AfroPoets Famous Writers
PAINT IT BLACK
Picture a man of nearly thirty
who seems twice as old with clothes torn and dirty.
Give him a job shining shoes
or cleaning out toilets with bus station crews.
Give him six children with nothing to eat.
Expose them to life on a ghetto street.
Tie an old rag around his wife's head and
have her pregnant and lying in bed.
Stuff them all in a Harlem house.
Then tell them how bad things are down South.
Written by Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011)
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