How does a hero, scholar, politics conglomerate,
get written out of history by gentleman's bullet?
The man could rant and rave that his honor wasn't saved,
a duel to the survival of the fittest - in the end it was the shittiest –
way for a man to rise above his birth and way beyond the girth
of his past
and at last
get put into the earth.
The burr in his saddle, the leader of the cattle,
by no means evolutionary but blessed with the proximity
whose aim was no atrocity but he got along fine;
and on the day when it counted
all obstacle surmounted
when he shot Alexander Hamilton and it went into his spine.
In the end I suppose that's the way it goes
when a revolutionary slanders an opponent
and I don't say I don't condone it
when the man becomes a legend and the running mate a mercenary.
Did you hear the bells in the church, looking from the steeple,
rocking to the beat of a new kind of people,
they celebrate with song and brewery,
cursing King George's dirty tricks,
still on the high of the victory in Seventeen-Seventy-Six.
But wait!
Funny how hindsight can be an oversight when you're rushing out the door,
without looking back on the slave ships that come before,
they still arrive in droves docking in the coves
selling mankind like a polished black woodstove.
So my hypothesis for the Americas is inevitable metamorphosis,
a defeat in battle for the enslavement's psychosis.
Put the chains down and remember there is more,
it didn't end with Hamilton in year Eighteen-O-Four.
It's true that Alexander died and Aaron Burr spied
and went to prison for his treason, but I gotta have a reason for the pages to be turned
even when partial histories are burned,
there's a uprising that don't need 'em
and it revels in the sound of freedom and the cry of men, women, children
who are bound but must be filled
with hope, hope, hope for change
from the bowels of a ship cage
lying in their filth,
have hope oh forgotten for your daughters and your sons,
for God's justice begins in Eighteen-Sixty-One.