Under Lock & Key

Unwashed bodies
mortal stink
scrunches your piggy nose
to your moral wreak
you do not smell
anymore than our torture
you do not feel
anymore than they tell you
bloody bodies
necks twisted from nooses
carted off like junk
our chests blown out
our backs
by four all-amerikkkan chumps
you must hurry and get away
pass out pills then scurry away
cringe and laugh
be disgusted
it’s not your mind and body
lying here busted
we suffer because of you
cursed U.$.
not in spite of you
and these racist tests
worsen worsen
extend and crumble
lay down in your fucking grave imperialism
lie down beast
stumble, sputter and mumble

I’ve seen them walk in with the bleach
Goose stepping out with the rifles
Bloody fragments and bone in blonde hair
Brand new Casio watch, new shoes, clean underwear
The traces of the dead man’s Prozac
Ulcer medications and ibuprophins
Mingle loosely with the trigger mens viagra
with their cocaine and caffeine grins
Where you off to now Mr. Executioners?
After you’ve lynched in the most disgusting way
you are off to your grandchild’s christening
to her prom night or school play
my sweat drips on to the cold concrete and I chant, i say, “you can’t stop us,
it’s inevitable. Soon all you know will fall.”
Tattered socks scrape and squeak as I motion
I raise my arms and tap my chest, “ten”
counting out the sets and counting down the days
here’s a promise that I believe the people support
we won’t blindfold you, we’ll allow you to watch
you’ll need to see the ones now holding the rifles
are the very same you’ve oppressed, starved and stifled
and we will pull the trigger out of social conscience
not out of your racism, greed or chauvinistic pride
and it will not be a secret, the world can watch
nothing will need to be hidden or secret
because we’ll explain why, to our children we’ll teach it
that the reason we kill you pig isn’t out of hate
it’s that food you stockpiled that the starving masses never ate

From our birth they installed limitations on what we may acquire and achieve,
Diluting our minds and aspirations, making it virtually impossible to succeed.
See 28% of men are dead or imprisoned by age 21
Yet they say there’s equal opportunities for everyone.
20% of the 28% are from neighborhoods like yours and mine
But these #’s don’t seem to equate in my mind.
The urban culture is being oppressed by a politically corrupt society simply and utterly
Because they’re afraid of what we may become if given true equality.
So I implore you do not succumb to temptation,
Stand up and speak out for what you believe in,
let liberty and prosperity be your motivation,
because it’s beyond our time to achieve it.
I drop these simple words of inspiration cause knowledge is power,
As for the urban culture and my entire generation, this is Our Darkest Hour

Welcome to the school of hard knocks,
where it seems the clock has stopped,
trapped in a prison industrial complex,
the size of city blocks,
guns cocked in gun towers,
Ever so slowly passes, years, days, months and hours,
time devours all - tempus edax rerum
And here I live in this correctional slum
I’ve never been dumb, but I’ve done dumb things
and this brings me to:
As long as I’m alive, I strive,
Sometimes striving means simply surviving,
I could have went to Penn state,
but instead I’m in the state pen
Surrounded by 1200 people, but not one friend
I sent a letter to my family, but it seems that they’re mad at me,
Because they only seem to respond semi-annually,
But I still have a strategy
to increase intellectually,
they may have my body, but they don’t have the best of me,
I’m 30 now, I’ll be released at 41,
In the futuristic year of 2021
The sum total of my incarcerated years will be 20,
But the total of the tears of me and my family is too many,
Plenty places, all over the state they have sent me,
tortured occasionally with tear gas and electricity,
they think that they’re breaking me, but they’re only remaking me,
I’m taking a breath while they’re trying to smother,
And brother, in this world, if you break it down statistically
you’ll realize you have to do your own part individually,
and realistically, I can see, if I don’t improvise, educationally,
In FL DOC, I’ll never go further than GED,
So I’m striving and searching, reaching and seeking,
trying to gain more knowledge, give my life more meaning,
in this institutional, “correctional,” demeaning existence,
to improve yourself, takes a lot of persistence,
and one day prove useful to communist resistance

You muthafuckaz is stupid, we makin’ music for the movement / You can find me in the streets organizin’ revolution / Pigs come for D.P., best believe that we shootin’ / And if the people can’t eat, best believe that we lootin’ / Til I’m dead I rep for Fred, George, and Huey P. / Turned in my red, white and blues for the Red, Black and Greens / So make room, we comin’ through the People’s Army’s with me / And you can tell that we some soldiers by the army fatigues / And all these haters call me “race traitor,” I’m a creator / How the fuck is you a tiger when you made outta paper? / Imitators and fakers is perpetratin’ as gangsters / But get exposed now they froze in the face of liberators / Organized and fortified with discipline as the basis / COINTELPRO couldn’t send agents to infiltrate us / Cuz we bossed up, empowered, and self-determinated / How the fuck is you a slave in the age of information? / Sharp as a razor blade when I move through the matrix / I’m just a link in the chain so we move in formation / Guerilla style, underground we comin’ straight from the bassment / Activate the revolution for the future generations / Makaveli branded, automatics is blazin’ / Send the city into panic like a Maoist invasion / Made my peace with death cuz that’s the fate that I’m facin’ / When you die for the people that’s the meaning of greatness.

