This Is The Life These Eyes Have Seen

Always swimming against the current, traveling a path that wasn't clean

A Pandora's Box of past experiences...This Is The Life These Eyes Have Seen

I remember when in grade school/sad at home/and fewer friends

In the throes of a shattered childhood...into the abyss this youth descends

Reading, Writing, and some Arithmetic, it was the Three R's which kept me sane

Yet, in my psyche a storm was raging; nimbostratus and soaking rain

By junior high much more than wretched/abuse endured would set the tone

Dark MidTown blocks, a hustler's playground...those streets of pain I walked alone

Things were done - it's called survival, deeds mostly wrong, but sometimes right

Only God above could Love me, a desperate child who sought the Light

I knew boys who sold their "manhood", a tragic fate - they sold their soul

Forty Second, the 80's quicksand, and many kids were swallowed whole

Ingest these words of tribulation/I freebased when just sixteen

By 19 on crack and fiending....This Is The Life These Eyes Have Seen

Chasing the cloud, yes, on a mission, losing sleep to find the drugs

Looking for hits, but, finding nothing/a thousand specks on darkened rugs

Then came prison/another nightmare/just twenty six/a second bid

Introspection/ineffable loneliness to pay for all the things I did

Striving hard to avoid all conflict, encountering things that made men fear

I went so deep within my spirit; no one could ever hurt me there

Adult years of daily suffering/teenage times that weren't serene

Still, several Blessings amongst the hardships....This Is The Life These Eyes Have Seen