At The Seams

Left hands hold the leashes and the right hands hold the torches
And grandpas holding shotguns swing on porch swings hung on porches
And the grandmas in their gardens plant more seeds to cut their losses
And the poachers with the pooches and the nooses preheat crosses
And the pooches see the grandpas and they bare their teeth and growl
While their owners turn their noses up like they smell something foul
And they fumble with their crosses and they start to mumble curses
And they plot ways to get grandpas off of porches into hearses
But the grandpas on the porches are just scarecrows holding toys
And the grandmas in the gardens are papier-mâché decoys
While the real grandmas and grandpas are with all the girls and boys
Marching downtown to the city hall to make a lot of noise saying

Hands up don't shoot I can't breathe
Black lives matter no justice no peace
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams

Sometimes it seams like we've reached the end of the road
We've seen cops and judges sleep together wearing long white robes
And they put their white hoods up try to take the black hoods down
And they don't plan on stopping til we're all in the ground
Til we're dead in the ground or we're incarcerated
'Cause prison's a big business form of enslavement
Plantations that profit on black folks in cages
They'll break our backs and keep the wages
It's outrageous that there's no place we can feel safe in this nation
Not in our cars not at the park not in subway stations
Not at church the pool the store not asking for help
Not walking down the street so we've gotta scream and yell

Hands up don't shoot I can't breathe
Black lives matter no justice no peace
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams

You tweet me my own lyrics tell me to stop
Letting a few bad apples ruin the bunch
Don't minimize the fight comparing apples to cops
This is about the orchards poisoned roots not loose fruits in a box
Once the soils been spoiled the whole crop's corrupt
That's why we need the grassroots working from the ground up
And we look to black twitter to stay woke and get some truth
Instead of smiling cops and black mugshots from biased corporate news
'Cause if you steal cigarillos or you sell loose cigarettes
Or you forget your turn signal will they see your skin as a threat
Will they kill you and then smear you and cover it up and lie
Will they call it "self defense" will they call it "suicide"

Hands up don't shoot I can't breathe
Black lives matter no justice no peace
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams

Decades of cultivation starts from tiny seeds that were once planted
And we mustn't take the gardens that our elders grew for granted
Though it is up to our youth how new rows sown are organized
Because movements can't keep moving if old and unsharpened eyes
Can't see the need to hear what those on the ground hafta say
In Ferguson and Cleveland Staten island the east bay
Charleston Phoenix Detroit Sanford Waller
Seattle Chicago Los Angeles Baltimore
Climbing flagpoles taking bridges locked together to the bart
Speaking up about injustice in our music and our art
Storming stages to ask candidates when they're gonna start
Really directly addressing issues breaking our hearts

Hands up don't shoot I can't breathe
Black lives matter no justice no peace
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams

Hands up don't shoot I can't breathe
Black lives matter no justice no peace
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams

And if the altars are torn down we'll just keep on placing flowers
For the boy whose body was in the road for more than four hours
We will honor the dead of every age and every gender
'Cause we can't just have it be the brothers' names that we remember
Black boys with skateboards and black boys with hoodies
And little black girls who are on the couch sleeping
And all of the black trans women massacred
Too many black folks killed and brutalized too little justice served
After the lynchings of our people by the murderous police
Who stand like hunters 'round their prey gasping helpless in the street
Feet from the teen sister they tackled and locked handcuffed in the car
Feet from her twelve year old brother dying...

While no one did CPR

And we'll keep on planting flowers and we'll fight until the day
That we don't have to pick them all to put them all on graves
Yeah we'll keep planting flowers and we'll fight until the day
That we don't have to pick them all to put them all on graves

Hands up don't shoot I can't breathe
Black lives matter no justice no peace
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams