Us black folk love to tell others to stay up.
Yet we can’t stay up ourselves.
Always laying on the ground getting stepped on.
They ask us to put our hands up
But how much higher can our hands really get?
We’re reaching for the stars
But the world don’t love us.
Instead we’re martys
Marred by the very place we call home.
Yet we continue to say “Stay up”…
Stay?
Staying here is the last thing I want to do
And I don’t think I can get much higher with all these fumes in the room.
These herbs help take away the pain
Better yet they make me forget my name
Sometimes…
Better I stay motionless to stay safe.
The more I obtain the more they take away.
My blackness ain’t nothing but a warrant
For my life.
I’m trying to excel but these excel sheets
Can’t protect a black man from the police.
Better to them that I lay 6 feet deep.