Rusted Ghosts

[Verse 1]: Soul Khan I remember my mother pleading Telling me that this meeting with a needle wasn't needed It would leave me a disease If they didn't just sterilize it The HIV or the hepatitis Your generation is biased You'll see it when it's completed She's saying she didn't have to I'm saying it's just a tattoo On my skin, but she made the kid that the skin's attached to "But what if they won't have you in a Jewish grave?" Well you can take them foolish ways and bury me beneath a Buddha statue I was surprised to find some friends were opposed "Like what about when you get wrinkled and it stretches and folds?" But if I never take a step I could regret when I'm old Then my regrets'll be the only thing that I'll ever hold So I slid in the chair, palms clutching the arms of it My whole body was probably limp as a sock puppet Used to fear the pain, now it's one of my favorite parts of it Cause there ain't nothing more beautiful than the scar from it [Hook]: Arthur Lewis Some hear the voices Inside of their head But I had mine Inscribed in my flesh They realign me when I am depressed At least I know what they'll read when I'm dead Open and close Let it flow through your nose Or your little lungs might forget how to breathe Those rusted ghosts Made a home on your shoulders And you can trust that they'll never leave [Verse 2]: Soul Khan "And the just man rages In the wild's where lions roam" The first tat on my right rib, from the fliest poem Of William Blake, when i was still afraid I'd die alone And I was getting wasted every day like Styrofoam Left arm's John Henry, hammer in hand A tribute to the indisputable impact of a man And that the United States is a graveyard of slaves But only some of us are eating off the fat of the land My right arm's the grasshopper From the Fable of Aesop That sang songs while the ants labored and saved stock Of food for the winter, too cool to consider He steadily succumbed to starvation as they watched That colony of ants was responsible, right? But they ain't ever sang a motherfucking song in their life And those are just a couple of the tats that I got I'll holler at you when I'm back from the shop [Hook]: Arthur Lewis