| I remember my mother pleading
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| telling me that this meeting with a needle wasn’t needed
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| it would leave me «a disease
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| if they didn’t just sterilize it
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| the hiv or the hepatitis»
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| your generation is biased
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| you’ll see it when it’s completed
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| she’s saying she didn’t have to
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| i’m saying it’s just a tattoo
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| on my skin, but she made the kid that the skin’s attached to
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| «but what if they won’t have you in a jewish grave?»
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| well you can take them foolish ways and bury me beneath a buddha statue
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| i was surprised to find some friends were opposed
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| «like what about when you get wrinkled into stretches and folds?»
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| but if i never take a step i could regret when i’m old
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| then my regrets’ll be the only thing that i’ll ever hold
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| so i slid in the chair, palms clutching the arms of it
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| my whole body was probably limp as a sock puppet
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| used to fear the pain, now it’s one of my favorite parts of it
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| 'cause there ain’t nothing more beautiful than the scar from it
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| hook:
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| some hear the voices
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| inside of their head
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| but i had mine
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| inscribed in my flesh
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| they realign me when i am depressed
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| at least i know what they’ll read when i’m dead
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| open and close,
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| let it flow through your nose,
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| or your little lungs might forget how to breathe
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| those rusted ghosts
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| made a home on your shoulders
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| and you can trust that they’ll never leave
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| «and the just man rages
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| in the wilds where lions roam»
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| the first tat on my right rib, from the flyest poem
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| of william blake, when i was still afraid i’d die alone
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| and i was getting wasted every day like styrofoam
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| left arm’s john henry, hammer in hand
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| a tribute to the indisputable impact of a man
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| and that the united states is a graveyard of slaves
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| but only some of us are eating off the fat of the land
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| my right arm’s the grasshopper
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| from the fable of aesop
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| that sang songs while the ants labored and saved stock
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| of food for the winter, too cool to consider
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| he steadily succumbed to starvation as they watched
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| that colony of ants was responsible, right?
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| but they ain’t ever sang a motherfucking song in their life
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| and those are just a couple of the tats that i got
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| I’ll holler at you when I"m back from the shop
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| hook |