(Bernadette)
The killers
You’ve invaded my nights
Singing your haunting lullaby
Drowning other voices
Choking, suffocating, numbing
Sending me to sleep
You’ve awakened me many mornings
Like an unexpected alarm
Shattering my dreams
Confusing, terrorizing, traumatizing
I’ve talked to you in tears and anger
Spat on you in rage
Whispered to you in sorrow
Tied you in chains
Thrown you in jail
I’ve pulled you out
Asked you many questions
Knowing there would be no answers...
(Shad)
I’ll never understand how flesh being torn apart feels
Or how after all this suffering a heart heals
On the rich green fields where they killed old and young
Cold and numb, under the light of a golden sun
It still stuns, tell me what possesses man
To, in anger, raise his hand?
I’ll never understand...
(Bernadette)
I tied you in chains
Again and again, round and round
Until the chains, in my dizziness
Bound me to you
You and I becoming one!
Bound by the chains of hate
I knew then the choices to make...
(Shad)
I’ll never understand how it felt
When my mom lost her dad
Her sister and the only brother that she ever had
And I’ll never know what’s more sad
The fact they could’ve been spared
Or the fact that to this day nobody cares
For the innocent
Victims of a full-fledged holocaust
Because folks only holler if the cost
Of dollars lost is high
So regardless of the number of lives
When poor blacks die
They always turn a blind eye
And I’ll never understand why...
(Bernadette)
I untied the chains
Letting go of those who converged on my dad
Beating, pounding
Leaving him dead
I untied the chains
Letting go of those who propelled the grenade
Scattering my brother’s brains
I untied the chains
Letting go of those who knifed my sister’s throat
Leaving her begging for a better death
I untied the chains
Painfully, purposefully
Knowing the one who said to do it Seventy times seven
Totally understands the depth of my pain...
(Shad)
I’ll never understand how people can go on and live
The miracle of finding the strength to forgive
To resurrect peace, to close up wounds so deep
They pierce souls beneath heart beats
To be a willful slave to a loving God’s commands
The key to a freedom that I’ll never understand