Battle Of Los Angeles

The movie ran through me
The glamour subdue me
The tabloid unite me
I'm empty please fill me
Mister anchor assure me
That baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing
I need you my witness
To dress this up so bloodless
To numb me and purge me now
Yes the car is our wheelchair
My witness your coughing
Oily silence mocks the legless
Now traveling in coffins
But on the corner
The jury's sleepless
We found your weakness
And it's right outside our door

Now testify

With precision you feed me
My witness i'm hungry
Your temple it calms me
So i can carry on
My slaving sweating the skin right off my bones
On a bed of fire i'm choking on the smoke that fills my home
The wrecking ball rushing
My witness your blushing
The pipeline is gushing
While here we lie in tombs
While on the corner
The jury's sleepless
We found your weakness
And it's right outside your door

Now testify

Mass graves for the pump and the price is set

Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?

Now testify

The hills find a peace
Locked armed guard posts
Safe from the screams
Of the children born as ghosts
Gates guns and alarms
Shape the calm of the dawn
Peering down into the basin
Where death lives on
Where young run foaming at the mouth with hate
Where burning batons beat the freezing who shake
Under the toxic sunsets they dine and toast
Their walls deny the terror faced by the children
Born as ghosts

Born as ghosts

One book and forty ghosts
Stuffed in a room
The school as a tomb
Where home is a wasteland
Take the razor wire
And thought is locked in the womb
The tales that tear at the myth of the dream
A suffering that shocks the lives off the screen

Born as ghosts

The sun ablaze as maria's foot
Touches the surface of sand
On northern land
As human contraband
Some rico from jalisco
Passed her name to tha boss
She stuffed ten to a truckbed
She clutches her cross
Here comes tha exhaust
And it rips through her lungs
She's off fast to tha pasture
Like cattle she'll cross
Degree 106
Sweat and vomit are thrown
And she prays and suffocates
Upon the memories of her home
Of yanqui guns for blood debts on tha loans
Of smoldering fields rape rubble and bones
Of graves hidden trapped up in visions of war
Of nothing no on nobody no more
These are her mountains and skies and she radiates
And through history's rivers of blood she regenerates
And like tha sun disappears only to reappear
She's eternally here
Her time is near
Never conquered but here

To tear away at tha mask

And now she got a quota
Tha needle and thread crucifixion
Sold and shipped across tha new line of mason dixon
Rippin' through denim
Tha point an inch from her vein
Tha foreman approach
His steps now pound in her brain
His presence it terrifies
And eclipses her days
No minutes to rest
No moment to pray
And with a whisper
He whips her
Her soul chained to his will
"my job is a kill if you forget to take your pill"
Her arms jerks
Tha sisters gather her and scream
As if in a dream
Eyes on tha crimson stream
Numb as her wrists spit shots of blood to tha floor
Of nothing no one nobody no more

These are her mountains and skies and she radiates
And through history's a rivers of blood she regenerates
And like tha sun disappears only to reappears
Maria she's eternally here
Her time is near
Never conquered but here

Every official that comes in
Cripples us leaves us maimed
Silent and tamed
And with out flesh and bones
He builds his homes

Southern fists
Rise through tha jungle mist
Clenched to smash power so cancerous
A black flag and a red star
A rising sun loomin' over los angles
Cause for raza livin in la la
Is like gaza on to tha dawn of intifada
Reach for tha lessons tha masked pass on
And seize tha metropolis
It's you that it's built on

Everything can change on a new years day
As everything changed on new years day
Everything can change on a new years day
As everything changed on new years day

War within a breath
It's land or death

Their existence is a crime
Their sear their robe their tie
Their land deeds
Their hired guns
They're the crime

Shots heard underground round tha rapture
Tha world's eye captured
At last in a mexican pasture
Tha masked screaming land or death
Within a breath
A war from tha depth of time
Who shot four puppet governors in a line
Who shook all tha world bankers
Who think they can rhyme
Shot tha landlords who knew it was mine
Yes a war from tha depth of time

Everything can change on a new years day
As everything changed on new years day
Everything can change on a new years day
As everything changed on new years day
War within a breath
It's land or death

I be walkin' god like a dog
My narrative fearless
My word war returns to burn
Like baldwin home in pairs
Steel from a furnace
I was born landless
It's tha native son
Born of zapata's guns
Stroll through the shanties
And tha cities remains
Same bodies buried hungry
But with different last names
These vultures rob everything
Leave nothing but chains
Pick a point on tha globe
Yes tha pictures tha same
There's a bank and a church and a myth and a hearse
A mall and a loan and a child dead at birth
There's a window pig parrot
A rebel to tame
A whitehooded judge
And a syringe and a vein
And tha riot be ha rhyme of ha unheard

Calm like a bomb

This ain't subliminal
Feel tha critical mass approach horizon
Ha pulse of tha condemned
Sound off america's demise
Tha ant- myth rhythm rocker shocker
Yes i spit fire
Hope lies in tha smoldering rubble of empires
Back through tha shanties and tha cities remains
Ha same bodies buried hungry
But with different last names
These vultures rob everyone
Leave nothing but chains
Pick a point here at home
And tha picture's tha same
There's a field full of slaves
Some corn and some debit
There's a ditch full of bodies
Tha check for tha rent
There's a tap, tha phone, tha silence of stone
Tha numb black screen
That be feelin' like home
And the riot be tha rhyme of the unheard

Calm like a bomb

There's a mass without roofs
A prison to fill
A country's soul that reads post no bills
A strike and a like of cops outside the mill
There's a right to obey
And there's a right to kill

A mass of hands press on the market window
Ghosts of progress
Feeding on hunger
And glaring through the promise
Upon the food that rots slowly in the aisle
A mass of nameless at the oasis
That hides the graves beneath the master's hill
Are buried for drinking
The river's water
While shackled to the line
At the empty wall

This is the new sound
Just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound
Over the new ground

Listen to the fascist sing
"take hope here
War is elsewhere
You were chosen
This is god's land
Soon we'll be free
Of blot and mixture
Seeds planted by our
Forefather's hand"

A mass of promise
Begin to rupture
Like the pockets
Of the new world kings
Like swollen stomachs
In applachia
It's the priests that fuck you
As they whisper holy things
A mass of tears have transformed to stones now
Sharpened on suffering
And women into slings
Hope lies in the rubble of this rich fortress
Taking today what tomorrow never brings

This is the new sound
Just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound
Over the new ground

Ain't it funny how the factory doors close
Round the time that the school doors close
Round the time that the doors of the jail cells
Open up to greet you like the reaper

Ain't it funny how the factory doors close
Round the time that the school doors close
Round the time that the doors of the jail cells
Open up to greet you like the reaper

This is the new sound
Just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound
Over the new ground

Like ashes in the fall