From birth 
Since childhood
There's never been a time good
Crack baby
Never knew the parents
Black maybe 
Or Spanish
Skin darker, Almost Mocha, 
features average
Mixed in with all the orphans
His upbringing
Amorphous

No focus
Problems arise
And left to fester
No soul behind his eyes
Why he do that to Lester
Get him out of here
He's old enough
Toss him
The little asshole
13 and in the streets
There's pain and a can of Alpo

There's also the po-po
By now,
They know his M-O
And N O
He doesn't wanna go to jail
That's detrimental
He adapts quickly
Move to consolidate his cash, tricky 
Panhandling
Give it up to him tho
The mans handling
His B-I

And despite odds
Grows up
And moves forward
He also moves toward
Job, wife, house, three kids
What he did
Was overcome
By all accounts
He made it
 
But deep inside
He cries
There was hell to pay
And he paid it

(Hook)

Life 
A man
The two are at odds
Its hard
The struggle
Rips thru the facade
The pain
The problems
They poke and they prod
He just wants to stand strong
and be a man

Time falters
Breezing thru  
Mind altered
His kids disown him
Saw thru the blinders
Reminders of old
And then they told him
Broke thru the shell
Amidst
The bells
And the whistles
They scold him
Relinquish your grasp
On the last of the 
Memories 
You're holding

Ahhhhh
You can breathe now
Please leave now
Please see how
You can fix
What is lost
And  bereaved now
What you've callously tossed
Please retrieve now
You can try to repair 
Thru a teary eyed stare
When you're old an senile

At that 
With a awakening
He adjusts his hat
Turns once more
Before the cold wind creeps down his back
A single tear
Soon disappears
Skin wrinkled from the years
And he frowns
Walks his way down
With the weight of the world pressing
No direction
360 degree turn 
Expressing
Single thought recurring
Slides it's way inside
Distressing
Progression stops
Now it's more about regression
A lesson
No 
One of life's imperfections