Kids On The Beach

There once was a boy who lay on the Beach
If we were a better world,
He would only be sleep
His mom would be smiling
Laughing with Love
We failed this Child
The side-effects of a harsh world
Where his skin color made him worth less to our eyes
We ignored their screams
Their yells
Their cries
So a mom gathered her children,
And went to the Beach
She could not tuck them in
She could not let them sleep
They got on a raft,
Tossed and turned by the sea
And that's how little Aylan
Got to visit the Beach

Ode to Role Models

I grew up looking up
To the boys on the Block
Everybody was a killer
We all had Glocks
Cash in the socks
Work in the boxers
Man to man, throw hands
Had to learn to be a boxer
I wasn't really tough
I was just an impostor
I had good grades
With a mother and a father
But that ain't what the hoes liked
They wanted Blood and Crip niggas who skipped school to roll dice
So, I went away for the summer
Cooked up a hustle
Came back with a pocket full of money and some muscle
It was kill or be killed
Life was a jungle
Black Lives Didn't Matter
You could get 'em for a bundle
Of some hard white
Or some good green
Throwing away our lives pissing over Martin Luther's Dream
We never dreamed because we never knew nobody with a future
Everybody worth something
Sold something
I wanted to be Nino
Money Making Mitch
Ace Boogie but not Rico
'Cause he turned into a snitch
All my role models gang banging Blood or Crip
Nobody we knew ever grew up to be shit!
So . . .
I guess we thought we wasn't shit either
Pour some out to my Role Models
If only they had been teachers . . .