Climb Trees

Sage Francis

Sun set and sun rise I'm my own personal light show

Flipping switches...moving from basin bottoms to plateaus

The Earth...manipulates itself beneath me

I stand still...stagnate. Can't kill...this lagged state



Life...manipulates itself around me, but I'm dead still

Upright...but dead still

Word is still born...I will not stoop to the level of the stoop that y'all chill on

If the building's boarded up and the children of the corn

-er Liquor Store don't want to kick it no more...

because holes have filled the wall, sneakers are scuffed & toes have become sore



I saw y'all walk from the hood of tough luck

Yeah, if these walls could talk they wouldn't shut the fuck up



Jump in your pick up truck. Drive from the mountain range

Cash the chips in on your shoulder, cut your losses, die young, count the change

How strange...you think these clouds look lovely?

Smoke signals...manipulate themselves above me

No symbols...are below me enough to overlook

I know you read my every move, I wrote the book



Mind not the blemishes that are on my premise. Endlessness is my "to be continued..."

Notice the nervousness in my footnotes when being interviewed

Shaking uncontrollably. "How you doing?" "Not bad...how about you?"

Brought it right back to me like "What've you been up to?"



I don't talk to freaks. I even ignore my neighbors who live down the stairs

I walk the streets. And they don't know that I'm famous in 2000 years

So I say shit loud in their ears and I spit a wretched verse in their face...

Disrespecting their personal space

In a split second, curtains and drapes get closed

They think they've shut me out, but I can see their ugly mouth in the shape of "O"s

I'd break their windows with a stone that has a note attatched

that says "I hate Jim Crow, and here's a poem to let you know the haps:"



"I've got a golden axe and I chop cherry trees down

Dead to this