QUE VIVA NUYORICO SUCKA

Where Your Peoples At

Bronx Boricuas drive up the Bruckner

To reach Orchard Beach

BBQ pollito y burgers bailando to Lluvia

Praying for a proper homily at Holy Cross

Sunday Church playing lotto

Down payment on dreams

Lean off Bacardi after Uptown

Saturday night special

New levels diablos nuevos

De que tu esta hablando si no es libertad

Gran combo exito with happiness on coro

Para flaquitos y gordos

Pesa’o con fried hunger

Small wonder large curiosity

City provides variety of distraction

Transaction under 2 train

Right by Big Pun Mural

Tropical concrete intoxicated hatred

Puerto Rock Puro amor

Made slaves by dinero

Inspired by heroes sacrificed by capitalism

In search of freedom sin compromise

Un aviso

Most likely your flag and air forces made in China

Reaping profits off your patria

While you preach Pa’lante

How firmly can you navigate manana

Over choppy waters

New world order with barcode on birth certificate

Projects’ baby showers prolific

What’s the specific plan for daily pan

Beyond Sabado Gigante

And next year’s desfile

Kermit the coqui airbrushed on ripped denim

Ghetto venom vicious

Greasy plate delicious soggy paper plates

Each grain of rice makes you escape

City fire barbed wire sharp skyline

Torn tee and bloody bandera

Flapping over casita on vacant lot

How the flame trembles off rock’s mirror

Oye el gallo llorando despierta y levanta

Be brave young lord regal black panther

Nuyoricans get money off Grand Concourse

Bullshitting in Bushwick

Smoke out in Soundview

Praise Elegua en El Barrio

Shout and scream en Los Sures

Live en Fantasia en Orlando

Cold chiefin in Chicago

Hopeful holidaze en Hartford

Frozen hatred en Holyoke

Salsa dance and sip slow en Springfield

Hula hoop spread Aloha en Hawaii

Stuck spitting incomprehensible Spanglish to our shadows

Drowning in shallow polluted puddles

Hustling in middle of suburban oasis

Chasing reparations

Illuminati is complicit with your cage

Caribbean lapdog

Pitiful pets

Wagging tail for job well done

Solo drum painful piano

Faithful flute

Insulated boots leave frosty straps

Chanclas en la sala dusty next to fuzzy TV

Watching too many situational comedies

Monotony of bass thumping on brick wall

Thin tape holding on to

Basketball wrestling and graffiti posters

Decorating drab apartment

Sparkling beverage on scorching day

Lost trying to find better ways

Out complex maze around each corner

Another colonial confrontation

Camera spy on your estilo

Where is powerful potential of proud people

Brave lord living terrible history

Staticky stereo requires 10 D batteries

We can be as free

As we allow ourselves to be

Need to toca clave attached to vocal chords

Holding on to history is more debt

Than we can afford

Too much time to plan for revolution

To ever be bored

Bobito

be on point at the parade gente

Isla frita

How do you process privilege

Sacrifices from ancestors made on your better behalf

Be whole

Laugh dance sing dream in whatever order you allow

Don’t suffer generational consequences

Because everything is out of service

Due to illuminati invasion anniversary of

An island 135 million years old emerged from

Angry ocean

Earth is 15 billion years old

Me I’m 33 Babita been blessed with 91 years

Infinitesimal speck on the canvas of multiverses

What are the partisan politics of quasars in another galaxy

Challenge to stay optimistic when rain on sunny days

Has you conflicted every detail of your pain

Can be specifically traced to DNA dancing

Drama down dark alleys of varicose veins

Rarely seeing victory

Let sunlight part the fog on your history

No longer typically victim statistic

Population pacified red tierra will testify

Bloodshed en busqueda de libertad

To do what you absolutely please

Don’t be apathetic or apologetic

Aggressive in search of destiny

Using best mental weaponry

Affirming path in poet’s passage

With eyes closed take a shot

Speak life into reality

Make your dreams actions

Wise ninja said

We need to show the youth

Our freedom fighters bloody scars

Lion king said

The stars will always guide you

Never leave you alone

You will forever have a home

Where coquis sings to concrete

Across 4 hour flights in business class

Whenever you land

Hear our hands clapping like claves

Bats welcome you to distant caves

Where your runaway slave great great

Great grand uncles carried their visions in bundles

Looking for holy shelter sanctuary

Hearts were the only actuaries

Turned legacy to stone cobbled roads

Breaking silence

So you could figure your path

Amidst city static

Climax to your lack of progression

Heavy depression

Will make your shoulders slouch

Oppression so numbing

You barely say ouch when bitten

Please take prescription and bounce

Purchase a light cebolla to flip into foundation

We can firmly stand upon

Our beauty is beyond condemned blocks

Puercos watch and envy to rob happiness

Want to use sadness as fuel to a greasy system

Pipeline from gutter ghetto to powerless prison

Of mind believing no one will listen

But we still hear your gritos loud and clear

Severe condition critical

Transform your spiritual to lyrical

Manifest miracles to resurrect movements

No longer losing

Your confusion isn’t exclusive

Mentality molded through umbilical

Poverty cyclical

