Rudy Francisco - Chameleon lyrics

When I was in the fifth grade, I knew a kid named Javier He was black, which was confusing He was an African-American kid who spoke Spanish, loved Country music, wore cowboy boots, played jump rope and had a look on his face that said: I wish a motherf**er would say something None of us said anything For show and tell, he brings in his pet chameleon When he walks in, the eyes of every kid glaze over Like the windows to our souls shook hands with the winter for the first time A girl, with box springs in her throat Felt the silence was just too heavy for her fingertips to hold onto any longer Drops the quiet like a suitcase full of habits that no one wants to keep And says, "So what's his name?" He replies, "I call him Rudy" When the cla** realized that me and the lizard had the same name, they laughed uncontrollably. 20 years later, the irony hit me over the head like an empty Heineken bottle inside of the bar fight that I call my everyday life. I get it, you see, chameleons They have the ability to paintbrush themselves into what ever will match their surroundings They do it so often, they probably wouldn't be able to recognize a photograph of their own skin They think it is far better to be invisible than to grind their teeth into "I dare you" And to ride their bones like a magic carpet no steering wheel, no tires, no brakes, no battery Just bravery Just faith and a chest full of "I am not dying today" Courage has never been a chameleon's best attribute And some days, it's not mine either I was mentored by black men with brown skin who turned yellow at the sight of swollen bellies filled with half their DNA I was taught that a woman's vagina is just an underground railroad to masculinity That real men have tunnel vision and treat girls like subway cars Like nothing more than a space to parallel park our genitals A hole to bury seeds and leave orchids in our rear view mirrors They say you gotta peel a woman like a tangerine And your job as a man is to chameleon your self into her trees Bite a piece of her fruit and leave the rest hanging crooked and confused This is an apology to every woman I changed colors just to get inside of. See, I still haven't stumbled across a definition of a man But I know that we are hotels that stand a million war stories tall I know that we carry guitar cases full of phobias Hoping that we can turn fear into our strongest instrument I know that our hands break things just as frequent as we can fix them And we often forget that s**ism is a family heirloom that we've been pa**ing down for generations As men, it is important that we start asking ourselves What will the boys learn from us?