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