they keep up appearances
while traveling up and down
Memorial Drive, a part of town
that nobody wants to remember,

the smokehouse and the liquor hut
help them to forget their troubles,
the little storefront holy ghost
temple on Sunday is a hideaway
for souls who can't afford a shrink,

funny how they manage to
scrape up enough small change
for a bus pass
a "40" and some trojans,

do you hear the bell chime,
maybe it's trying to wake up
those who are sick of mind
and maybe i'm not '
suppose to understand
why folks talk "white man ain't this-and-that"

. . . and other assorted
verbal grit

(oh just go 'head on,
substitute THE LETTER "S"
for the last word
and if you got a shovel
feel free to hit a fan or two)

but i can't forget what i see,
a street where the trash
outdoes the pride,
where the day-in-day-out
drama and social suicide collides
like rednecks clashin'
with black-threats
and white chicks lookin' to catch a
quick flick of a lick from so-called-big-black
-oh-please-don't-make-me
say it. . . Kneegroes who
just wanna "flick their bic"

(That's not what I thought
I'd see when I grew up)

all i know is that if
any fool expects to survive
yesterday's tried and died news,
maybe we should take a look inside
as to what we think is human pride,
and stop stickin' out necks
in the rope that is knotted

EVERY night by
so-called professional
network dopes. . . see?

the good ol' days ain't comin' back,
not network research,

just a natural-spawn'd fact.
So Poor & So Black