Paper Bag Dreams A penny for my thoughts
A dollar for my troubles
Living in this tenement's an everyday struggle
What's in this paper bag
Hides a small extortion
A small bit of exacted payback to all my losses
To stay awake in hunger is a torture
So alcohol's a temporary delay of eventual forfeit
A toast to our fortunes
Some butter for the brothers down in Rikers
Some jelly for the belly-growin' sisters without abortions
All this
Toastin's got me feeling just a little bit tipsy
A few more shots in won't kill me
Pursued persistently
By vivid dreams of suffocating the demons that visit me
Whose goals are to get rid of me
Admittedly
I've fallen for a trap or two
But haven't you?
Let he without sin admonish me for my placid youth
The bad influences
In this sewer the Dutch called Breukelen
I grew up with the lack of a father to teach me the tools to fish
They throw you in the waterfrom start-up
You either sink or swim
You think the current ain't making waves?
Then think again
In these current times
Lyricists are mmade into pariahs
With these pirahnas lunching off their every word
With every verb and adjective are daggers in the system
The symbolism's getting much clearer as the vodka kicks in
In my slumber, I start to see visions
As a society, we throw rocks
While our residence
Is in a glass present-tense
No more terror equals no more dumb-ass presidents
But then again
A lot of these critics that constantly barrage us with their verbal venom
Are none other than the good twin reverends
Their credentials are irreverant
We should just have respect for them
When they help ruin these black communities
By just talking shit
True this,
Cuz I see a peephole
Through it, I see Judas telling Pontius what to do with
This new kid
Whose influence has become a nuisance
Who gives two fucks
About these people imploding slowly by the generation
Those who know, know the detonation
Wasn't set by race-relations
Or testing Satan
It was made by the hate lying in our deafened hopes
I can hear its heartbeat without a stethescope
It awakens me
Out of my slumber
My dreams have taken me
Out somewhere where I don't wanna go again
The drunkenness has slowly dripped away from me
I tell my friends to get away from me
Till I know the day is safe to breathe
in black society
so white people blame it on the platinum
not realizing where we had grabbed it from
diamonds
not suicide
is the chief export of Africa
You call this poetry
I call this colored commentary
A lot of scared people call it politics
I call that a lot of lip
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