I am what I am, created in the image of God.
I am my mother’s past and my father’s future.
I am my mother’s hatefulness and my father’s ignorance, but I am bound to my mother’s soul and my father’s heart.
I am given the responsibility of the path that my sister shall walk.
I am from a home full of acknowledgment, where in other’s home my pursuit for success is not accepted.
Instead I get the turned backs of those whom I should not.
I am from the haze of Washington Heights.
I was born with the mark of a white tiger’s paw print.
It symbolizes individualism and personal truth.
I am from the blinding white of my smile, born of goals achieved.
I am born of struggles and with a stench of loneliness.
I am from the graffiti written by my hands.
I am from the softness of my melody, from the deep blue of my sadness.
I portray visions that ring loudly through my head and burn my eyes.
I am from the disgust of poverty, the hatred of race, and I see the faces of hunger and neglected children.
I am from a past of orphans, a present of crack heads, and a future with no such thing as an earth in the universe.
I am from the shame of a criminal world.
-Butta Love, the provocative verbalist
