Black boy stripped of his innocence.
Black boy denied his right to be a kid.
Black boy labeled since birth.
Black boy criminalized.
Black boy stereotyped.
Black boy violated.
Black boy silenced.
Black boy monitored.
Black boy put into a box.
Black boy seen as a menace.
Black boy forced to grow too fast.
Black boy with his back to the world.
Black boy, you are loved
Black boy, you are a prince
Black boy, you are beautiful
Black boy, you are smart and worthy.
Black boy, go on and speak your truth.
Black boy, go on and dance.
Black boy, go on and sing.
Black boy, go on and paint.
Black boy, go on and be a kid.

First, let’s talk about some of the lies
Uttered by the nefarious and unwise
Of a peculiar type of mindless insanity
Created and backed by the inanity
Of the Madison Avenue careerists
And hordes of conspiracy theorists
Who have taken the issue of a ****
And buried it in misconduct and greed.

It is important not to fall for the joke
That it is quite all right to smoke
Because smoking anything you pass
A dose of something called cyanic gas
Into your lungs, and perhaps minimal,
It’s the gas they use to execute criminals.
But, other uses for this homegrown stuff
Can help people whose lives are tough.

But the whole shooting match is a dodge
Started out by rich men in their fancy lodge
Fueled by ignorance and false piety
Written into law by a strangers to sobriety
That somehow had no problem with drinking
But thought being ****** was stinking thinking.
So they created movies and legends galore.
But repression is all the lies were ever for.

(There’s an old joke about a boss’s decree
About employees drinking ***** daily.
He issued the rule on the smell-free *****
That was drunk at lunch time by his crews,
Because he didn’t want customers hazy
Thinking his employees were going crazy.
He preferred they know they were inebriated
Rather than a staff full of the grossly pixilated.)

It was that kind of thinking that created
A fervor that up until today has not abated,
That named an easily grown garden plant
Into some kind of major anti-***** rant,
While opiates are endorsed by the AMA.
And hundreds of versions are here today
To cure the same ailments as cannabis
Without the side effects that are a nemesis.

Medical science is finally ignoring
A sacred cow that needed goring;
Suggesting to the country as a whole
That this simple plant can play a role
In helping those who need relief
And are being criminalized by a belief
That, accompanied with such sadness,
Was the true definition of ****** madness.

When Dissent becomes illegal,
the Law becomes inhumane.

As Dissent is criminalized,
Democracy becomes a crime.

As peaceful protest
is met with violence,
Democracy will die theatrically
behind closed doors.

"Once the city used to pulse with energy. ***** and dangerous, but alive and wonderful. Now it's something else. The changes came slowly at first. Most didn't realize, or didn't care, and accepted them. They chose a comfortable life. Some didn't. And those who refused to conform were pushed to the sidelines, criminalized. They became our clients. We call ourselves Runners. We exist on the edge between the gloss and the reality: the mirror's edge. We keep out of trouble, out of sight, and the cops don't bother us. Runners see the city in a different way. We see the flow. Rooftops become pathways and conduits, possibilities and routes of escape. The flow is what keeps us running, keeps us alive."
*-Faith Connors

what’s the good institution
when evil is institutionalized
what’s the good teacher
when the student is criminalized

instill in us some morals, sure
but what are morals in a
“more or less” world?

bite the hand that feeds
it’s only poison you’re eating
bite the hand that feeds
these aren’t the toxins you need

cats out of their bags
lions in their cages
eat it raw eat it raw eat it
red and soaked in blood

bite the hand that feeds
it’s only poison you’re eating
bite the hand that feeds
these aren’t the toxins you need

bite the hand that feeds
bite the hand that feeds
eat it raw eat it raw eat it red
bite the hand that feeds
it’s poison it’s poison it’s
toxic waste toxic time toxic
valentines with pretty lies

bite the hand that feeds
it’s only poison you’re eating
bite the hand that feeds
these aren’t the toxins you need

these aren’t the toxins you need
not the toxins
not the toxins
not the toxins you need

Ancestors of ours fought for our freedom. So they believe.
Everyday free men are robbed of life for petty things that became criminalized somewhere on the timeline. I would like to believe that I am free, that my children will grow up with equal opportunities to do as they please. Care free. Worthless. Life should be bliss, some say it is, those we've welcomed ignorance. Failing to see the truth, think for themselves, not standing up for what they know is right, bowing their heads like dogs afraid of initiate the fight.

