A Different Mirror (Explicit)

Let me tell you all a story

I'd like you all to

Take a walk alongside

Take a look at reality

Alternate reality

Your history

A Different Mirror

Am I my father's son

Am I my forefathers son

When his poor daughter

W***e out of slums

My instrument

My heartbeat

My drum

Was stole

In the pits of a ship

As I squint for the sun

A heavy lash

Traveled

Hit my body mass

Split it into half

Cutting like

A razors edge or glass

So I laugh

Gotta be a dream

To be unfree

Starved hungry

D**g by a chain

Called ugly

Only my scars love me

Only the stars far from me

Charred by the tar

On a branch where they hung me

Burned through the blood

And the bone

As my soul rose

Landed in the stomach

Of my woman

Soon to be a mother

Snuck out of the slave quarters

Saw me sway beneath the moon

Raped so many times

That she was thought to

Have a barren womb

Haunted by the nightmares

I return in her dreams

9 months in the fields

No maternity leave

Traveled out the birthing channel

Minutes after I was born

Overseers came to

Snatch me

Right out of my mothers arms

Blood stains splattered on

Her tattered clothes

Weakened by the labor

She gets up to follow after slow

Crying screaming no

But I was sold

Worked hard until my death

And in that final breath

My soul left

And this curse lasts for centuries

If you've forgotten

Read your shirt tag

What percent is cotton

Beneath the stars

And calloused hands from

Working in the yard

They said they freed my people

Yet we still work on the farm

Several generations past

Emancipations gone

I moved off to the North

And volunteered to fight a war

The same strain of DNA

That slaved away

Is running through the swollen veins

Of he who joined the draft

To fight the German state

And as I held my rifle

And my Bible

Up against my rivals

Crawling under jagged wire

Tired

Prayed for my survival

Tapped the filter

Lit my cigarette

Frozen to the bone

Beneath the uniform

Yet dripping sweat

Beads under the army greens

With patches on the sleeves

Lying in a trench

I hope I'm catching no disease

After fighting for this country's

Freedom over seas

I return to burning crosses

Fire hoses and police

It was cool for me to risk my life

To fight the Reich

And go and shoot

But I can't feed my pregnant wife

Or go inside

The voting booth

So I

Break bricks

Break dishes

Shoot dice

Sip Sherry

Snort girl

Shot some boy boy twice

Caught wind

Of a quick come up

Jewelry store heist

Said they need a gun man

To watch his back on Thursday night

I said all right

With that hunger in my eyes

A baby on the way

My woman's strong

But still she cries

So the plans devised

Meet on Wednesday to go over this

Life is such a gamble

With no poker chips

Leave the plotting meeting

Stop to call my woman on the pay phone

9 months she's pregnant

Swollen feet but she don't stay home

Working 'cross the tracks

Where don't know Blacks live at

Black child in Jeopardy

From cleaning White baby's cracks

Hello

I just got up in something dangerous

She says if it'll get us out of poverty

She'll pray for us

She clutches on our baby

I hang up and walk into a store

Bump into a cop

While walking in

He's walking out the door

Pulled out his baton

His hand is on his holster

And the trigger

Swung and split my head

And said

You watch where you're going

N***a

Blood running down my face

Neck and back

I couldn't help but react

Smacked the pistol out his hand

Punched him in his face until it bled

Choked him by the throat

Until his eyes rolled back into his head

Before he died he struggled

Reaching out to get his gun

So inspire by it

I ain't even think to run

As the sirens sounded

I walked down the block

To catch a breath

A dozen cops surrounded

As I lit another cigarette

I yelled

I fought your war

To prove that I'm a man

They beat me 'til I died

But after cuffing up my broken hands

My soul rose

And landed in the stomach of my woman

As she knelt upon another

Pearly white floor humming

The comfort of this country

Has been built on so much misery

Know the history