They are trained to pimp pre-pubescence into adolescent strawberries

felt the need to share this. i may have to read it at some open mic. it's not my own, but speaks to me. feeling it immensely. your thoughts?

In Self-Defense of Hip Hop: Reaiming Rutger's Rifle

Come evening, lonely gunmen wander cracked out concrete streets
prowling empty back alleys and hallways
for prey to satisfy their lust for profit.
It drips liquid cyanide
onto childhood veins;
god be we with those who cross their path
they will turn a women's womb into wishbone
broken
They are trained to pimp pre-pubescence into adolescent strawberries
carve child soldiers out of orphans
like these government giving children guns
and telling them to play god
scenario replayed at checkpoint and
our hoods when we pulled over
and over.
It is no wonder we wander ebony nights
hoodies pulled over our head
hiding our face from the shame ingrained in us at birth
for daring to be beautiful in such an ugly environment.

We of the darker melanin do here by proclaim
we must stop pointing fingers
stop pointing guns
stop pulling triggers
and stop blaming hip-hop for everything.
For any microphones check will reflect
from murder to mayhem
that when it comes to violence on the block
Hip Hop never bombed Beirut or Iraq.
Who built n'orleans and watts
who were the cops who shot Biggie and Pac
Fred Hampton as he slept, Malcolm X in his chest
who designed the tech nine?
whose next in the specs of their Virginia Tech mind?
That may seem politically incorrect
but anger manifests when told to check tongue
yet no one checks textbooks.
For last I looked
Columbus was riding dirty
with thirty conquistadores
way before this art form was ever born.
calling Tainas nappy headed hoes
way before any Imis radio shows
way before any hip hop radio flows
and the only way I know this
is it inscribe onto the inside of the souls that we speak.
Young Afro-Indigenous drum tongue
metamorphous musical Morse code
that we beat through the soles of our feet
cuz we creative like that.
What's your worth?
We are audio Aztec sacrifice in reverse
giving birth to heart beats.
Why you think we dance so well;
every movement
a prayer for serenity
ever rhyme a
teardrop to the divine
to remind us
that life is more
than icing your wrist
more than slicing your wrists.

There is a rift in our consciousness
like continental divide
and conquer
we caught up in chaotic remix
between Columbines and concubines
Wounded Knee and Palestine
blaming the rhyme of an mc
who make the crowd move so well
while the police move to the beat of a beatdown that
Sean Bell knows so well
little Pena knows so well
my brother knows violence so well
it leaves swelling bruises every time baton finds
luck slipping
when he's sleeping in the park
5.0's flows beat him down like breaking bones
and he doesn't even listen to hip hop
he listens to rock

that other art form cursed like
Black Sabbath blamed for Black Sunday
Led Zeppelin and John Lenin
are searching for heaven
as Pink Floyd writes manifestos to
graffiti and future
for the Writings on the Wall

It states:
there is a day coming
beyond migrant fields and mortuaries
when my tongues gun will not again be necessary
to speak in self defense
of our turquoise reality
sunflowers will grow at our feet
the hearts rhythm the only beating we know
our women's names will spoken like divinity
infinity multiplied like timetables
n turntable
I don't want to turn back
tables of time
and bring the old days of hip hop back
but move our people forward
till the only needles and cutting our children know
Are the needles cutting into the grooves of an lp at a dj show
and the violence will finally stop echoing
like shellshock bass from bombs in this Middle East L.A.
stretching from Watts to Iraq
and on that day
we of the darker melanin
will once again be,
like these hip hop streets
like these old school hip hop beats
creative, beautiful
and violence free

m.gonzales- Human Writes Project- Copyright 2007