Ring around the roses a pocketful of tosies

Ashes

Ashes  we all fall down

This goes to the little girls and boys

Birmingham black

Features as dark as the times

You will go through

as the times we’ve been through

even though i hope you will never go through

but one of you will

we’re sorry, babyboy

That you are born a criminal

That most of the time your first word is momma

Because dad da never makes it

In a system where amerikkka

Leaders are holding office

That the only thing that will blow up

Is your story when you’re mentioned on the news

Only to fade away with trayvon's hoodie

That most black boys are never taught

How to be a man

Mainly because they never make it to adulthood

Just ask emmett till

The boy who was lynched at 14 for flirting with a white woman

Maybe that’s why our black men

Don’t know how to treat our nubian queens

How a system you were raised upon treats you so unfairly

yet wants you to give back

Black and brown bodies

As if that is all you have to offer

The bombs that killed us

Is not only a call to arms

But a warning shot

That not just michael brown felt

But you all

Will have to suffer

Don’t leave me hanging my brother

Because you might be the new

Hashtag

Hashtag shot another black son

Hashtag still hanging on 2016

We’re sorry babygirl

You were taught to fight yourself soon as you saw a reflection

Hung yourself with stereotypes of what you should be

Natural hair was nappy

Melanin body a unbleached skeleton with no soul

Tied chokers around your neck like they did our ancestors

You finished the tightened nose in a cell they confined you in  

Told you to change yourself, tried to bend your curves with something no perm could ever fix  

I feel bad for the way your roots grew up but, not for how they were planted

Took the definition of a real proud chocolate man away

No one told you that you might have to grow up without a dad

That the system could fail you before you could even walk

Make you mistake your father for boys with nostalgic hearts

Is that why you took to calling every boyfriend “daddy”

Times should have been hanged up, I mean changed up

They haven’t and we are still reeling in from the reality of what's to come

Little girls little boys

Your death will be so fatal

They will make a bible out of you

With commandments like

Thou shalt not have self esteem

Any shade other than white

I mean light

Thou shalt not wear a hoodie past twelve

Thou better not look a police officer in the eye

And if thou catch you staring at a white woman to long

Negro i mean thou will be dealt with according to the following

Chains, ropes, guns, and what’s that other one

bombs

This goes to the little girls and boys

Birmingham black

Features as dark as the times

You will go through

as the times we’ve been through

even though i hope you will never go through

but one of you will