Love and Manipulation Video (MV)

Sometime I gotta wonder
If my mama ever loved me
If at moments that I ever loved her
If the things I suffered kept me closer
To the life I started different
From those summers I remember
A degenerate seeking refuge
In the refuse of his childhood
Blue, black, beaten
By the drugs inside the system
Veins stained red
By the love for his brethren

It's hard to tell the time
Nowadays he just writes a rhyme
To keep it straight along his spine
He got his problems neatly lined
Try and take it one a day
The way he only knows it
He's free to stay and play like poets
Singing for their names, their souls sold it
Sold suffering to the grave, raw minds composed it
Told it by trade, on the streets stray drifting
Like a burn out, got his hand out
Flat out splayed on cold ground
Feel the seconds closing down
Like red ribbons rolling out
On fingertips folding round
His voice choking out
Made to feel the guilt
In the stillness of his will
As her words are gilded
And his shadows are stilted
And his visions start tilting
As her reasons start wilting
And everyday he set off
Hoping he'd be met with appreciation
And everyday he came home
Knowing he'd be met with deprecation
Setting hooks inside his dome
Working like experimentation
Prying away his cold stone
Got his back up on indignation
And all he could do was roam
Across the rain looking for gratification
Hoping he'd be left home alone
Everyday fastened and tight-gripped
Waiting for a day when he might trip
On knuckles and words, lines slipped
Between love and hypocrisy
Silent curses, his wings clipped
Rejection and refusal met with heresy
The rest of his days burnt at the stake
What's left of his pages turned into a charade
But the mud and the blood don't kill him
No, it's the rosebuds and rain floods that fill him
With joy and despair
Away from that love and toxicity
That love and toxicity

Sometime I gotta wonder
If my mama ever loved me
If at moments that I ever loved her
If the things I suffered kept me closer
To the life I started different
From those summers I remember
A degenerate seeking refuge
In the refuse of his childhood
Blue, black, beaten
By the drugs inside the system
Veins stained red
By the love for his brethren

When you see the time, call me from below
When your senses go fading slow
Flowing like a river, rocking rolling
No boats gliding wide across shores
Golden falling from the eyes
Roses dying like a prayer
And he's lost again
He got his eyesight rolling back
In the twilight twisted strapped
To the highlights in his past
And her strikes are flying hard
Like a liar styling mad
To make his mind's quiet last
Til his vision takes off
On criminal flight
Lines rolling waves
Upon the doorsteps making trace
Visuals taking place
Of his shadow and his face
In a blissful way
Like he's forgetting about his pain
Like he's stepping out his way
Like he's walking round in chains
Like he's slipping down the drain
But ablutions don't come by absolutions
When you're looking for solutions
To the traffic contraptions
Got him stuck in traffic depression
Feeling like this crossroads
Won't take him home
His words swallowed
Don't make him whole
Suicidal thoughts are loaded
Stoned blank to his bones
Choking twisted on lies fighting
Like distrust of politics trying
Too hard to hide the crime
Rolling with public and courting the grime
His world view fades to vapor and mist
Like pearly gates laid upon his eyelids to rest
Thinking where can I turn
Face to face with his own transgression
Thinking where can I run
Chase the race to the end of creation
Thinking where can I go wrong
When there's no doing right along her companion
Knowing this is where I stand
Between her love and manipulation
Knowing this is where I stand
Between her love and manipulation

Sometime I gotta wonder
If my mama ever loved me
If at moments that I ever loved her
If the things I suffered kept me closer
To the life I started different
From those summers I remember
A degenerate seeking refuge
In the refuse of his childhood
Blue, black, beaten
By the drugs inside the system
Veins stained red
By the love for his brethren