Drugs

​The user.

It's all about the next fix

getting the money - by any means

locating a dealer 

maybe on a street corner 

down a dark alleyway 

and getting the deal done.

​The users future is just a map with all roads leading back to this same street corner

this dark alleyway,

with everything else erased - pointless

like a heart that forgets how to care,

a body with no soul,

this everyday ritual

is a ritual every day,

these small bags of powder exchanged for a crumpled note, 

a coin of the realm.

The dealer.

Just a middleman 

the rarely seen ghosts,

passing on the misery

often users themselves

supply to survive

selling a brief exit 

from a world that feels too heavy to bare

in a gloomy world

dealers pass on a moment of light

that eventually dims into the inevitable ending.

​These consequences don't arrive in a flash of light

more,

like a cancer

imperceptible at first

unnoticed

unfelt

in which ​the 'wallet' feels it first - emptied out until it has no reason to exist 

​like a house with no roof,

no windows

just a cold; wet pile of bricks

nothing more,

pointless

on just another pointless day 

on another pointless afternoon like any other.

The Drug Lords.

The 'number one'.

'The boss'

​just follow the money

up the chain, 

up past the dealer on the street corner 

up past the dark alleyway,

up to where the air smells of cologne and expensive cars.

At the top of the chain

the 'drugs lords' sit in their ivory towers

looking down at a city,

a city they’ve turned into a chessboard - one where it's always their next move.

​They're not affected by what they trade in

they don’t even walk the streets on which it's sold - they hover over their destruction in helicopters!

Their garages house cars that cost a lifetime of 'deals',

deals that cost lives.

Huge houses full with the 'hangers-on'

the 'hired hands'

people who look like magazine covers,

beautiful

yet false - and temporary!

​And sat beneath a chandelier made from tear shaped crystals - the 'top man'

he; never content with his vast wealth

totally uncaring,

callous

oblivious to the fact that the silk sheets on which he sleeps

were woven by the short miserable lives of the users,

who wait,

with the crumpled notes,

on the street corners,

down the dark alleyways, 

the seedy places where his deals are done.