KYLIE...

Hush, sleep the everlasting sleep
Dream the everlasting dream
Take a kiss from my dark lips
And forever hold your peace, hush...

If I gave you my eyes
Would you give me your teeth
Or bite while you could not see?
Would you take my thoughts,
Spin them into your soul
Or blow them into a whisper?

You can’t deny your destiny,
Sleep my child, sleep,
Fall into my arms forever,
Follow me, hush, hush...

(Kylie - child prostitute)


It sounded almost as if she was reciting from the far end of an
interminable underpass. She was pleading, I knew, almost like I should do
something. But what could I say to this melancholy refugee from the
free-floating horrors of her own obsessed imagination. These were the classic
symptoms of drug-induced hallucination. And I had neither the skill nor the
inclination for abandoning myself to the fantasies of a susceptible and
over-imaginative child.

She was right, of course, on one score.

One day she simply wouldn't wake up, lacking the vitality that
energizes life. One day she would come face to face with reality. It was just a
matter of time. Life is consciousness, and like consciousness extinguishable. I
felt alert to a situation that seemed nevertheless unreal. Some psychic
dichotomies were irreconcilable. Here she was, neither woman nor child, neither
wicked nor innocent, perennially dodging the soporific affections of some
psychotic entity, spinning her soul into a web. Almost as if she no longer
belonged to herself, waking up was a struggle. A reluctant return from the magic
kingdom.

The ravings of a fourteen-year old? Certainly. But that doesn’t mean
that she didn’t have a point. At least fallen angels have some hope of
redemption. She had nowhere to turn but to drugs and dreams for her salvation.
Already, she was in freefall. I could almost see her hurtling to her death.

As she walked towards the mansion in the crisp morning air, she struck
me as the loneliest figure I had ever seen. I heard the crunch of her footsteps
on the gravel. A waif-like, insubstantial figure, apparently quite alone.

(From a true recollection, based on Kylie, a child prostitute -
fourteen years old. The poem is her own - the events are authentic).

Dreamy