I have no epiphanies for you, nothing poetic or prettier for you

Nothing to hide in a simile or award-winning aesthetic symmetry for you

Tell a kid, “This authority’s comin from havin' to live it or witness it for you.”

And some of 'em say to me, “Look, Mr. Levin, twenty other teachers did this before you.”

Huh...damn...that’s always when I take a moment to breathe

Remember we haven’t been treatin' these children as more than a quota of needs

Or usin' 'em to grow our reputation, and then taking the credit for sowing the seeds. deaf to those pleas, nothing can drag all the air out the room quite like hope when it leaves

Rollin up sleeves, writin' these songs with a scalpel from thorax to groin

Stuck in the talk bout the talk, until we off fishing for beef just to throw back the point

Ironic how they tried to keep themselves together by burnin' they bones after joints

Ironic I felt so much happier back when I considered Prozac a choice

Anger was like an attack dog, didn’t let go once it latched on

If you start strippin' the violence out of these rhymes, what’s left is a sad song

My life in the deck--started prayin' the dealer had ran outta bad cards

At my happiest furious, backwards, unworthy, and writin' the words in these raps wrong

Paid my dues, and I still came back to feed the meter

I don’t got the answers. I don’t need 'em, either

Even If I had 'em, I wouldn’t believe 'em, neither

I don’t got the answers. I don’t need 'em, either

Flattened knuckles on these tracks until they cracked and buckled

Eyes Jekyll wide finding out that Hyde was fashioned from you

First cut went past the muscle, in your head, the cannons rumbled

You relaxed, actin humble, tunnel vision a plasma puzzle

Writin' bars, and flexed your posture, pencil scratchin' down your life

Tired arms were treadin' water, then you practiced drowning twice

Flinched, then winced, and tried to wash those butcher’s hands of power’s price

Used defensive self-reflection in the mirror, counting Christs

Snappin' vinyl outta spite the only time you pressed a record. Extended

Helping hands, knew your reach could either be stretched or severed

Desperate times, desperate measures, some of you packed blades sharp

Enough to carve a twenty-four-karat heart out the chest of pressure

Untamed as affection when your love language is vengeance

Before violence can lay its hands upon the front page, it’s kinetic

Therapy or surgery, either way you bout to open up, or that

One way toward the exit--but it’s blocked by what you won’t confront