Gil Scott-Heron - Plastic Pattern People lyrics

Yes glad to get high and
See the slow-motion world
Just to reach and touch
The half notes floating
World spinning, orbit quicker than 9
8th Dave Brubeck
We come now frantically searching
For Thomas More, rainbow villages
Upon suddenly Charlie Mingus
And Ahmed Abdul-Malik
To add base to a bottomless pit of insecurity

You may be plastic because you never
Meditate about the bottom of glasses
The third side of your universe
Add on Alice Coltrane and her cosmic strains
Still no vocal on blue-black horizons
Your plasticity is tested by
Our formless assault
The sun can answer questions in
Tune to all your sacrifices
But why will our new Jazz-age give
Us no more mind-expanding puzzles?
Enter John

Blow from under, always and never
So that the morning, the sun
May scream of brain-bending saxophones

The third-world arrives with Yusef
Lateef and Pharaoh Sanders
With oboes straining to touch the
Core of your unknown soul
Ravi Shankar comes with strings attached
Prepared to stabilize your seven sins
Your black rhythm

Up and down a silly ladder run
The notes without the words
Words are important for the mind
But the notes are for the soul
Miles Davis, so what?
Cannonball, Fiddler, Mercy
Dexter Gordon, one flight up
Donald Byrd, playing Cristo
But what about words?

Would you like to survive on sadness?
Call on Ella and Jose Happiness
Drift with Smokey, Bill Medley
Bobby Taylor and Otis Redding soul music
Where frustrations are washed by drums
Nina and Miriam

Congo, mongo, beat me, senseless
Bongo, tonto
Flash through dreamworlds of STP and LSD
Speed kills and sometimes music's
Call is frustrated
And the black man is confused
Our speed is our life pace, much too fast
Not good i beg you to escape and live
And hear all of the real
Until a call comes for you to cry elsewhere

We must all cry, but tell me:
Must our tears be white?