1: They got me duckin’ FBI agents and Federal cases/Infiltrated by informants with anonymous faces / One nation under invasion and mass surveillance / They probably got me on a list for assassination / Movin’ through the underground like Angela Davis / Vanish without a trace when them badges chasin’ / I’m like a communist in a fascist nation / When them Nazi’s spot me they gon’ blast with hatred / Snitches makin’ statements that they fabricated / collaborated with the state to see my ass get raided / Til the DA’s in my face with the affidavits / Wanted in all 50 states on some tax evasion / It’s the life of a rebel like a Panther aimin’ / To set it off: Revolutionary activation /

2: They got imperial plots of world domination / Populations decimated by the globalization / complete the brainwash to keep the people complacent / Propagate false information through mis-education / My generation is lost gettin’ intoxicated / I got homies gettin’ shot in police altercations / The rest of my peers are facin’ incarceration / cuz they’d rather slang ‘caine than be slavin’ for wages / corporations makin’ profits off our alienation / Puttin’ money in the pockets of Obama’s administration / illegitimate payments solidify the foundation / For the rise of this genocidal civilization / They talk equality and democratization / When we got people up in Harlem starvin’ like Haitians / And every ghetto’s under military occupation / The solution: revolutionary activation /

3: They got me feelin’ like Mao when Japan invaded / Mobilize the masses like Fidel and Che did / In the belly of the beast where police are racist / And people kill for cash cuz the greed’s contagious / Turn on the television see my Queens degraded / manipulated by the 10% descendants of Satan / From Nixon to Reagan to the Bush administration / Prophecies fulfilled in the days of revelation / illuminati through my body I got shotty’s with gauges / And my soldiers are strapped down for whatever they’re faced with / Lurkin’ beneath the surface take it back to the bassment / Guerilla rappers highjackin’ all your radio stations / All my comrades stay gang affiliated / With their finger on the trigger and their trigger fingers anxious / To pull it back and set it off like a bomb detonation / Now the revolution’s activated /

I never learned to turn the other cheek,
to bow down to oppression I think is being weak;
And who taught our children to love thy enemy,
how can they have pride in themselves and,
yet be accepting of tyranny;
I will not allow our youth to be confused by
false Amerikkkan history;
I will teach them honor of Marcus Garvey, George Jackson and Joseph Cinque of the Amistad mutiny;
I will show them unity, though it be a fist of solidarity,
gloved and also in a clench,
I will dispel the myths of Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Bush and the notorious Willie Lynch;
You hold up images of Armstrong Williams, Clarence Thomas and no child left behind,
yet you outlaw Malcolm, Huey, Nat Turner and Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time;
Your greed is fed by capitalism which creates
a world of endless war zones;
You sell Israel F-14s, yet you watch Palestine
defend itself with nothing but sticks and stones;
You proclaim equality, so we had hope during the trial of Rodney King;
You spoke of love as an eventual reality,
but in 1968 you assassinated our dream;
You exploit our words with pawn shops,
liquor stores and broken down shacks;
You sell our kids guns, pork chops, Jordans,
Lil Wayne, Kools, heroin and crack;
you brainwash our youth to be killers and to
fight for ole Uncle Sam, but when they lose
an arm, a leg or just need a helping hand,
you say there’s no money in the nation’s
wealth care program;
Innocent until proven guilty, at least that’s what
the supreme court say;
It took you almost 14 years,
but you still came back to make O.J. pay;
Your credibility is reminiscent of chickens
being in the care of a sly old fox;
You gave the Amerikkkan natives a trojan horse,
infected with small pox;
You invaded the motherland, with a smile, a pistol
and filled with the holy ghost, and in the blink of an eye
it turned to mischief and bloodshed,
on Afrika’s west coast;
You stole kings and queens and tried to turn
them into slaves,
but some chose the Atlantic ocean to be their cold wet graves;
Some were passive and obedient, they did what
they were told,
some were like Harriet Tubman and sought
their freedom on the underground railroad;
One refused the draft as he floated like a
butterfly and stung like a bee,
while one used nationality and religion to help
uplift fallen humanity;
one was on the move, got bombed, so you know
that we had to keep her,
One used a podium and socialism and we coined
all power to the people;
We’ve produced lawyers and doctors
and Langston Hughes a very poetic talker;
And with great ingenuity, our first female
millionaire was the incomparable madame CJ Walker;
Some tried to shake names like Toby or George
or even Cassius Clay,
But some were called Oscar because of “Monster’s Ball” and Denzel’s Training Day;
So now we have Obama, the 44th President is our own native son,
but you still find reasons to hate us,
even though you’re still winning “forty three to one.”

