Deviant Angel

Deviant Angel
(dedicated to "Zoe", a 14-year-old interviewed in The Sunday Times 04/04/04)

Dark, the seedy room
of a Hotel 81, contaminated
with post-coital odours, while a girl
lies crying besides a snoring man.

Tender arms crisscrossed
with scars and track marks,
each one telling a sad story
of abuse, despair, neglect.

She neverknew any father.
Mother is always beating her,
her boyfriend hurt her real bad,
too horrible for words.

Dropped out of school at
age 12, why stay on anyway?
It's no use, nothing can drag her
out of this hellhole.

Coke, grass, ice, beer, glue.
The keys to another unreality.
They have it all, so that
it would not hurt anymore.

And the vulgar arms of strange
men, night after endless night,
each one a poor substitute
for the love that is absent.

Yet...... hope endures.
Maybe there would be someone
who truly loves her, to lead her,
a deviant angel, out of the darkness.

But dream as dream does,
for now, all she can do
is to run, as far as she can,
away from everything, anything.