On the edge of seventeen,
And on the brink of eighteen.

Wow ain't that a scary truth?
Growing up is such a funny thought;

You're a carefree kid once upon a time,
And then a mature adult on the clock's next chime.

Turn eighteen, they said,
Join the big boys, they said.

But truth is, adulthood is a serious business,
One that comes with bills, and debts, and losses.

It may be my one ticket to freedom and legality,
but it sure is hell carrying all that responsibility.

So thank you sir for the nice offer,
But I don't really want to get involved there.

I'm comfortable here in my naivety,
Where my childish whims are the propriety.

So let my eighteen candles burn bright up ahead,
Cause I'll douse it out without an ounce of dread.

Born hate-free, I was taught,
Caught up in a time when crimes
Against millions of people was fine
And the social genocide of bigotry
Was excused for me and practiced hourly
Then daily and yearly and nobody said no,
Oh no, don’t go there! Where was decency
When everybody could use names
Like flames to torch total strangers?

The danger is visible now, almost risible
But indivisible with no liberty or justice
Just issuing slams and slurs like a knife,
A way of life that helped nobody
And anybody that protested, complained
Were given their own names to suffer.
No, they didn’t stutter. ****** lover.
That’s what they called us if we shied,
Chose the wrong side, the side of freedom,.
Equality, morality, principles of Christianity.
Seemed invisible concepts to the likes of me.

Taught hypocrisy, I dissembled easily
Saying all men were equal when evil
Was universal at a “whites only” fountain,
The affronts to decency mounting, hurting,
Atrocities compounding, surrounding
Hanging, shooting, beating, killing
In a society willing to hang and ****
The Martin Luther Kings at will
For being willing to not sit still
And let the falsehood go on and on.
And then he was gone, but The South
Still pours honey from a mouth that claims
To be the right, the good, the family party.