The gaping jaw of the
prison industrial complex beckons,
grinding away basic human decency

Men forced into a blast furnace
of warehoused existence,
the ore of humanity smelted away
until only the dross remains

Kindness…compassion…love…
…all that defines one as human…obliterated.

Anger…resentment…despair…
…the remains of a once caring human.

Treated worse than rabid animals,
for are they not graced with a peaceful
death?
Animals are not stripped, forced to
parade around naked, mocked and
humiliated, flashlights beamed into
every orifice.

Animals are not caged in a
claustrophobic atmosphere, living
amidst a breeding ground of hatred
and rage.
Animals are not forced to survive
lives of mind-numbing tedium,
interspersed with moments of
chaotic violence.

Corrections & rehabilitation?
Corruption & retribution…
… closer to truth
human-form enters one end,
animal-form expelled out the other.

Take heed society, for these animals,
these human animals, shall one day
walk amongst you.
They are your creation,
created by societal apathy and
political fear-mongering,
created at your factories…

…the animal factories

Can’t u see
Inacell is where we dwell, sippin’ coffee,
Smokin’ bugler, plottin’ the future, goin’ straight
4 the jugular
incarcerated, never intimidated, just fighting
2 be liberated from these chains and fences,
no repentance while doin’ this life sentence
Killings and drug dealings goin’ down in this shit
called the game, brothas lookin’ 4 fame, dying
4 gangs when it’s the system that must be
changed, revolution is the solution, not prostitution, we aimin’
at the kapitalist, imperialist institutions, and the
chumps pimpin’ the sistas, they birth the
future
can’t u see
Pain, sweat and tears over 400 years, oppression,
emasculation, mass incarceration, kapitalist exploitation,
it’s time 4 self-determination
This shit has gotten deep, sometimes we weep,
fueled by past and present images of brothas and
sistas being railroaded, given lengthy sentences,
being misplaced in the census
Can’t u see
altho we exist in the undaground, we persist
the possibilities of a new world, unfurled like
a mother giving birth 2 a new baby girl
we exist in tha undaground, in a hellhole, yet
have we 2 fold
we’re not jiving, not hiding, always ready 2 face
the cold
that’s why we be so bold in our maneuvers, we
see a beautiful future
They say the game ain’t 2 be told, but sold
this ain’t no game, people, you be gold if the
truth be told
As we started 2 grow in the undaground
some tried 2 kill what we feel, that’s the
real deal
Others claimed we were out of season, how
can that be correct reasoning using the
logic of a heathen and ignoring the bleeding
refusing 2 read the signs of the times
that’s why i designed this rhyme, hoping you
see what time it is 4 real
Predatory lending,
subprime mortgage schemes, prisons filled 2 over
capacity with the masses
crack, heroin is back
fat cat CEOs paid obscene salaries in stacks
off the backs of the working classes
the holice using the hoods as shooting galleries
Politicians lying, young folks dying
mothers crying
brothas neglecting responsibility, hiding instead
of protecting the community by riding
Can’t u see
Political prisoners, pistol packing, poetic poetry
power, survival of the illest, the realest
Elections, defections
wars being fought with toys of destruction
the game of elimination is being employed
the environment is being destroyed
Can’t u see
that’s why i propagate what we see, hear
and feel, hoping you see what is real.

They thought that this would break me
They tried to tear me down
Confinement made my mind get stronger
You should hear me now
I wasn’t hip to all their tricks
They had me stuck before
I had to grow but now I know just what it’s hitting for
Their mission is divide and conquer
Their goal is menticide
We must protect our minds from them
Don’t let them get inside
Cus if they do
then they’ll use you to do the dirty work
Unconsciously they’ll make you be the bringer of the hurt
Unity’s ingredients are power, strength and love
And if we come together we will surely rise above
Divided, we are midgets with no hope to ever rise
But together we’re a giant who can choke them till they die.