Under Your Influence - Youngblood Brass Band

In a dark proud stance / nose dripping sweat / there’s sprays a mess of life

from my bloody lips

Blindly swinging at shadows / flaying the flesh of us both / people hurry by /

eyes downcast

Fraying the line between maker and made / all white-knuckled ideas and

exhausted tears

Still the effort pools at my feet / and i stomp and i scream and i punch like i

dream

With more abandon than perseverance / and for a pacifist i sure want to beat

the shit out of the unseen

My so-called soldiers are too busy making a scene / so i call on death

And we become an unholy tag-team / undercutting rap dreams and spirit-slamming

unbelievers

Yeah / me and death stomping creation in the streets / bellowing our crazed

anthems

With glorious fists like verbs / landing now on noun-nuns dave-dazed

Firing our mouth-guns into the skulls of walk-less talkies like rahhhhhhh!

Like Ra / head like 'so raw' / raw as vocal cords snapping / raw as our hands'

skin drum-boxing the pseudo-enlightened

Resurrecting executed slaves to proclaim right crosses / burning through the

immortal melee

Laughing with jabs / even eternal when slain

Death was dealing himself thin / so i tagged in and began round two:

Howl move burn change sing reach dance teach

Grow play scream give read live write die

Love cry cast fly guess wish ask train

Do act will make bleed march need start

Now black enters the fray and white tries to act gray

I’ve stopped bleeding as death becomes sane and slowly retreats appalled

At how much we’re begging his favor / and twelve-year-olds afraid they won’t

Get to use their gun before sunrise

Now the words dribble / stuttering incoherent / even rafis ferdinand has

slumped himself home

And i’m alone on the corner again / mumbling to nobody

One solo backward is half-marching symphonic stub sickle

Shivering timbers intended to save backward solo one

Friends, country, justice / these are sounds quick forgotten

By street fighters alpha / just aimless concepts

Like high schooling / my dueling / mc’s spewing death standing next to death

Like 'you gonna eat that?'

Fuck / the world is spinning colors over my eyes

And somewhere there’s a gutter to kiss

Cats are pillars of static / i’m on some butterfly shit

Meta-morphing back into a warrior ablaze inside a fire

Inside a fire / feeding the sun’s nuclear engine love / and one

Suddenly the block’s deserted and buildings pretend to be trees

We can’t fight in the jungle of steel stolen screams

I pick up a syllable scythe and slice my way to round three:

Ingest/embrace/inform/incite/ignite/encode/entrap/escape

Exude/instill/inspire/imbue/entail/intend/expound/infuse

I enter a ring surrounded by everything and display my gloves to hoots and

hollers

'audience!'

i cry, 'it's time we let these words think for themselves.'

The sun replies / washing my face / and i’m content to bask for a second…

Now bathed and solar-winded i turn center and see seven million objectives

One by one they fall / risen / and smiling something wonderful

For the sun has given daylight over to the stars to be on my side

I look over and kill my senses / it’s on / we are so on

With fission psalms and diction bombs fixing throngs / eclipsing strong

But not us who find all inherent all

The sun’s been here all along chilling with death and me

And these battles will forever not be fought by us

But the things we do without rallying the troops / plan / free

That’s an order / tall and strutting his self-righteous ass on corners,

open mics, and the same tired discussion

Wake up to us / here’s to shutting up and his followers in a glass box

smoke-filled and falling

Our squad is too much / catching the earth stalling

Death and me and the sun makes three / answering the calling

Coalesce.

confiscate.

activate.

sacrifice.

specify.

teleport.

captivate.

catapult

Exercise.

advocate.

disavow.

saturate.

culminate.

cultivate.

sensitize.

occupy

Remember

Embody