Last week outlook weekly,

Spoke of the unfortunate reality,

Of people’s daily misery,

We come across and fail to see,

Everyday in the city.

Here’s yet another story :

Joe and Julie on tricky streets,

Started to roam for a retreat,

Fleeing boring classroom stools,

Where the lucky made them drool,

While they were treated as fools.

Family instability and poverty,

With neither rules nor tools,

When the body is hungryand the future gloomy,

How could Joe and Julie,

At school perform and study?

Instead of a retreat,

They were to meet,

A ugly thug full of deceit.

With drugs he was to greet,

Joe and Julie on tricky street.

Was he a friend in deed?

Or was he one in need?

A fix and a rug,

Life from bitter to sweet,changed its seat.

Short was the spree,

When the seed became tree,

The drug was no more for free.

Sower turned slaver,

He was indeed a cunning weed,

A drug trafficker, a monster.

Julie sold her body

She lost all dignity

The drug was no more free

She needed it badly.

Joe needed money

To get his fix on time,

He stole regularly,

And behaved aggressively,

Whenever he was needy.

Both caught the deadly bug,

From shared needles and drugs,

Greedy thug turned humans to slugs.

Garden laden with history,

Turned into vicious den.

Its gloss grows weary,

Humanity suffers quietly,

While we pass blindly,by the downtrodden,in that dear garden,

where misery inevitably

writes future history.

Shall we wait and see?

<B>Alain JEANNOT</B>