Poetry by Michael Ortiz

Our people’s faces are seen through bars/ there eyes filled deep with scars/ Past reflected upon our frowns, exiled by the oppressors now we are forced to be among da towns/ they want us not to be present/ the man wishes hell bound instead of heaven/ no money equals genocide!/ where I am from it’s drugs or pride from which my people die from/ they wear rags thinking it’s their land/ when they are just puppets to uncle Sam/ we need to stand & take it back/ no more murder no more crack/ Brown is a beautiful color/ 1 teach, teach2, teach4, my brother we smarter then they make us out to be/ no longer will we be victims to society.

I hear shots and then see black suits/ hungry people lookin pale cuz they lack soups/ old people I know askin for change to find a vain to shoot / I feel the grief of all my fallen troops/ and I ain’t fought 1 day in Iraq/ I fight everyday where I’m at/ they call it the slums, the barrios, the traps, I call it home just like the roaches and rats/ wear the wrong colors they approach you with gats/ friends you think are friends buzzin around you like gnats/ wanting all you have/ and when you don’t got it they wont call, they just pass/ my neighborhood is a third world culture/ where the cops stay on you like vultures/ they search & accuse/ cuz the majority of our faces look the same on the news/ this is my version of the Mexican blues/ they said were free but where’s the proof/ I see 1 person today and the next day *poof* they gone/ it’s the world you create/ be dumb or be strong/ & of course they see us as dummies/ how they want us to be proper when most of us grew up with only havin mommies/ we forced to go out & find our own father figures which is usually/ the gangster the pimp or the dealaz/ we try to make it out & they call us killaz/ cuz in prison all we are is fillers