Selfportrait

(Always writing... always revising)

Shorty feels the pressure on his shoulders as he's liftin' it

Wonders why the elders always tell him not to question it

Options at the bottom of the ladder got him desperate

But all he ever wanted was a weapon to protect him with

Riding a 36 through the veins of the beacon

The water is the heart, its rainin' when its beatin'

In the city that I sleep in I'm dreamin' while I'm awake

The miserable escape but they're too high to ponder faith

But who am I, to use their plight to illustrate a rhyme

With everything around me that I've never had to live

But I observe the inequalities to serve the people properly

Tell them that their freedom isn't found in private property

Prostitutes are more than just the folks who sell their bodies

See this ******t applies to those whose souls are a commodity

I can hear the colony callin' me back to be

The bullet in the belly while they lock, load, and squeeze

Rebel with a pen lettin' off buckshots in threes

Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be

They made a mockery out of the possibility

But under constant revision is the poem that I be

Rebel with a pen lettin' off buckshots in threes

Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be

I be the emcee in the place not to be

But under constant revision is the poem that I be

Shorty feels oppression on his shoulders as he's liftin it

Wonders why the elders always tell him not to question it

Conjuring the courage just to conquer whats been killin him

He says its ****** up cause he knows no other synonym

Hidden from the truth, seen youths turned to troops

Whos goal at 21 is to turn 22, true tuition's too high

and those with the privelage to pay don't listen, it's a shame, go figurin'

The name of the father, the son and holy lyrics

I suppose those who know what I'm sayin' when they hear it

Might rage against the system, or hate me for dissin'

The house in which they live in as a slave to the rhythm

But I walk the broken sidewalk paved with the magic

Of those who walk past it, just to survive traffic

If paybacks a ******, gravity's a bastard

Avenues I used to call familiar turned backward

Rebel with a pen lettin' off buckshots in threes

Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be

They made a mockery out of the possibility

But under constant revision is the poem that I be

Rebel with a pen lettin' off buckshots in threes

Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be

I be the emcee in the place not to be

But under constant revision is the poem that I be

Yo.. shorty's getting grown, old enough to read the messages

Understands the elders as he then begins to question them

One generation handed down what they've inherited

Another generation rewriting the master narrative

Older folks overdose on broken hopes often

Children then begin to grow comatose and lost up

In the clutches of the wickedest fingers

Indicative of the systems inhibited

Ability to listen to the voice of the dyin who've been tired of cryin'

Nightsticks fall where projectiles are flyin'

Through a straight path narrow like the gap between heaven and hell

They skip class cause they know it's a jail, true

Students prevail when the knowledge is passed

But others seem to fail sittin flat on their ass

And now I be the emcee in the place not be

Under constant revision is the poem that I be

Rebel with a pen lettin' off buckshots in threes

Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be

I be the emcee in the place not to be

But under constant revision is the poem that I be