I want wake up in a better world
Where hate is no longer on the slate

I want to wake up in a better world
Where migrant caravans aren’t criminalized

I want to wake up in a better world
With less human deaths by guns

I want to wake up in a better world
Without blue states or red states

I want to wake up in a better world
Where my vote counted to make a better world

Save yourself
Shine a light on me
Don't shed a tear
On top of the hill

There is no wealth
That I leave
Nothing here
An empty will

The dish and the spoon are on the lam
The cow is now jumping Jupiter
As the cat smashes his fiddle in a fit of frustration
While the little dog sobs after being neutered

Satan's pointed horns and hairy hooves are turn-on's for some
While coal miners stick their tongues out at gold miners
Because they will soon produces diamonds
They all laugh with the oil riggers and refiners

I admire Eeyore
He never cries
But stays grounded
And has a great outlook

It's a crawl
On the parkway
An hour drive has turned into a day trip

You've just won a million dollars!
What will you do next?
Buy a new flashy, top self life
So all the Looky Lou's will break their necks

I got shoes to fill
Things to live up to
People to face

Acorns and elder berries
I've got nothing
Can't think of a word

Baptized
Conformed and organized
Made illegal and criminalized
The dollar bill remains idolized
Until we all realize
That everything is all wrong

I chill with rising suns
And setting moons
Hot and heavy winter nights
Calm cool summer afternoons

Colonel Mustard did it in the library with a candle stick
Because the pistol had no bullets

No harm done
No fault but my own

Promises aren't broken
The hope and faith put into them are

But it's all good

Why does the world conspire against the eccentric?
Unique is wrong, creativity ostracized.
Numb, blind, masses choose to remain.
Being true to oneself, criminalized.
Like candles whiffed one by one, extraordinary is now a scarcity.
Aristocracy calls for the illiterate, not the enlightened.
We’re surrounded by advancements that dull our minds.
When will we realize, herded we are?
When will we realize, we are assumed usufruct by the elite?
Common folk desensitize incessantly at death’s door.
Robbed of creative thought and ingenuity.
Tolerate, embrace, assimilate, so it seems.
Breaking status-quo is just vagrancy.

Do you think they woke one day
To decide to be that way
To feel the hate that they will feel everyday
To have their families feel betrayed
It's so much more
Then them liking the ballet
And them able to make a great looking bouquet
And them able to set a great buffet
And them having a roll in the hay
It's about two people sharing love
That was sent from above
And being committed
After all that was admitted
It's a shame they cannot feel acquitted
And they have to fight for it to be permitted
Why do they have to feel chastised
Just because there love does not comply
And no one will listen to their cries
And they have to watch their own demise
And they have to feel criminalized
Why do they have to be demoralized
Being gay
They want what everyone craves
They have to be brave
When they show their feelings
That for so long has been enslaved
Why would they not feel betrayed
So let me give you a clue
Being Gay
Is something you do not choose

You are born that way!.......................

Dear world,
I understand I'm not the perfect
picture you paint in your mind
Let's be kind to the truth,
I Look at my reflexion,
something isn't right
Dear world,
I'm losing my youth
never had a connection

Day to day I face rejection,
You Say there's redemption
As I see this reflection of non-perfection
I Try getting along
But there is all these objections.
You echo
"I lost connection"
Well Connection was never lost,
That path was never crossed
See world,
I don't fall for your lies and deception
Saying this world is yours,
Well where's mines?
You say see its my world,
You must play by my rules

Well one day I'll say that too,
I will one day feel the same way
Maybe because,
I'll Get you caught up in tricks and lies,
Make you feel criminalized,
In my world,
You'll be victimized
You will be called uncivilized
You won't be the perfect picture
You painted in my mind.

Loving you is a political act

A radical act of revolutionary love,

Loving you in the morning, in the middle of the night,

Loving you in a time of war,

Loving you: your spirit, your skin, your depths,

In a historical warfare where we are not meant to be wanted,

But gunned down in the streets,

Detained, criminalized, displaced.



My tongue, which is supposed to remain silent

Turns into poetry at the contact of your lips,



My accented language turns into lullabies of love

Asking your body to rest, your soul to rise,

Your spirit to become one with mine,

As we shield each other from this world of ****

And whiteheteropatriarchalcitizenist normativity

That we love to interrupt as we breathe

Against each other’s flesh.

