[I gave you every opportunity. I spared no expense. A place to live, clothes, food, dollars, pennies, and cents. I gave you something, you could never have, I gave you a second chance.]
No, you were so busy giving “justice” to all,
That you didn’t even give us a second glance when we called.
Making it hard to think and believe.
Waiting for you to lie and deceive.
[Who do you think I am?]
A system more criminal than justice.
A system that can’t be trusted.
[What are you trying to say?]
You neglected to see our problems and sent us to the iron forge when we were like broken glass.
Glass that was once gold, that had now turned into brass.
An unknown alloy, that you had assayed, and instead of strengthening our vulnerabilities, you planted a wedge and swung away.
The only thing left were sharpened knives that go right through the bone, you left us in the wild, all alone.
All because of this system. This very concept of justice.
The thing that broke us again, the one that we trusted.
We were made of untold stories and unsaid words
All you had to do was listen to our songbirds.
We’re then taken from unstable homes,
Sent to meet the state with fear in our bones.
[I tried to heal your old scars,
I gave you a home -so many- without bars.]
Emotionally and cognitively we’re damaged,
Moving from home to home like baggage.
Every day, our lives were set ablaze,
Making us rack up more placements than birthdays.
Those temporary homes led to one,
More permanent than we’ve ever known.
[We spend more money on investigations,
Then keeping together families and their relations.]
But this time it wasn’t bullets that tore apart our lives,
It was papers, that cut through it like knives.
[So it’s no surprise that they strike back, in dispassionate anger, they crack.]
Robbed of stability and equal education.
We’re then turned out onto the streets, without a destination
[Offending a society,
That broke them entirely.]
At a disproportionate risk of being incarcerated.
Feeling desolate, lonely, and hated.
And so, like stars, we rest in endless voids,
We exist, destructive, yet innocent like meteoroids.
Falling from the sky.
And once it lands, our light will die.
Why?
Abuse, threats, humiliation, and deprivation,
Have burdened us with PTSD and a lack of medication.
[We moved forward, from those mental institutions,
Away from the barbarity of its persecution.]
Yet we’re criminalized because of our mental illness,
Thought as over-prescribed psychotropic sickness.
[But then why do we sentence thousands of young people,
Of which 70% have mental problems, that are lethal?]
We’re under-served with what we need to heal,
Isolated, we end up trying to fight the things we feel.
[Is our incarceration,
A reminiscent of that situation?]
Our hearts made of glass, minds made of stone.
We’re robbed of the responsibility we’ve never even known.
[We send them to a place with a culture of violence,
Where mental health issues are locked in silence.]
[Alas, doing nothing and unmoving we sit.
There’s blood on our hands, from the crimes we commit.]
Because our mind is the lock,
Made of chains as hard as rocks.
But those restraints, you cannot see.
Our mind may be the lock, but it is also the key,
The very thing that won’t let us be,
Is the one meant to set us free?
From a place filled with debris,
A place we never meant to see?
A place where we’re denied a sense of privacy,
Its “security” only gives us anxiety.
[Considering everything you’ve done,
How do I know that you won’t try to run?]
It may make sense, in your defense.
But it shouldn’t be at our mind’s expense.
We shouldn’t suffer at the hands of our defendants,
Thrown in solitary confinement, for twisted independence.
Handcuffed and shackled
We’re treated like rotten apples.
Thrown away for 20 hours at a time,
Exceeding the need for restraints for a single crime.
We’re inmates isolated and impaired,
Being baked to death, or lips turning blue in despair.
If you listen real closely,
There’s banging to protest being killed slowly.
Living in a “school for crime”,
The “tricks of the trade”, an unwanted pastime.
[Seventy-seven a day is our track record,
68% of them, a number we can’t afford]
Incarcerated for low-level crimes, is a violation.
Yet, we’re buddies with “shot-callers”, and their association.
For no reason,
We’re convicted of treason.
He said “I’m here on an armed robbery, held a loaded gun to the cashier’s head”
I would’ve pulled the trigger if it did any good, I woulda “shot him dead.”
Yet, what he didn’t say, was that it was neon green,
With water inside, sloshing, a distinct aquamarine.
But he was still sent to trial and convicted.
Sentenced to three years, due to pain he had not even afflicted.
Now, tell me where is your justice, or justification?
Why was he sent to jail, for the lack of medication?
Your theory of by which fairness is administered,
By imprisoning people excluded from society has now become sinister.
[Two out of every three,
Are in facilities, as restricted as they can be.]
What about her? Why was she convicted for “kidnapping”,
Kids from a home, in which love was lacking?
Where they were locked up in the dark,
Treated like dogs, who can’t do anything other than bark?
[But it is, and that is what we do,
Very soon, the bill will come due.]
Because we’re the slaves of this system, the hands in those bonds,
The wings in those chains, the blood in these ponds.
[(And) when they discover who they are, they’ll be free, we tell
them. They’re disembodied voices asking for pleas, but all we do is condemn.]
[You’re pointing fingers at me]
No, we tried to open a lock that had no key.
We tried to swim through a blood-red sea.
All this time we’re finding ourselves,
But didn’t know that we were lost in itself.
We had no desire to be here,
We wanted freedom, not destruction, but looking into a mirror,
The only thing we saw was fear.
But no one else did, and so, we were invisible, waiting to disappear.
[I’m supposed to feel guilt.]
No. You were created for good.
A system that used to be well understood.
From reliable and trustworthy, you’ve changed.
To inflexible and unfeeling, your power is now unrestrained.
We’re simply suggesting if you hadn’t been so focused on the system you built and the chains on our hands.
If you had taken the weight off our shoulders, we could have taken a stand.
And if you had, we’d be marching on towards freedom, face turned towards the sun, without a single bullet in our guns.
Pt.3 is up.
