A Race Against Time

200 years held in captivity, branded like cattle, worked like dogs, treated like dirt The Emancipation Proclamation gave us a false sense of freedom That illusion was quickly unmasked when Jim Crow came to town Decades have passed, time has continued, and the wounds of oppression have been forever embedded in the minds of our people We went from Kings and Queens, to slaves and maids, to drug dealers and prostitutes Coerced into gang-banging, swayed into drugs, and herded into a cycle of self- deterioration and social corruption Liberated from plantations and packed into ghettos Now the future of our people rest in the audience of this generation Trying to make an army out of confused soldiers fighting a backward war Trapped in a play called LIFE Cast as people of the same color, wearing the uniform of another Fighting to be real men like Pinocchio While trying to break free from the clutch of Uncle Sam cast as Chappetto Exiled to a land of poverty, poverty has needs, needs breeds thieves, thieves make war, war brings corpses These streets have seen more blood than the battlefields of World War I and II We are in a race Against time It’s a Race against Time When the clocks strikes again is it your life or mine?