Soul Khan, Arthur Lewis - Rusted Ghosts lyrics

I remember my mother pleading
Telling me that this meeting with
A needle wasn't needed
It would leave me a disease
If they didn't just sterilize it
The HIV or the hepatitis
Your generation is biased
You'll see it when it's completed

She's saying she didn't have to
I'm saying it's just a tattoo on my skin
But she made the kid that
The skin's attached to
"But what if they won't have
You in a Jewish grave?"
Well you can take them foolish ways and
Bury me beneath a Buddha statue
I was surprised to find
Some friends were opposed
"Like what about when you get wrinkled
And it stretches and folds?"
But, if I never take a step
I could regret when I'm old
Then my regrets'll be the only
Thing that I'll ever hold

So I slid in the chair
Palms clutching the arms of it
My whole body was probably limp
As a sock puppet used to fear the pain
Now it's one of my favorite parts of it
Cause there ain't nothing more beautiful
Than the scar from it

Some hear the voices inside of their head
But, I had mine inscribed in my flesh
They realign me when I am depressed
At least I know what they'll
Read when I'm dead

Open and close let it flow through your nose
Or your little lungs might
Forget how to breathe those rusted ghosts
Made a home on your shoulders
And you can trust that they'll never leave

"And the just man rages
In the wild's where lions roam"
The first tat on my right rib
From the fliest poem of William Blake
When i was still afraid I'd die alone

And I was getting wasted
Every day like Styrofoam
Left arm's John Henry, hammer in hand
A tribute to the indisputable impact of a man
And that the United States is
A graveyard of slaves
But only some of us are eating
Off the fat of the land

My right arm's the grasshopper
From the Fable of Aesop
That sang songs while the ants
Labored and saved stock
Of food for the winter, too cool to consider
He steadily succumbed to starvation
As they watched

That colony of ants was responsible, right?
But they ain't ever sang a
Motherfucking song in their life
And those are just a couple of
The tats that I got
I'll holler at you when I'm
Back from the shop