A King Worth Killing (Ft. Atticus)
Atticus
Mindless
Under that black top hat, stitched within
its barers, rests Uncle Tom, and a delightful
game of ring around the rosy meets the ashes
of what's to come; while all the kids fall back
as they watch Rosa run in black circled eye
lashes, looking For the head of the pack.
Then he stood, a foot in the grave as they gave
the tipping point a blunt wrapped in those ashes.
I smoked the bones of the land and braved
to go on the brim, as niggers splintered the thin
lumber and Black Jack Johnson turned limbs
towards the kids; calling "timber!" until white men
went limp, in sight of the heated summer.
Coreta's in the corner, making Martin's
death bed, As the sheets get caught in
that stubborn old birch tree, while the willows
trembled and their passionate tears burn two holes
through these thin covers of purity;
before they go opaque and twist their corners
in to hug her screaming throat.
We came engraved on stumps from the cherry
tree that was chopped down, which became our
coffin as drops of resin incased our tasteless eye.
A golden apple stolen from the hands holding time.
Washington watched them enter the garden
and pick fictional leaves from the money tree,
bringing dead presidents crumbling to their knees.
So sit at the head of my table and tell me
of the minorities who's basket came back empty.
Then reach for the blood sun with the rope between
the dirty leaves where poverty once hung.
Monotony sowed it's seed when stores showed
how deep we breathe into their hollow roots.
We wore shirts that spoke cloaked volumes to
listeners that were mute. They clothed our
hatred, anger's naked, undressed resentment,
that loathed a fashionable, complacent truth.
We all followed suit, you would too soon enough.
We all supported it, sporting outfits from innocent
fists of infants gone missing under wheel barrows;
carrying deals scandals materialized to hide narrow
wrists twisting crops cops were peeling for proof.
Mississippi state of mind; paths are being blazed,
as Fredrick Douglas leads a train of thought
underground, directly through the eternal grave.
Meet at the safe house, but mind the barbed wire.
The plantation stands as the sun's eclipsed in fire
and each step leaves an entire asphalt highway.
Roads are overgrown hospitals since we sold
peace by the kilo to those homes in the ghetto;
knowing young ones loved fame, wanting to
snort the light, but it distorted the bright faced
horizon into sporadic afternoons, where the moon-
shine quietly made life frightful of black men that
had broken bottles, but guns that cast no shadows.
Hear the dogs bleed, their hungering screams
into the dense air as Jesus yanks the collar
so hard that a spark is born in dry atmosphere,
While the darkness Watches from between
gaps in the forrest's fingers before the flame
dances up the arms of a quivering evergreen.
The two thick trunks burn steady until all their
limbs have been singed off and all that remains
is a charred may pole as Jesus starts dancing,
Hand in hand with ignorance, before the polls falter;
land crossed on ground as embers light their pride.
All these new constellations fall beside
the rippling skies while Jesus opens his eyes;
falls upon God's lost cross, into his transfixed
crucifixion and begins to sing sin as he cries.
... And there, Betsy Ross sits on her colonial porch
watching it all happen. Gazing threw the spaces of
the railing she watches every black man there,
trapped between the bars of a white picket fence;
then tilts her heavy head down and continues
sewing as the needle of that syringe cracks her
ivory thimble. All seven red stripes began to bleed
away, leaving a clean white page to fly at half mast.
This past is nobody's flag that is flown over the rags
of epitaphs. Our plague is on parade and we walk
with crooked swags that are gladly bound and gagged.
Who will praise this symbol if it's raised with
simple prejudice for the thimble and the thread
as we dragged our feet in trenches with bliss?
They proclaim to wave proud and brag about names
mentioned, being ashamed of the attention willing
to make them a famous nation over a king worth killing.
Continue to pace crab grass and broken shards
of that stained glass window that decided to
kiss the blarney stone. As the windows opened,
the fog ran in, then tiptoed over every note
and began to dance... hand in hand, toe to toe;
Jesus was romanced into such a slow trance.
The music led; fog followed, as the choir stood
in awe and watched doves overcome the swallows.
They just stood there, providing the soundtrack
to the last site of equality...before the fog became
tangled in threads of sanity. Faster the two twirled about;
thread growing titer around The Minister's cold throat
as the two continue to dance; Following the orchestrators
hands before he raises them... the noose tightens,
and Malcolm wears an "X" over each eye lid...
while he dies, the music subsides on a high note.
Likewise, when Martin Luther realized how steep
the steps where set deep inside each steeple,
he cried, "When I die... I'll scribe my Alibi in metal.
Tell me if there's life above what we call good and evil!
Should people fight if time passes away our rights?
I've tried to turn the knob, I've tried to knock
on the doors with the force of praying hands.
But this neutral lock the Smiths picked to hold
the broken pieces of people's complete soul
can't fit through the key-whole..."
The church clears. The screaming spectators
disperse through the various halls to find an exit,
While with ever ear piercing Screech Malcolm lifts
Farther into the darkness of the cathedral rafters.
Join us here, after the dead letters are opened again,
and the spine of the Bible breaks under the devil's pen.
He's drawn blood, while we've foregone awe to
wonder if dawn will come. All it spawned was sons,
that our daughters saw shunned to fields dreamed in cotton.
But, there's a straggler. Harriet has lost her way;
stumbling through the halls, It seems the walls
have a thousand eyes, they see all, and judge more.
She stop dead, reached a fork In the cavernous hallways,
to the right she gazed into the light at the end of
the tunnel, before she turned... looked quick then ran left
as she disappeared............. into the darkness.
The silence: deafening as the walls began to cry led;
they lifted brick fingers, pointing, chanting "Death... Death...
Death went out to the sinner’s house,
Come and go with me
Sinner cried out, I’m not ready to go,
Ain’t got no travellin’ shoes.
Got no travellin’ shoes, got no travellin’ shoes
Sinner cried out, I’m not ready to go
I ain’t got no travellin’ shoes
Death went out to the gambler’s house,
Come and go with me
The gambler cried out, I’m not ready to go,
Ain’t got no travellin’ shoes.
Got no travellin’ shoes, got no travellin’ shoes
Sinner cried out, I’m not ready to go
I ain’t got no travellin’ shoes
Death went out to the preacher’s house,
Come and go with me
The preacher cried out, I’m not ready to go,
Ain’t got no travellin’ shoes"
("Travellin' Shoes" By Vera Hall Ward)
http://www.rapbattles.com/forum/show...33#post4073933
http://www.rapbattles.com/forum/showthread.php?t=276919
