak
Slain soldiers
Warriors that never were
In all these urban streets