He Spies the Child - (from my poetry book, Encounters)

He stalks through streets where no one cares,

as hookers sell their battered wares.
Where run-a-ways have gone to ground
and Gangland deaths are honour bound.


Where Pimps and Perps fulfil their needs,
regardless of their victims' pleas.
Evil's sick stench, scents every door,
and addicts come to make their score.

He seeks to salve his malcontent
by hunting down an innocent,
craving  purity that he can taste,
he spies the child, then seals her fate.

***
She walks the slums where she was born
bedraggled, hungry, cold, forlorn.
Her mother died whilst turning tricks
The victim of 'Just one last fix.'

In self-defence, she grew up fast,
struggled to escape her past,
with hopes of casting slums aside,
of finding someone warm and kind.

Enraptured by a man with charm,
he promised that  he meant no harm,
disguising well his true intent,
then tore away her innocence.

***
Now every night is Halloween,
since the age of seventeen.
She turns the tricks, he takes the treats,
compliance held through drugged defeat.