By: Cedric McClester

Is it duplicity
That I detect?
Which confounds
The average intellect
When families are treated
With such disrespect
They say It’s not the aim
But it’s the affect

Families are forcefully
Separated
Is it any wonder why
America is hated
Even though they say
Our president is elated
His immigration policy
Needs to be debated

South Americans
Seeking asylum
Come to these shores
To escape the violence
Only to be criminalized
For their reliance
On the American dream
Which for them is silenced

Could it be
The color of their skin,
That works against
Them getting in?
If not why then ?
Because it’s a sin
To be in the predicament
They find themselves in




Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2018.  All rights reserved.

Taking back all of which was seen.
Time is elusive now, no where to run from your dreams.
Onward bound, gagged, displeased,
Criminalized for the things I've done.
Now its all just a game of there fun.
And now I'm the one insane!

Privacy is no longer a honorable sculpture of a word.
Sealed with a fist, ignorance is somewhat bliss.
For I'm guilty of the hit or miss.
Shrouded for cover, but thou shall not fear,
If and when I wonder, could the end be so near.

Cons-fearacy blunder,
Antagonize the ones whose cornered.
When all **** hits the fan,
And the lifting of your shutter of your cam.
Dehumanizing one-another,
From a spit-full can.
Rattalizing as if so empty.
For no one hears what your saying.
Cos its all just so pretending, as they mend.
You hear what I'm saying?
X-ACT-LIE

As it dawned,
The Golden age of man
A wonderful group was assembled
To analyze the Sands

Grain by grain
Hands that they shook
Forever questioning the meaning of life
Remembered only by books

Yet for the men of Philos,
Quickly did they die,
Were criminalized by the people they loved
Mourned by those that cry

Since wisdom is a trade
Surrounded by weightless fences
The spiritual, the ignorant, the arrogance of all
Left Philos nigh defenseless

For there is a price for everything
Just ask the great city
To tell the tale they all forgot
About Philos and its fee.

They set us so carelessly upon the trees;
despite our wails, screams, and pleas, we
become dying fruit for the fleas.
Institutionalized and criminalized, we live a life of fear.
They sneer, jeer at the sight of us at life’s rear.
Our plight against contempt makes for a militant man
as we just try to be as real as we can.
To them, our efforts are never enough,
for them, our pain is never enough.
We strive for equality, liberty, happiness, and life.
In turn, we receive hatred, anger, and strife.
Murdered and ***** and torn next to our loved ones.
In response, we give a passion greater than the Sun’s.
All of our lives, we have had to fight.
Striking back against their wrath, destroying their blight.

They set us so wrongly upon their boat;
after we are spent, we are set to float.
I wonder about real life,
“What does it feel like?”
Torment should not be equal to pigment,
and there is nothing to warrant such abhorrent torrents.
We are not equal and never have been the same.
When we speak out, we are silenced; liberty too tamed.
They set us so harshly upon the pyre;
the extermination of desire,
the death of liberty as a killing fire.

I really hate to get political
But the evil over my head is becoming much too literal
Not visceral, the rhetoric, it ain’t even subliminal
At this point in our history, this **** is going critical
Nearly three centuries, our people were enslaved
Terrorized for another one, locked up, put in graves
Segregation, Jim Crow, you already know
That’s how America goes, but we ain’t the only ones done *****
By the law of the land, the native genocide, cultures erased
By their hand, my latino brothers being thrown in a camp
Just like the Japanese a few decades ago
Non white ethnicities turn into a threat
By those who say America is a bastion of hope
Because they reached for a rope and ****** all of these people
With impunity, we ain’t getting nowhere cause there’s no unity
And it’s only getting worse thanks to president chump
Wait I meant president dump, hope fate gives him a lump
He’s the picture of cancer spreading through our country
Make America great again? How can you not see
This place was never a home for the people like me
There was never moment in time without a division
The birth of a nation? More like the birth of a prison

We’re stuck in these communities that keep breeding crime
Denied equal opportunities time after time
If you think it’s over, nah, it’s more carefully hidden
In corporations, politicians, the laws have been written
Three strikes, stand your ground, and mandatory minimums
They keep us down or dead, keep us sipping on their venoms
We’ve stayed criminalized since we got out them chains
Thrown right back in the system and corporations get paid
They’re the new masters, and prisons are fields
You’re deluding yourself if you think we are healed
And this “war” that they're waging, it’s not a war on drugs
It’s a war on minorities, not a war on thugs, it’s a war on love

They murdered our leaders, gunned down in their beds
So we couldn’t defend ourselves, our civil rights have just bled
Our people, we were wealth, whites got to keep it
Our ancestors sowed it, today we don't reap it
And the wealth gap keeps growing day after day
There’s no honest day’s work for fair ******* pay
Discrimination in loans, we’re still trapped in our homes

