Call me "druggie" or any other name you want
I am more than the degenerate society sees
Quick to be cold, they don't know who I am
Toss insults around like leaves in the breeze

I tried to make people understand
Staring is not the correct way to learn
Lack of caring, disrespectful looks
Is all an addict will earn

Show me one person who has never been down
Has no mistakes to hold
Demons find their way into all of us
Life leaves the warmest hearts cold

Things taken in different strides
Each person handles pain in their own way
Some stand ground, others escape
Sense of self-worth is the price we pay

Because of you, the stigma you spread
I found how harshly most judge
I want to educate ignorant masses
Their opinions too rigid to budge

(2017)

How difficult to choose a job,
Some have made their way,
Some have moved a far degree,
And still a lot to pay!

Inquiry is not practised;
It ne'er be accurate
Without a stately door behind
That shuts who educates.



E.

Sitting in a circle, we were just sixteen
A few dumb kids figuring what this life would mean.
Andy says he's going to community college,
Jimmy is going out of state,
As if these plans were going as perfect as they seem
Matt took a year off trying to search for knowledge
I took a similar rope just waiting for fate
As if we can succeed just stuck in a wait.

Andy took general courses, working a minimum grind
He stays up all night, caffeine pills keeping him online.
Jimmy got a degree in something with no market
Thirty grand has him working two jobs
Feeling like seeking education left him robbed
Cleaning up after the generation that cut him off
Matt and I keep passing ideas that we never do
Thinking school might be worth it
Still deciding a future  but even the new
Leaves a taste of the same place we knew

A few average kids didn't stand a chance
Took a few different roads all led to the same
If you have the experience, you lack their degree
If you have a degree, it's two years experience they want to see
So nobody trains you and nobody learns
Now they have a following believing the world doesn't turn
I'm so lost in these politics I can barely find my way home

Mi raza (my race)
Judge by a nation by my skin and roots but not by my capabilities.
Judged as a common criminal
But never as a helping hand.
Judged as a poor man for wearing the same clothes every day when I go to work.
Judged as a man that will only drop out of school and depend on welfare.
But the thing they don't know.
I was raised by a mother that had to put both pants to get by.
Become an older brother and a father to my own brothers to give them that love.
That I graduated high school in one of the best schools in the country.
That I'm going to college to become a teacher to educate and inspire that it don't matter what's your race or skin all it matters is your beliefs your dreams and your urge to succeed. I may be Brown and proud. But we're all one heart (solo un corazón) we all should love and bond not fight over who's the dominate race. Who has the bigger guns or the most beautiful woman. We are only one  (solo una raza)

So open our minds could be
To invite each side with a balanced scene

So loud our voices could carry
The righteous solution of a perfect recipe

With the ingredients so perfectly married
Of love, fairness and honesty

But instead our eyes are glued to the screen
Downloading illusions with influence and monotony

The information, as fake as the food we're eating
Served on a silver plate to convince it's certainty

All to rid us of the power we carry
Which is masked with negativity
To confuse us of the reality
That gives us the possibility
To accept one another's beliefs
To agree to disagree
To think for ourselves without all the censoring

If all this was a probability
Our home wouldn't be so naive
Our children would grow into a future of positivity
With certainty of security
And we could all live ever happily

But instead we are taught that fairy tales are for t.v. only
From the same screen controlling our identities