Enough of This BROKE Thang

Today I got a raise/ and a 10 day eviction notice in the same day/ I pull the cry out from my throat/ hold this pulsing thing/ Know that prison can look like rented rooms/ And sentences are denied apartment applications/ That records are credit scores that never report the facts/ Degrees rags that don’t soak up your moms incarceration/ Or times ya’ll spent in the projects/ Or the one room ya’ll lived in eating pork n beans/ Me being the first one to graduate from high school and college/ Don’t mean nothing to the nice rental office cause your past is numbers/ That don’t add up/ My mother’s sacrifices can’t only be worth denials/ There are times when the hood and educated revolt in my blood/ Are two forces that don't like to exist in the same body/ Discord that chokes/ Reminds me that I know what being locked in feels like/ How the doors clang shut on your hopes/ Success feels like forgetting where you come from/ Like burying my mother instead of honoring her memory/ But when the time comes and the hood is just a part of town you pass through cause it cost more to stay than leave/ It stays in the vessel of you/ Will be found in the lessons you teach your future children/ In the way you run your household/ In the stories you pass to strangers that become family/ God will use the educated hood of you to light the world/ Raising you to new heights/ Evicting you from that old way of life/ Accepting all the parts of your being/ From sacrifice to freedom/ Causing hands to raise/ And voice to praise/ Ain't it glorious to not be prisoner to money 
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