Brother Ali - The Travelers lyrics

[Verse 1:] Shackles are heavy on the wrist Stacked like sardines, belly of a ship Live in your own piss and sh** and being seasick Cracked across your back with a thick leather whip Salt water burns through your wounds Women are starving with babies in their wombs On your hands and knees trying to cry God please Exhausted your voice is too weak to speak Neighbors and strangers are dying beside you Their decaying bodies you're tied to Cling tight to your fight for survival Wonder if your tribe will ever try to find you Arrive somewhere strange, the air is cold You can see your breath and you're barely clothed Your first time ever seeing snow Sleeping next to it on a hard dirt floor Go from can't seeing see in the morning to can't see at night You work till your hands bleed white Your native language you can't recite Murdered on sight if you try to read or write When you bend all of your life and can't see the light It get's painful to stand upright Right? And your eyes bear the sight of your wife Being being pulled from your shack and brutalized at night You only taste joy when babies are born Which becomes an occasion to mourn Separated, torn from your celebrating arms Then as quickly as they came they were gone Sold away from your farm this is all they've known Never heard stories from home They forget your name T The culture from which you came Teaching it'll get you slain. Praying to your god will get you the same and tortured to near d**h lest you complain No Choice left you sing through the pain and pray that your suffering wasn't in vain End of your chain, end of your life Your grandchildren born with no end is sight So you muster up all of your might And your last breath comes out... fight This is actually true Now stop and imagine that's you Now stop imagining unravel the truth and ask just who is it happening to Everything that the pa**enger do The driver experience too So if humanity is one Then we all get burned when it's hell that we're traveling through [Chorus:] You've got to save my soul Put me back together make me whole Said we don't know which way to go Take my hand and place me on that road [Verse 2:] Trapped in a history we don't understand Can't remember how this blood got on our hands Never been taught about the ugly past Expecting God not to punish man Our ancestors brought us control We realize now that the cost was our soul Got me feeling like an empty shell Prison guard that inherited a cell I'm desperate to find my place Emptiness lies behind my face Flowers only die in a vase A heart only dies encased in a lie we call race I hear the song but I can't sing along Something's really wrong I can't put my finger on Terrified to admit it's wrong Cause I'm hiding in the ruins of a legacy that still lives on Our identity is hinged upon the miserable myth we've been caught since we're born Until we mend what was torn The debt of a sin lingers long after the vicitim's moans This is actually true Now stop and imagine that's you Now stop imagining unravel the truth And ask just who is it happening to Everything that the pa**enger do the driver experience too So if humanity is one then we all get burned when it's hell that we're traveling through [Chorus]