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Politcal Graffiti

THE RING
Written by AG and BOO

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Have you ever heard a gunshot ring throughout a neighborhood street?  Have you ever heard church bells ring in the mourning of a soul who was lost by that bullet?  Has anything ever rung true to you that you assume most people don’t get?

Before going on in reading these lyrics please understand - This one is not funny.  Baghdad, Belfast and Beirut sound like scary places.  The inner city in America is even more troublesome to me than these places because one never knows the enemy is the enemy.  I lived for a while in the Chicago area.  Gangs were recruiting younger and younger members and, without "proper gang-military training" (yes - I read that phraze in a Chicago paper?!), some of their shots went into unintended windows.  One day a child was killed in his living room by a random bullet that was fired, from the street, at the Cabrini Green apartments.  I'll call him 'Pattie.'  He was a good kid.  Not a gang member.  He is dead.  Later in that same year an infant was killed in her baby swing by a bullet fired in the general direction of the building.    We seem to have become distracted, not focused on our own back yards, and we seemed to have stopped putting the feet of the political leaders (that we have on our payroll) to the fire.  What!?  You thought you were going to get off and get a free sound byte of political puffery, satire and slams without a political statement from the author.   

Maybe Hometown Security is simply: not having Baghdad in our Bedroms. There is an enemy in America - and it is us. The best way I can see to fight it is to be good to everyone and set an example. I have more to say, but not the time to organize a message that will actually do any good, except:

My statement is this:  Take care of the kids.   Here is the song:

Hear the Song

THE RING

Once upon a winter on the Southside
Frankie made a snowman in the road
Patty’s mother wouldn’t let him outside
Recently the gangs had lost control

Chorus:
The Ring
The Ring
Can you hear them ring

Kids were being shot at in the playground
Drugs were being peddled in the halls
Patty kept a double lock and heard sounds
On the balcony outside his window walls

Chorus

Frankie came to Patty’s on Sundays
To play inside his third floor catacomb
Then one day Frank’s momma said we must pray
Today your old friend Patty won’t be home

The Ring
The Ring
Can you hear it ring
The guns
The guns
They are echoing

Now Frankie is a copper on the West Side
Guarding all the Patty’s from the ring
But how do you stop a bullet from the outside
How do you protect the Patties from the ring?

The Ring.  The ring.  Can you hear them ring?
The guns.  The guns are echoing.
The ring.  The ring.  Can you hear them ring?
The bells.  The bells..  

Can you hear them ring?



Solutions? Anyone?

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