"Look, I don't even know you, dog
So, I'm not trying to start anything, alright?
Just chill out, son"
Hermano
That's usually a best case scenario for squashing beef with me on a Saturday night after a few drinks
Conflict called "beef"-
As if it might feed some hungry mouths
How absurd and ironic our language has become, hermano
I get nervous out at the club now
Do you?
I'm tired of us playing games where the odds are never in our favor
Feels like the people that have been betting on us-
Training us, feeding us-
Care less about who wins and more about someone losing
Hermano
From birth
It has been a given that we won't know how to fight
Only choose to k**
Or scrap and punch and confuse it with fight
Won't know the power of colors held tight
Like strong, well-worn multi-colored laces
Or blue and red bandanas bound together at Crips and Bloods Truc Picnic in 1992
Spanish and English melted together in an early morning Sunday choir
Hermano
"Yo, that's my dog
Who's that cat?
Yo, look at this chicken."
We are trained to think of each other as animals
Makes bullets fit more easily in the clip
Makes it feel more like hunting
Or a park ranger doing population control
"Yo, chill out, son
Damn, shorty, fall back"
Lil Flip, Young Buck, Lil Scrappy, Yung Joc-
Call ourselves young and little, like we're proud of it
Like there is any way we ever could be-
Even at birth
After surviving what no one else could
Buried in boats in the Atlantic or Caribbean
Full of bodies packed so tight
Most praying
For the opportunity of starvation over being immediately suffocated
Hermano
This false language was never sufficient
Like a trial by jury
The odds allusive
Words
Making it easy to k** each other
The naming right of war
"I'ma rattle them n***as
I'mma get these n***as
I'mma k** that n***a
Nigrito, that wetback, spic"
How easily
Epithets condone the d**hs of enemies
That slept in the same bed you did
Wore those same shoes
The same pimple-faced
bu*terflies in stomach
Liked a girl once that smelled sweet and had dimples
A starched, pleated dress and oversized bu*tons
Thought the world of you
"I'mma rattle them n***as
I'mma get these n***as
I'mma k** that n***a"
Hermano
I'm not gonna fight you
Hermano
We aren't what we call each other
Hermano
We've lost too many of us already
Hermano
Me llamo Carlos
Ya nos conoce nos
Tu eres mi hermano
Let's start something