I'm no role model, and your kids I won't coddle,
that's just what Johnny said
Run, don't walk from The One,
with their played out fun, stay low,
let the bullets fly over your head.
Stay clear of the Clean and Safe crew,
assigned to mop up your goo, your blood, guts, piss and shit.
Just keep singin’ your freedom song, sing it all day and night
long,
til they got a bullet printed up with your name on it.
And tell you how you went wrong,
when you sang that one song,
‘bout hatin’ the cops till you were too hoarse to spit.
Now, when authorization comes through,
for The Man to grab you, take you
out to an abandoned roadside ditch,
no matter how the deal goes down,
they wouldn't dare make a sound,
how you was just another everyday, double dealin’,
card-cheatin’, dirty, rotten son of a bitch.
You see, Johnny West,
he ain't just another, everyday, ordinary, lyin’, cheatin’,
robbin’, thievin’, card-cheatin’, double-dealin’,
dirty rotten son of a bitch.
Flesh of fruit, like wild strawberries,
With the tang and sweetness of morning air
The unseen particles of sugar clinging to the tongue
I could compare to your mouth
In dim evening.
And when you lay with me,
The gold of your legs glowed luminously
Like silk infused with honeyed light
A moonglow of deep yellow
Uncommon and unlikely in its depth.
The heat of which was most memorable,
Hotness shared, felt and lost somehow
To a kind of insanity of will,
An insanity expected and delivered
With the gleam of her narrowed eyes.
And after creating this thing of beauty,
It is thusly destroyed, cleanly and quick.
Now I embrace the expected death,
Locked in the coils of saved memory.
Long shall your body lay in state,
Deep within my mind glowing.
And long shall I remember you,
With hatred and with love.
Were you there when they killed Kendra James?
Were you there when they murdered and put her in her grave?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to rage and tremble, tremble with rage!
Were you there when they wasted the mother of two?
Were you there when they beat down James Chasse?
Knowing he was ill and cruelly saying he was crazy.
Oh, sometimes it causes me to retch and throw up!
Were you there when they took the life of gentle Jim-Jim?
Mahalia Jackson’s sweet-sorrowful voice echoes in my ear.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?*
Were you there when they nailed him to the cross?*
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?*
The plaintive wail of Billie Holiday reverberates in my heart.
Southern trees bear strange fruit.**
Blood on the leaves.**
Blood at the root.**
Where were you when the Portland cops tortured and murdered
our sister and our brother in cold blood?
*African American spiritual
**Lyrics by Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis
Allen)
There's many a man I have known in my day
Who's lived just to labor his whole life away
In the hive, in the hive, in the hive
He bleeds for his money and he sweats for his pay
But the sweet of his honey gets taken away
From the hive, from the hive, from the hive
It's kept by the keeper who lives far away
And he won't lift a finger till it's robbing day
For the hive
If your brother should starve why should he take the blame?
He don't charge for the air, he don't charge for the rain
He's so kind, he's so kind, ain't he kind?
Those clerics all teach we should take it and pray
That the last will be first once we reach judgement day
It's a lie, it's a lie, it's a lie!
So get off your knees, see the stinger on bees
Know the swarm of a million will cure this disease
Of the hive