Mumia has been in prison since I have been born.
I am 25 and every year is another tally added to the score.
Tens of thousands executed by the State.
2-3 million in the biggest prison population landscape in the world
It began in Philly, I guess that is why Black Thought is so angry
we must look into the roots of proof for the poetry
in expressively illustrating why we are so demanding
To take this and MOVE as if John Africa has just been speaking
attitude teaching to reach, if John Tabrizi’s landing, on the beach
having only enough time for play, as there are opportunities to find
everyday on the rhyme the mind climbs to weigh in on unity never ever forgotten
Preach the gospel of submission
to an ever increasing action
The corruption will only hold for as long as we have told ourselves this is the best transition
or else the entire system comes into correction
Become stronger than Prison cell blocks
One from the slums had a vision of the clocks,
having a time to stop for reflection
Just another number from the Palace of Rhymes collection
Always remember that we are changing every second
“Live From Death Row”, the bottom of the pitcher, and another day with other answers
The letters are addressed return to sender
wearing a home made sweater from grand mother’s hard working
The best to ever manifest a focus so certain
Why don’t you move the back show curtain
Reading, that, most of what we have been told was a lie
Creating raps to make permanence of the wise
and not fall into trance of industry’s luxury eye
watching over the oceans and lands like the sky
drinking our motions into a dance to defy
since we can think about how we have been denied
and
sometimes
only
about, how we will leave a better place to occupy
“We Want Freedom” were the loud chants’s we heard cried
The Death Penalty is the hallmark of a society/civilization that is uncivilized
Page 3
Part 1- Teetering on the brink between life and death
“For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life. -Albert Camus
Preface
page xvii
“I am some seventy-eight other men spend about twenty-two hours a day in six- by ten-foot cells. The additional two hours may be spent outdoors, in a chain-link-fenced box, ringed by concertina razor wire, under the gaze of gun turrets. Welcome to Pennsylvania’s death row.”