No need for telescopes to encounter lack of hope

Down to miniscule molecules

Won’t learn this liberation inside schools

Designed to damage

Ability for proper analysis of compound fracture

Bones bursting through skin

Sin makes you pop you own brother

False thuggery uttered like pan con butter

Moments of strength never stutter

Deep within lies true conviction

Give yourself permission to shine

Eyes reflection of radioactive sun

Toca significant drums

Summon people to paradise plaza

Hay que mejorar la raza

Pero no con porqueria

Advertisements on every building

Overtly urging you to consume capitalism

As your cacique

Money is your GOD

Every cent is your santo

Referring to dollars as dona

Manana convinced that exile to rotten manzana

Won’t make you a sangana

Mira muchacho

De que tu hablas

Nunca blah blah o tonteria

Hay que ser humilde e inteligente

To see who is real enemy trying to hustle you

From not loving the mirror

Whenever the horizon is clearer

Calm before paranormal tormenta

Make our beautiful gente into invisible ghosts

Gone

Statues for sunburned tourists to drive by

Take pictures and stare

Lost footnotes at bottom of pages never read

Fed enough YUM brand fast food

Children will be malnourished in perpetuity

Cruise choppy waters tirando bombas

New world order bequeathing civilization

Savage society impatiently waiting for

Status quo sandwish mallorca bread

Lovely land with lack of liberty

Class stratification gives you no symmetry

Until you in cemetery and every tombstone

Looks the exact same

Gamble away all your ganas

Sell out all your panas

Tomorrow can’t be more lame luxury

Corporate resorts sell you jibaro nostalgia

Illegibly infiltrated from inception

Hear this motivational message after Medalla

Chasing Don Q

Pushing you pa’lante nunca patras

Mis palabras de boca will travel to Dios’ ears

Learn the lessons to break out of colonial cage

Todos somos Boricuas de pura sepa

Albizu Lolita Filiberto Piri Pedro Miky

Machetero reinvented with rage

Before I wrote this on a blank page

Took it to stage

Coquis hyped me up

Told me sigue cantando

Siempre con corazon LORD

BE BRAVE

Descanse En Poesia, Tato Laviera

I think in Spanish/I write in English

                                                -Tato Laviera

Como puedo decir distracted distances en multiple lenguas

Future looking more mezclao

Gente from different countries all speaking Spanglish fluent

Primo we need to organize to get that power

Barrio loco shorties got that sour

Loudpack sonido en stereo

Dimelo how vecinos turned blancos

Got that banco popular

Except we are far from popular democratic

Declarations of pan tierra libertad

Subsidized that state will make you a slave through barcode

Scanned and watched

Mucho bochinche and porqueria on the block

Don’t want to start a resurrection of Young Lords Party

Pa’lante only a documentary

Fuzzy VHS ripped DVD sold for a dollar on 125^th

Shift in mentality marketed by prison industrial complex

Owning music industry murdering ears

Ponce massacre of minds sterilized souls

Estrellas imperceptible reflections

Calles chain your confidence

Constellations have muffled conversations

Giving you answers before side smirk

Break off in tonterias captures complete totality

Ghetto griot grito orality caserio newscasters

Replay lowlights of vicious pobreza cycle

Vital signs show high blood pressure

Bad cholesterol prediabetic disaster running faster

Happy hours at sweatbox social clubs

Looking for love in all the long faces

Race for independence speed walking marathon

Mananas depend on milagros migrating where

Isla dreams can be reborn from project penthouses

Skyline matches frame of mente molded by palabras

Motivating your jibaro heritage

Teaching proper lessons forever holding onto

Ancestral love sin compromisa sacred promise

Push next generation con fuerza siempre amor

Confianza en our belleza

Elevation

caliente en las calles

Right around corner from the spot

Don’t let sensations be ephemeral

Handle your business

Sun reflects hood fantasies of going jamon

Crispy skin juicy flesh

Sweat breathes to release

Be careful who you swap spit with

Anyone who got a brandnew comeup

Who is this blowing up jack

Getting smacked where you laughed and played

Quickly young days pass

When in doubt say no

Have rights against self incrimination

How clean are your prints

State of art probation

In and out clean smooth

Sat stuck while world was dancing around you

Soak skyline while time allows

Ducks to cross river coasts

Rebrand the hood before developers invade

Thuggish soldier status

May keep crackers at bay

Beware; trademark and copywrite

Each good idea before it becomes a tshirt

Cup or bumper sticker

Can’t make up or choose family

Somehow exists organically

Headed towards another circle around sun

Looking for a better spot to fish

Even most gutter granite titerre

Got a plan for reformation

Can show prospects of brighter mananas

Mission statement should be

Forever sustainable legacy left behind

Indelible baked salmon lunch special

Indisposable cursed first impressions

Kept a great mask grinning genuine

Hidden pathologies inevitable sickness

Passed from generation

Clean slate

Remain dusty customers

In pursuit of barrio bliss for Borinqueneers

Gold streets promised

Never delivered