180 Degrees

Don’t wanna die; don’t want to die, so why can’t I live?
My life is so fucked, I fucked it up, how do I endure this shit.

From the start, promises made, I took to heart;
You can be anything, wanting to be everything;
Yet and still I was the only thing, that I was instructed not to be,
What I could never be, look into my eyes and you will see;
The disillusion and all the confusion, of this great mind wasted,
Over my boy’s house getting basted, was all that I wanted to do,
Seem like my life was already through.

At seventeen a grown ass man, in my mind;
With no drive, no purpose in being alive,
Just wouldn’t strive; to be the best;
Life beat on and stomped by the stress,
Until the day that I just stopped.

And saw, off a ways kinda far
Into my life and where it was heading, the path that I was treading;
would have been the end, if I hadn’t then;
Made the choice, for a sort of divorce, time to change my course;
A change of venue, that what I’m here telling you.
How I spun my life 180 degrees.

Hear the guts and gory, here are my guts and glory, if your patient I’ll give you my life story.
A clipped winged hawk, a broke winged eagle, watch him still soar.

Looking for my way out, trynna turn my shit about, run up Zion and shout;
You’d better admonish, see what I could to accomplish;
But not sure myself, all effort placed high up on a shelf;
Placed deep in the back, seeded by the lack;
Of determination, no matter the occasion;
Not one innovation, lost in the equation-
1 man + Baltimore city = another nigga in the system.

So I hope the point you aren’t missing, or my mistakes your getting close to making, and no I'm not telling you the end, or trying to pretend, that I have stopped every sin;
Just enough because I have learned, just make sure lack of effort doesn’t cause you to burn.

Not gonna die, I will never die, come see this black man live.