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 eighties quicksand, and many kids were swallowed whole Ingest these words of tribulation/I freebased when just sixteen By nineteen 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