I often contemplate maggots—
How they can clean 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 pie in sight.
Nada más que cucarachas muertas.
But, 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?
Say it WITH me:
“I am a revolutionary.”
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,
and false prophets are
on TV after profits
wile black and brown
mothers struggle to feed
kids & 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
darker poors.
It's the land of the free—
to buy—
unless you were banned
from straying outside red lines.
They kill who they can't enslave.
to save copper and waive
the fourht to stop her,
so she'll never be free—
that dream's reserved
for sheep
counting dimes in a bag to stay 'sleep.
They CHASE away the red stars
with stars and bars in clown cars
driven by green y gringos
traía 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.
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 and indigenous.
No, I am not feeling this.
I know 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 all scream:
I am a revolutionary!