Bogged Down (Jim Crow)

Mass incarceration for a whole

generation of the poor

so that the one-percent

can fill their pockets and soar

A lockdown for all the black and brown

in all the cities and towns

You have no keys to the doors

and no carpets on the floors

The walls are already closed

in on you chosen before you are born

leaving you no place to go

sometimes no place to feel

Cages are opened from the outside

but, transcended from the inside

Sometimes you must close your eyes

and the walls will fall

Mass incarceration for a whole

generation of the poor

so that the one-percent

can fill their pockets and soar

They bog you down

in the worse parts of town

low or no income and low

or no education

They tell you, you have no keys

to life, no value and no souls

that you are forever

criminals, gangsters, hustlers and hos'

Ghettos and barrios, starving,

homeless, hopeless, fatherless, loveless

places, with liquor stores, cops

economic faces and educational and judicial traps

Mass incarceration for a whole

generation of the poor

so that the one-percent

can fill their pockets and soar

You are deemed a criminal

and disposable in their eyes

even before you are born

and fodder for their mass incarceration farm

The new caste system to waste

the youth, while the one-percent

who owns the drug profits legal

and illegal, rich and poor

War on drugs war on crime, war on black

and brown youth is a pipeline to clown

suits, a smoke screen

to mass incarceration

Mass incarceration of young men

fathers and sons lives

who are having no other options

do what they must to survive

Survive in this society

where all they have to do

is see you as a criminal

that makes you expendable

A new caste system to waste

a whole generation of poor blacks

and browns, with no human rights

and a scapegoat for all America's woes

Mass incarceration for a whole

generation of the poor

so that the one-percent

can fill their pockets and soar

Why is the war on drugs

waged only against the poor?

Who owns no land, no ships, no planes

no ware houses, no barges, no stores, no trains

Mass incarceration of a whole

generation can set in motion

for all the smallest infraction

a lifetime of commotion

A lifetime of incarceration

no way to clean the slate

especially in California, the richest

mass incarceration state

No matter what you do

it's still your fate

in California the mass incarceration state

in California the mass incarceration state

© Spoon Jackson