She weaved her way twixt errant climes
to make her own route home,
defining paths of hellish pain --
the words to fill her tome

with chapters stocked by crook and crime
and desecrated hopes,
of destiny and pedantry
for whimsy's fickle tropes.

Beginnings born in humble means
beset by death and thirst
became a life of peasantry,
of horror fit to burst

until a man with powdered dreams
cast shadows at her door,
dispensing death by dust and dope
to keep her ever poor.

She spent her teenage chasing scales
of serpentine design,
on ragged breaths and rancid tales
of terrors unbenign

but wrapped in the familiar
defamatory dirge.
Then one day, danger intervened
and tubes removed the urge.

She found her way to fame's escape
upon a backdoor stage,
her broken life lain out for laughs --
her every word and page,

and as celebrity defined
a weakness she might take,
she recognised the harrowed path
her peers could not forsake.

Instead of falling side by side,
she gripped each helpless head
and dragged them up through strata to
a place of hope instead.

These days, she is a sainted soul --
the saviour of the weak,
a trav'ller of the highest lows,
from nadir unto peak,

and power is her tool to wield
without corruption's taint,
for chance is her unpowdered high --
unmitigated saint.

She weaved her way twixt errant climes
to make her own route home,
defining paths of hellish pain --
the words to fill her tome

with chapters stocked by crook and crime
and desecrated hopes,
of destiny and pedantry
for whimsy's fickle tropes.