|
When the black and whites arrive |
|
I am lifeless on the floor. |
|
Crumpled dollars in my hand |
|
In my hand, in my hand. |
|
The lady in the fishing vest |
|
Has dropped the gun. |
|
Who wears a fishing vest |
|
When they're working at a liquor store? |
|
I float up to the corner |
|
Just above the ice cream |
|
And the frozen food. |
|
I perch beside the surveillance |
|
Camera... |
|
Only days after the trial |
|
You could feel the tension rise. |
|
In the streets and in the rhythm |
|
Of despair, of despair. |
|
It was war after a while |
|
In each neighbor's tired eyes. |
|
There was nothing to persuade them |
|
To stand down, to stand down. |
|
I float higher and higher |
|
Friendly with the clouds |
|
That cover Southland... |
|
**** |
|
I watch the tender skyline |
|
Dancing, oh the terror - |
|
On the long night, |
|
On the long night, |
|
Blood, glass, burnt hair. |
|
These angry armies |
|
Quick advancing in position: |
|
On the rooftops, in the culverts, |
|
Stores are sacked while there's no one there. |
|
Now two kinds of light |
|
From fires and fixtures |
|
They fill the sky |
|
It was never so bright when I was young |
|
I was too young to die. |
|
On TV sets, in houses |
|
Effortlessly done in fancy colors |
|
All the righteous, all the newsmen |
|
Speak of end times |
|
Why should they give a fuck |
|
Some angry little black girl took a bullet? |
|
Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy |
|
On the ones who've done the crime |
|
Now two kinds of light |
|
From fires and fixtures |
|
They fill the sky |
|
It was never so bright when I was young |
|
I was too young to die. |
|
If I float even higher |
|
Pattern and procession are uncovered |
|
Flood and fire, flood and earthquake |
|
Keep folks unmoored |
|
And the occasional celebrity car chase |
|
Woo woo woo woo! |
|
Just to keep God from getting bored |
|
Now two kinds of light |
|
From fires and fixtures |
|
They fill the sky |
|
It was never so bright when I was young |
|
I was too young to die. |
|
**** |
|
When my grandma was a young woman East St. Louis |
|
She thought the town was no good to us |
|
She took a Greyhound just as far as it could take her |
|
Felt her maker in the waves |
|
You know, how God moves through us |
|
I was six years old when we followed |
|
My mother was twenty-two |
|
The light was magic, the light was true |
|
She thought we'd moved |
|
Beyond a sharecropper's debt |
|
But we were just a pawn in the accuser's bet |
|
Nobody reads from the Book of Job |
|
At the church where me and my grandma go |
|
Nobody sees the trouble I know |
|
But I know that trouble's gonna find me |
|
Three years later on a Thanksgiving |
|
The light turned bitter |
|
My grandmother didn't know what hit her |
|
We got a chill from the cold white sun |
|
Momma found herself staring |
|
At the barrel of a gun |
|
That weren't enough, my uncle died too |
|
Shot through the chest back in East St. Louis |
|
So one fine day my grandma lost two |
|
Took me in her arms and said, |
|
It's just me and you |
|
Nobody reads from the Book of Job |
|
At the church where me and my grandma go |
|
Nobody sees the trouble I know |
|
But I know that trouble's gonna find me |
|
**** |
|
So when I say that my untimely death |
|
Was something certain |
|
What I mean is that these tragedies |
|
Are a kind of a family tradition |
|
So when I walk into the liquor store |
|
That morning, bright and angry |
|
In a daydream of a boyfriend |
|
I was fifteen |
|
Pick up a bottle of orange juice |
|
And put it into my backpack |
|
Head toward the counter with dollar bills |
|
And she accuse me of stealing that |
|
She pull my sweater and so I hit her |
|
Put down the bottle don't want no trouble |
|
Now two kinds of light |
|
From fires and fixtures |
|
They fill the sky |
|
It was never so bright when I was young |
|
I was too young to die. |
|
Now two kinds of light |
|
From fires and fixtures |
|
They fill the sky |
|
It was never so bright when I was young |
|
I was too young to die. |
|
I suppose it's no surprise |
|
To find myself about to die |
|
But how long that silver moment |
|
From the bullet to the floor |
|
That right there was a lifetime... |