And one third of my brothers will have to see the inside
That’s the statistic for us, for the white boy that rides
Right next to me, it's one in seventeen
The American dream?
More like the American scheme
There’s too much of our blood on their hands
To ever come clean, so cut them the *******
Like the worst kind of thieves, I’m a peaceful person
But **** my beliefs, cause if you don’t think it’s about color
Guess what it is, I don't need apologies, it’s God that forgives
The only thing I want from you is to stand for what’s right
Cause what’s wrong is wrong, be it black or white

How many unarmed black men have to die
Before we see we’re all in harms way
They put Freddie Gray in the sky
Trayvon and Tamir, Philando Castille
Too many to name here, I can’t help but feel disgust
And distrust seems to be all that is real
I can see the beast slicing into us like a meal
And just like Eric Garner, I can’t ******* breathe
Slip through the cracks in the screen
Filtered blacks through the sieve
How are we ‘sposed to live when they do **** like they did
To my lost brother Kalief, beaten without relief
For three years at Riker’s cause he couldn't post bail
After not taking a plea, that boy could have been you
That boy could have been me
And when the jury decided, the damage was done
They had already won, he hanged himself in the Bronx…

He was 22…
Just know your tales will be told
But this song’s getting old and I don’t want to sing it
To fit the mold of the angry black boy who wont be controlled
All I want to say now is that the hate doesn't scare me
And we are the solution, you can jail a revolutionary
But not the revolution, so take note, don't forget our struggles
Get out there and vote
But just so you know, it’s a promise not a threat
If my Dr. King don’t get through, my ******* Malcolm comes next
Because this is far from over, the grievance is real
And if you ain’t standing with me, frankly
**** how you feel

I’m done

I've heard feminists say
working class men have too much power.
That kind of naievety was once cute,
but now as working men are criminalized
and gunned down in the streets,
that kind of toxic hatred
has grown dangerous.
The problem isn't that working men
have too much power,
it's that they have no power at all,
and they are slowly being enslaved
in ******* jobs, in prisons,
and in endless financial debts.
Working men have been robbed
of their power, their dignity,
and their ability to care
for the communities
that now decay
in ruins.

Deemed us as savages,
That’s how they branded us.
Numbered us off,
Like the holocaust.
Stripped of a heritage.
That’s how they divided us.
But when we speak we’re told to *******.
Left to Watch in horror as lives are lost.
Overdosing on drugs or getting shot.
Drinking the fire water to numb the trauma,
Of our salads being tossed.
By hands left unwashed.
Missing and murdered when’s the pain going to stop?
Tell me when the pains gonna stop?
Huh?
Hold up. I don’t think yawl awake enough!
And I ain’t talking if ya woke or not.
I’m talking bout opening up.
Wondering if yawl got hope or not?
Cause I’m truly broken up,
Survived off rice and ramen as youngen,
Yeah when we was broke as ****.
Raised by a single mother,
Dealt with Aces in her oven.
So, ya bet that statistics were dark as ****.
Uh! ****.

Heavy head wears the crown of thorns,
Was blue and black when I was born.
Little did I know that wouldn’t be the only storm…
That I would face.
Been close to death so many times,
I could probably draw heavens gates.
That ain’t an exaggeration.
Cause I swear some days the Grim Reaper must’ve been on vacation!
Yet here I still stand, gotta protect this land.
As the King of the Savages.

Trying to thrive through this wilderness,
With so many disadvantages.
Hard to speak the truth,
When they still try to silence us.
Hard to teach culture and language,
When they handcuff us.
Criminalized our identity and treated our beliefs as blasphemous.
Treated like Devil children,
That’s why the sent in the church to exorcise us!
Hard to create a movement or protest,
When the government treats us as domestic terrorists.
Colonial law and the Indian Act,
Still keeps many powerless.
It’s hard to be proud,
When all they do is shame and blame us.
Ironic isn’t it?
But as they say…

Heavy head wears the crown of thorns,
Was blue and black when I was born.
Little did I know that wouldn’t be the only storm…
That I would face.
Been close to death so many times,
I could probably draw heavens gates.
That ain’t an exaggeration.
Cause I swear some days the Grim Reaper must’ve been on vacation!
Yet here I still stand, gotta protect this land.
As the King of the Savages.

When your existence is weaponized
Your suffering legalized
Your revolution criminalized
But your ****** televised

Stop and think...
Maybe the world knows your worth
Wants to dim your light of pride
Make you forget your history
Force your greatness to hide

But never forget,
When the world was striking fire from stones
We were kings and queens of emerald thrones