Born Yesterday - Billy Woods

Buried kin in rocky ground

Shallow grave, how sweet the sound

Amazing grace, first bus out of town

Lie boldfaced when the man come around

They got enough work if you can’t find it

Broad negros work like Caribbean island

Old heads smiling, like Woods you wildin'

Mayhap, slept in the shelter with the wave cap

Scoured the shower with Ajax

A man’s own pride will bait traps

Gnawed the limb, fled like rats

Fuck outta here with them late raps

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Rain sluices off trees, dried the wet leaves heavy foot

Ride it out branches the cancer advances captain hook

Listening for that crocodile

Same dark wood he knew as a child

Fear of the forest

Entitled white girl tasted all the porridge

More the poorer for it

World on fire, but he wouldn’t piss on it

Eyes burnished onyx

They gave us special glasses to watch the comet

I can still feel that African sun

It wasn’t just us, the whole country was young

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

Outside lie dark turned fields, with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that

harbor yet a few last wolves.

A solitary migrant upon that flat and pastoral

landscape.

Blacks in the fields lank and stooped, their fingers spider-like

among the bowls of cotton.

The shadowed agony in the garden