HIGHWAY TO HELL
© John Davis, 21/08/2013
Winner 2013, Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival – Open Adult Bush Poetry Competition.
There’s a blight of exploitation that’s destroying lives these days
directed at our children in a dozen different ways.
In the guise of recreation so much harm is being done
when they’re encouraged to take drugs as a part of having fun.
They may start with marihuana and they think that it’s a joke.
Progress to something stronger and very soon they’re stony broke.
Then the cravings are upon them and they have to have a fix
so the boys start doing robberies and girls start turning tricks.
To satisfy those cravings they may invade somebody’s home
or bash and rob old people as through a living hell they roam.
For they’ve lost all semblance of compassion and it’s sad to say
that their dignity health and pride they have also cast away.
Though they are courting time in prison, syphilis, HIV and aids
they must have cash for the dealers who list death among their trades.
For there’s terror in withdrawal when their demons scream and shout
and the pain that racks their being they would rather do without.
With their body in withdrawal then their skin begins to crawl
and a million satanic creatures are climbing up the wall.
When the earth it seems is shaking and the pain is so intense
then the demons begin their screaming, demanding recompense.
A young man hurries down the roadway, despair upon his face
as he searches for a dealer in this god forsaken place.
And the girl standing on the corner, what she’s about is plain,
selling her wasted body to fill a craving for cocaine.
Here an evil darkness lingers though bright lights are all around
and an eerie kind of silence though the air is full of sound.
In a dirty alley doorway in the freezing cold and rain
is the body of a boy no longer feeling any pain.
With newspapers for a blanket used syringe there by his side.
An overdose of heroin! All alone this poor soul died.
And the dealers on this roadway, well don’t think that they would care
or even spare a single thought for the dead lad lying there.
For money is their god and wealth is everything they crave
and they never are concerned about the kids sent to their grave.
Pain and misery is all that’s here and lonely death as well.
Please don’t travel down this road for it’s a Highway straight to Hell.
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