Deferred Hope

Lost bullets find their way to little hearts
Big dreams of classes and all their parts
Shots fired, little lungs run out of air
They'll be good if they survive, they swear
Their school bleeds from all corners
Each week they welcome new mourners
Stray bullets, shots fired, the war on drugs
Little dreamers between cops and thugs
Corpses that never got to grow full size
Too much pigment for politicians to empathize
Their education lost to the drug trade
Their lives lost to bullets that strayed
Battles on the news between vain fixes
Ignored by those worshiping crucifixes

The day life stopped in the shanty town
Days, weeks, months, it comes back around
Build walls here to keep them out
Little girls sold there to the local talent scout
The bricks are designed to keep you in
Freedom up to the choice of your guillotine
Those bellow gave up hope long ago
Those above maintain the status quo

This year he had single digit geography lessons
But he can name tons of vicious weapons
Conditioned to find life a normality
With the constant threat of senseless brutality
Born to brown parents with empty pockets
1% indifferent as living-cost skyrockets
Legal pharmaceuticals profiting from the sick
Those trying to decriminalize seen as lunatics
Exclusion begins with a lack of arithmetic
Inclusion is stalled by insidious politics
They stare at the same sky but their roofs are different
Watch them die on a new t.v., their suffering insignificant
Favelas periodically suffer a disease outbreak
Not enough think about which side to take

The day life stopped in the shanty town
Days, weeks, months, it comes back around
Build walls here to keep them out
Little girls sold there to the local talent scout
The bricks are designed to keep you in
Freedom up to the choice of your guillotine
Those bellow gave up hope long ago
Those above maintain the status quo