Dread Locks
Growing my dread locks in Trinidad
Was for all the right reason
But some didn’t understand
They think I was a bad person
I remember early one morning
Going with friends to the river to bath
And all of us had dread locks
So people would look and be afraid
People we knew all our lives
Some we went to school with
Now the look at us passing
Like we are from another planet
Being Rastafarian in this society
The police harass us all the time’
To them you were guilty
With out committing a crime
It’s legal to buy cigarettes and alcohol
Get cancer or drunk and fall down
But when choose to grow our hair
They point fingers saying we’re wrong
A true Rasta follows the holy book
Samson had seven locks of hair
And see in the vow of a Nazareth
Its there so very plain and clear
We use to read the holy bible
The bagwhat gita and noble Quran
The only way to gain knowledge
Is to read, discuss and understand
my friends were kind and humble
Don’t drink alcohol, don’t eat pork
But people see them on the street
They would go on the other side to walk
We use to Smoked marijuana
At night after the sun goes down
Like two joints among six of us
Rocking to some bob Marley songs
The police had the right to abuse you
And send many innocents Rastas to jail
And the judge will ask for a lot of money
So they can never get out on bail
And for me being an Indian Rasta
Some times it use to be hell
Then we got tired of the harassment
And a lot of us cut our dreads as well
Bob Marley and I look the same
All of my friends use to say
And cutting my dreadlocks
Is a mistake I regret up till today?
I leave all my dread locks pictures
In Trinidad when I came to the USA
And many years after I went back
They were destroyed or thrown away
This is just a part of my life story
A little history of my background
Sometimes I want to keep on writing
But if I don’t stop my poems will be to long
Copyright © Kasim Ishmael | Year Posted 2013
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