I am a hustler
I don’t steal
I hustle
I play the system with quick deals
Hustlin free meals
And back door VIP entrance to Little Temple Bar
I got the hook up on Thursdays at Zanzibar
Best prices in town for Cuban cigars
I smuggle in from Beautiful Havana
$300 or best offer
Tony Montana got nothin on my hustle
I hustle parking tickets with letters
Exchange Marshall’s at Macy’s for something better
I hustle free flights if my plane gets delayed
I told you Im a hustler and I gotta get paid
No justification for bad service and negligence
I outsmart big corporations with my intelligence
Teach Spanish to rich white folks for $45 per hour
While I empower my people for free
I charge a fee for written translations
Hustle my craft
And artistic creations
Sell my poetry for $5, $7, $12 and $15 donations
I make altars for the Gods and the Deities of your desire
I make paper prints and I pass out flyers
I sell study guides for final exams
So students can cram the night before the test
I take American Apparel bootleg shirts
And I stitch designs on their chest
Sell them for $25 a piece
So I can be at peace
With my student fees
See
I hustle
Just to get thru college
Hustle to find truth within institutional knowledge
Hustle to get where I am going and not forge where I’ve been
While I am stuck in this in-between place of higher learning
That makes me feel out of place
Amongst mi gente
They are hustlers too
Slangin fake ids and papers at the corner of McArthur park
Not quite 21…cant get in the club?
No worries…we got you covered
Like the tarp canvas that we spread across the top of our pick up trucks
To keep the frutas clean
And the flores dry
Hustle like cable black boxes that give us 110 channels
For the price of 2
No electrical engineering degree required
Just Juanitos plyers and a little ingenuity
We hustle
Like $100 bank accounts trying to cover 1st of the month expenses
Rent is due, checks ain’t come, either homeless, or hustle
So we hustle
Mi gente
The true hustlers of this nation
That are beat down and kept down by million dollar corporations
See…my people’s resistance is my inspiration
So I hustle
Hustle like Paisanos hustling naranjas on Crenshaw and the 10
Like Familias indocumentadas hustle for rent
Like Senoras on their porches selling pupusas
Like Madres in sweatshops sewing blusas for 8cents a piece
Like my students hustle to survive the police
We hustle
And when all odds are against us
We survive
Because hustlers somos los que luchamos when we have nothing
And turn nothing into something
Like magicians
Miracle workers
Shahman
Healers
Curanderas
Santeras
Connected to the earth
Our sweat births miracles
We see visions of la virgen in food and shelter
Yemaya manifested in clean water
Tonantzin crafting warmth on winter nights
Our ancestos feeding out spirits to fight oppression
In this new world order
Building new world borders
Fear of deportation
War zones en la frontera
Porque dicen que de este lado la vida merece la pena
Nuestra gente expulsada de su tierra
Families no longer emancipated by a labor of love
For the land where they once harvested Maiz, Café, Azucar
Now big companies justify displacement from our ancestors with free trade agreements
Justify stealing indigenous lands with privatization
And justify our people’s exploitation
With illegal immigration
We no longer work to live
Now live to work
On orange groves and grape fields
Mothers are relocated from their sons and their daughters
As they hustle their way up north
Hustle past border patrol
Dodging bullets
Trying to make it alive all the way across the rio grande
To send money back home
And hope for one day reuniting
Yet we keep fightin and we keep hustling
To keep our families from drowning in poverty
Flooding our cities
Destroying our homes
Now bones
Covered by Wallmarts, MacDonalds and Coke
Choke our brothers and sisters
In India and Colombia
Where 8 union organizers were shot dead for wanting enough bread to feed their children
And how can we not hustle
It is written in our DNA it runs through our feet into hands into action
It is not a fraction of being but our whole
It is engraved into our soul like the shahid that will fight till we regain everything they stole
And we will not hold back
We will hustle like Iraq hustled US soldiers
Like Palestinian Homes hustle bulldozers
Like Cuba hustles the Embargo with Pride
Like South Africa hustled Apartheid
We will hustle
Because it is innate to rise and uprise against
Their institutions of hate
Must be destroyed
Before we can create
So resist
Keep Fighting,
Get with the program
And get your HUSTLES ON!
