V.O.I.C.E

l speak out because I am not dead.

Because up to now, dead bodies in trees and in prison graveyards have spoken up for us,

It took Mike Brown’s boy lying in the street

And the sound of buzzing flies

To finally spoke up for Ferguson

So, I’m going to speak...

About Cosby, because we cannot laugh pain away

We have to drug it and f*ck it while it sleeps,

About R Kelly because molestation is a frakenstein

And our own complicity made his child porn tape a gold mine

About the poetic Harpy who steals your house and preys on teenage boys

I'm gonna speak out because if you are silent,

They will tell lies about you

They will call you violent and unfaithful

While they sleep with their own cousin 

And protect their own molesters

Judges and DAs, who don’t even know how to say your name

Will call you everything you are not

And will try to eat your face off 

If you don’t plead guilty to crimes you have not committed

I speak up to defy expectations 

To revolt against the assumptions and the muzzle of incarceration

I speak up because of maybes,

Because they try to tell me, 

If I just shut up, 

Maybe they won’t arrest me

Maybe Dominique won’t frame me

Maybe my daughter won’t hate me

Maybe if I shut up, 

I can be like Mike, Oprah 

Or even get to be President

Maybe one day become a credit to my race

But maybe 

Just maybe

I don’t care about maybe,

My voice has been the only thing that ever questioned my stepdaughter's predator,

The only thing that got me a verdict of “not guilty”

The very thing my grandfather marched at Selma for,

If you are silent, they will define you for you,

They will tell your story for you

And they will never tell it right -

They will call you thugs bitches hos and niggers

Until you start believing it 

And those very things, you will start to call yourself,

No, the only way to stop the Devil is to point your finger and call her by its name

I speak because a voice is an indicator of life

And my breath is the inhale of freedom and the exhale of defiance

And as long as air enters and leaves these lungs, 

No lie, shackle or coffin

No gag, no nuthin'

Will ever stop me from being free.