Sveta In The Promised Land

Hope glimmered brightly in her future, it was a
Desire for an education, a hope for love, a teacher's utopia
A hope for a family of her own, so she kissed farewell
To her parents, and left the damp somber Eastern land
She called home and followed the illegal pied piper's song
Across the green billowing sea to the Promised Land

In her uncle's nightmare, she found her dreams scattered
One by one as she was beaten, her blood vessels shattered
Beneath the smooth pale layers of discoloured skin
Bones fractured through repeated "trips down the stairs"
Her spirit assassinated as she suffered rape after rape
Trust died in her eyes every day in the Promised Land.

The title deed of her enslavement was transferred
At a poker table in an underground gambling den
Her new master insinuating the corruption, the toxins,
The junk she smoked, snorted, injected, to alleviate the agony,
To asphyxiate her sorrow as she turned tricks on the street
His financial gain, the capitalistic dream of the Promised Land

Her youthful beauty eroded with each hit, with each screw
As her body gradually deteriorated from the drugs
And the abuse, the misuse inflicted upon her sexual being
The hooded haunted look hollowing out her stare
Until she recognised her abandonment on the avenues
A piece of refuse scuttling down the gutter of the Promised Land

Fear mesmerises her, a snakelike coercion, imprisoning her
As she patrols the burgeoning Russian communities
Of Portland and Vancouver, too ashamed to return home
Sometimes at night in a dark alley she cradles a photo
Captured of her when hope still glimmered in her eyes
The illegal emigrant's reverie, the dream of the Promised Land

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