Store
by Dillon Avery Harp
Headlines got me ask’n
what we supposed do?
Our People get’n killed
cause we don’t look like you
Repression sent subliminal
if you see thugs and criminals
You should lift ya head up
and catch a better view
Cause,
I see Queens and Kings
Raised up in ravines
Just tryna teach they royal youth
to Rage Against Machines
I was raised up in Texas
Lost my soul to the heat
Some of the things I done seen
Man, you’d probably never believe
Different doorways for people
who look like you and me
Different city
Different streets
Different toilets
Different sinks
Different hopes
Different dreams
We might say the same words
but we mean different things
They tell’n me
Anger ain’t the answer
I just gotta turn over the page
But Lowkey
reading them census signatures
signed by blind citizens
Got me feel’n enraged
They keep say’n Abe,
Signed a paper
to abolish the pain
But that just means they
Turned the fields
into a cage
Built with tax dollars paid
By a country
Propped up on the
Backs of Slaves.
They call’n us
Indigo kids now
But I ain’t talk’n new age
I’m talk’n bout
Melanin bathed
In blue tints made,
Where our ancestors
slaved.
Our people
felt the first
waves crash
A heartbreaking welcome
to the coasts of a New World
As well as
the last sound heard
on the coasts of their past
Our people
moved their feet
bent down on
hand and knee
to feel the earth
change beneath
Our people
reshaped the sounds
their lips made
and the way
their hair laid
But
Our people
Knew that
When
Our people
Gathered at the
End’a the day
That our people’s blood
Would always
Speak the Same
A traveler of both time and space, Dillon Avery Harp is a radical Black poet-MC-writer and musician-producer-composer. Informed by a socio-cultural political lens that is unapologetically Black and human-planet rights focused, his work is a testament to the collective experiences of his people’s journey. Contact him at IG: @WavyRoseGold.
Our People, recited by Dillon Avery Harp:
