Dear Black Son

(album: All The Beauty In This Whole Life - 2017)

Dear Black Son, there's people you've never met
Who fear and hate you for something you never did
And these people are so self-convinced
Sometimes they pull the trigger, call that self-defense
And in that sad insanity
Their fear is realer to them than your humanity
But that's their problem, it's not yours
Listen to your pop for a second
These are the confessions of a father broken hearted
Who don't know how to pull his only son out of a target
They lied when they said it was the bottom where you started
You were a king long before them ships departed
You are not defined by anybody else's crimes
You don't need to answer for what happens in their minds
You are not confined by their imaginary lines
You don't need permission to exist with the divine
In fact, you don't need permission from no one including me
You need not do anything but be, just breathe
Whatever you dream let it mean you're free
Tears on a cheek never made nobody weak
Sometimes we got to grieve let it burn, let it bleed
Then let yourself heal, I pray to God it will
You've got a spirit that a bullet can't kill
That doesn't make it any less real

They say it takes a man to raise a man
You're slipping through my hands like grains of sand
And here I stand, tryna wrestle with the hourglass
Maybe see how long I can make an hour last
Raising a man, who's slipping through my hands like grains of sand
And her I stand, tryna wrestle with the hourglass
Maybe see how long I can make an hour last

Dear Black Son, I can't protect you like I want to
I never judge you, all I can do is love you
And that's all anyone can ever do is love you
All I can do is wonder how can anyone not love you?
They recognize divine you
So they try to find themselves by defining you
They're living in a myth that they don't want to loose
And now they're too terrified to face your kind of truth
But every time you shine, it's proof that they might've threw
A chain around your body, never conquered you
They don't always honor you but they love your culture
Let me show you how to move when the laws approach you
It's best to keep your hands where they can see them
And try to understand that you're not even what they're peeping
They don't see a sweet kid that loves his little sister
Their mind is seeing five hundred years of pictures
In fact, they don't visualize a kid
They see grown man imagery mythic masculinity
But you are not their fetishes or fears
Nor my ambition and tears, nothing can interfere
We've got to trust our seeds once we sow them
We hold them when they're growing
But we never really own them
We love up on them, play with 'em, pray for them
And cling very closely to those moments

They say it takes a man to raise a man
You're slipping through my hands like grains of sand
And here I stand, tryna wrestle with the hourglass
Maybe see how long I can make an hour last
Raising a man, who's slipping through my hands like grains of sand
And her I stand, tryna wrestle with the hourglass
Maybe see how long I can make an hour last

Dear black son