Carvens Lissaint - Harlem (after Miles Hodges) lyrics

In Harlem, these days, it's pick your poison, I guess every time I leave town and I come back I watch these streets grieve it's k** the chosen, I guess You delete the face of Lenox Avenue Hang gentrification like ornament Casket-fill St. Nicholas projects Drown the history of Morningside Heights Come in, take out You chokehold the Cotton Clubs throat Silence the drums of the barrio No one is safe Uptown is being broke down Black businesses fold now This how amnesia starts you stop them people from learning who they are plantation those ghettos Cut down the trees on Convict Put that Starbucks on that corner Auction block all ethnicity Decapitate ancestry Why look at all the black kids dancing moving let's shackle their ankles so they can't get light knock the buildings down, make them white its bloodsplattered pavement no justice, just crime scenes here Christopher Columbus the culture Amistad the Strivers Row Slaveship that Harlem Shake better yet, steal it, mock it, mimic it make it primetime YouTube buffoonery Why look at all the black kids, black kids bound to be bar kids, drowning you know they can't swim, drowning to bounce up, shine down, lace up, lock up, the rights up, close down park floor, crack pipe, dark girl sing, sing, singing, singing, singing singing the hymns of Adam Clayton Powell praise filling 135th street like an ocean but there's no God anymore just tourists sitting in the back of Corinthians 1st Baptist Church like it's a zoo like we's a beast spectacle like we's be's caged hyenas laughing at us like children do like demons do like we don't be people People? My people hanging on for dear life scaling the limbs like monkey bars whispering from the concrete jungle RIP RIP RIP Rest In Peace Apollo! Rest In Peace Polo Grounds! Rest in Peace Rucker Park! No more playing No days off No Billie Holiday's here No songs singing in tune with the sun They're just fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and brothers and sisters and lovers covering their children from screams and whiplashes and blunts and guns and guns Bullets do know what color your skin is: that color black, that color negro that Colored Negro is being watered down is being afterthought is being etch-a-sketched is being murdered is being thrown out Come in, take out No one is safe