With these thousand words

I'll paint a picture in your mind that breaks the rule of thirds

Let's go right back to the start

What better way to begin

Before too much of the corruption, temptation and sin

Before the gloss was taken off

Back to sand castles and grins

Before the world we were living in turned became riddled with Ritalin

I had a very normal birth, no wise men did attend

Born into my family as son, brother and friend

I had a normal start to life with a very normal infancy

And over the years many events did influence me

But there's one that stands out now with a special place in my mind

And the more times I think back the more new memories I find

When I was four years old, out in France, I almost died.

A wave swept up to the shore and took me back for the ride.

And in that moment of fear I gazed below normal tide

That's when the depths of the ocean showed what was really inside.

I saw a man sat just below the surface on a rock.

And his wisdom filled gaze withdrew all panic and shock

And unlocked an inner calm that let me float down to his depths

Without any flailing shaking arms or panic filled breaths.

I swear we sat for hours before words were introduced.

Just relaxing in a world, below the fights and abuse.

Below the weapons of war, below the cars and the ships.

Then when he felt I understood he slowly parted his lips

"The pen is far mightier than the sword", he said,

As he stabbed his pen in my leg and the ink mixed with the red.

"With this action I inject the gift of knowledge instead

Of all the other cluttered thoughts that will clog up your head

But if at any point you take the spoken word just for granted

These words will stick in your mouth and fall out broken and parted"

It didn't hurt for some reason but I could feel a change inside

But I hadn't really understood what his words had implied

I thought I'd wait for his next words with my mind open wide

And with the guidelines that he gave me I would try to abide

Again, much time passed with silence being the topic

But the serenity was such bliss I had no words that could stop it

Then after what seemed like a lifetime had passed

He stopped and looked right through me like I was made up of glass

And at that very moment I was grabbed from this landscape

As I left this wise old figure I quickly prompted a handshake

And I was carried back to shore, my life saved by my own dad

With no memory at the time of the experience I'd had.

And so I went on with my life these things locked up in my brain

I grew up no different from the rest, everything just stayed the same

Until one day I realised sometimes my own speech was erratic

Like the needle on my record would get all caught up and static

And at school, this affliction didn't make things too easy

An easy target so the kids would sometimes laugh at and tease me

I guess there's no denying this made me stand out from the rest

But that kind of thing has never fazed me. I just took it in jest

Sure the broken stammers of a youth can kind of bring some attention

But the sympathy of a teacher can get you out of detention

And this continued, until I reached a certain age

Until I started to thrive for knowledge from every word and every page

All of a sudden, the words would just flow off of my tongue

When I got bored of how one sounded I'd just learn a new one

I started listening to all these people who showed great use of each word

Feeling the buzz with every single line from Gil that I heard

The way he manipulated the language and really made it develop

As he told another story from 125th Street and Lenox

And Mr. Mojo Risin', the American poet

Had enraptured my mind with words and would never know it

I would sit in my room for hours just listening out

For every underlying meaning in the words he would shout

Then I'd put on The Specials to hear of their social commentary

You couldn't help but get drawn in, sometimes even involuntary

And the way that Rakim would take my mind on a journey

To a kind of lifestyle and scene that never used to concern me

A completely different world to the one that I lived in

But I could connected to the language and the passion within him

So I started to write, inspired by those here before me

Id found an outlet for thoughts a way of telling a story

So I wrote and I wrote until I felt it was time

To put some of this stuff on tape and then I started to rhyme

Once I started climbing I knew there was no way I could slip

And that was the one true birth of this here Scroobius Pip

The one with the leather ties and weathered eyes

Who's 37 clever lines left 37 severed minds

The one that speaks but never lies

And sometimes fails but always tries

And the more he writes the more he finds

It pays to bleed between the lines.

They say a pictures worth a thousand words

So with these thousand words

I'll paint a picture in your mind that breaks the rule of thirds

They say a pictures worth a thousand words

So with these thousand words

I'll paint a picture in your mind that breaks the rule of thirds