Tree Of Knowledge

Sage Francis

I'm a construct of your world, deep-rooted, polluted and tortured

Abused and altered, I just caught you eves dropping

Adam's rising to pluck the fruit from off the branch

reaching out to touch your inner-drives

Cut me open and count the rings inside to see how long I've been alive

Containing forms of records about the types of storms I've weathered

Leave a stump for kids to carve initials as long as I'm remembered

But lessons go forgotten plus you don't believe a thing

Listening to the whispering of my leaves in the wind

When the breezes begin you're just concerned with flying kites

Till I tangle up your child's play and get you climbing heights

Still reluctant to hear me out admiring the sites

You have no idea what it was like being nailed to Christ

You're swinging from the twigs and limbs that used to hang your siblings

Have respect you selfish self-centered sack of man-made buildings

I was the original pinnacle but now I'm nothing to you but kindling

Tickling my inhibitions of naturally attracting children

Who have a funny idea of what forever is

I witnessed the first time lips kissed with stripped innocence

Not too long after that was I supplying shade

For a man caressing silverbacks trying to get laid

Monkeying around and now they're all dying of A. I. D. S

Government guerilla tactics? That's a farce, I bring the plagues

Cancer? That's just icing on the cake, I nurse and feed ya

Cause you drained me of my sap with taps of perverse procedure

I hold your family background right down to the first amoeba

Watched you grow from just crustacean to a land mammal, it hurts to leave ya

But I've had enough, and it'll be very relieving

Just who do you think supplies the air you're breathing?

Humongous oxygen tanks? As if it's all free

Constantly wondering where your dogs are at?

They're barking up the wrong tree

Wanting proof of identification but I existed before fingerprints

Cognitive dissonance... I hear chainsaws in the dis