Marble and mud

They built the city on polished bones Glass towers humming in corporate tones Where names are weight and pockets speak And dignity is sold so cheap I watched them eat in golden rooms While hunger learned its quiet tomb And every door that never swings Is locked with invisible rings They say “work hard, you’ll rise someday” But ladders break and dreams decay Some are born where skies are wide Some are buried still inside Marble and mud, we breathe the same air But one is crowned, and one is despair They draw the line in ink and gold And call it fate when we grow cold Marble and mud, don’t say it’s fair When the world decides who gets to care I hear the silence money makes And every heart it never breaks There’s silk in rooms I’ll never touch Where names like mine don’t mean too much And history writes in velvet lies While truth is scraping where it dies They say the poor are born to learn But learning is a bridge that burns And every step toward something more Costs more than what we had before They call it order, call it right But someone always pays the price And when the system starts to sing It sounds like rust on broken things Marble and mud, we breathe the same air But one is crowned, and one is despair They draw the line in ink and gold And call it fate when we grow cold Marble and mud, don’t say it’s fair When the world decides who gets to care I hear the silence money makes And every heart it never breaks If blood is red in every vein Why does survival feel like shame? Why does the world divide the skin And call it where the truth begins? Marble and mud, the crown and the ground One gets to speak, one makes no sound But in the dark where truths survive We are the ones who stay alive Marble and mud, the lines will fade When broken systems start to cave And every voice they tried to cut Will rise like smoke from marble and mud