A Different Mirror-Toki Wright

A Different Mirror - Toki Wright [Chorus:] Let me tell you all a story* I'd like you all to Take a walk alongside Take a look at reality Alternate reality Your history A Different Mirror Am I my father's son? Am I my forefathers son When his poor daughter Whore out of slums My instrument My heartbeat My drum Was stole In the pits of a ship As I squint for the sun A heavy lash Traveled Hit my body mass Split it into half Cutting like A razors edge or glass So I laugh Gotta be a dream To be unfree Starved hungry Drug by a chain Called ugly Only my scars love me Only the stars far from me Charred by the tar On a branch where they hung me Burned through the blood And the bone As my soul rose Landed in the stomach Of my woman Soon to be a mother Snuck out of the slave quarters Saw me sway beneath the moon Raped so many times That she was thought to Have a barren womb Haunted by the nightmares I return in her dreams 9 months in the fields No maternity leave Traveled out the birthing channel Minutes after I was born Overseers came to Snatch me Right out of my mothers arms Blood stains splattered on Her tattered clothes Weakened by the labor She gets up to follow after slow Crying screaming no But I was sold Worked hard until my death And in that final breath My soul left And this curse lasts for centuries If you've forgotten Read your shirt tag What percent is cotton [Chorus] Beneath the stars And calloused hands from Working in the yard They said they freed my people Yet we still work on the farm Several generations past Emancipations gone I moved off to the North And volunteered to fight a war The same strain of DNA That slaved away Is running through the swollen veins Of he who joined the draft To fight the German state And as I held my rifle And my Bible Up against my rivals Crawling under jagged wire Tired Prayed for my survival Tapped the filter Lit my cigarette Frozen to the bone Beneath the uniform Yet dripping sweat Beads under the army greens With patches on the sleeves Lying in a trench I hope I'm catching no disease After fighting for this country's Freedom over seas I return to burning crosses Fire hoses and police It was cool for me to risk my life To fight the Reich And go and shoot But I can't feed my pregnant wife Or go inside The voting booth So I Break bricks Break dishes Shoot dice Sip Sherry Snort girl Shot some boy-boy twice Caught wind Of a quick come up Jewelry store heist Said they need a gun man To watch his back on Thursday night I said all right With that hunger in my eyes A baby on the way My woman's strong But still she cries So the plans devised Meet on Wednesday to go over this Life is such a gamble With no poker chips Leave the plotting meeting Stop to call my woman on the pay phone 9 months she's pregnant Swollen feet but she don't stay home Working cross the tracks Where don't know Blacks live at Black child in Jeopardy From cleaning White baby's cracks Hello? I just got up in something dangerous She says if it'll get us out of poverty She'll pray for us She clutches on our baby I hang up and walk into a store Bump into a cop While walking in He's walking out the door Pulled out his baton His hand is on his holster And the trigger Swung and split my head And said You watch where you're going (Nigger) Blood running down my face Neck and back I couldn't help but react Smacked the pistol out his hand Punched him in his face until it bled Choked him by the throat Until his eyes rolled back into his head Before he died he struggled Reaching out to get his gun So inspire by it I ain't even think to run As the sirens sounded I walked down the block To catch a breath A dozen cops surrounded As I lit another cigarette I yelled I fought your war To prove that I'm a man They beat me til I died But after cuffing up my broken hands My soul rose And landed in the stomach of my woman As she knelt upon another Pearly white floor humming The comfort of this country Has been built on so much misery Know the history