Avina...

Out in the big wide open valley
Things can happen like anywhere
But the openness gives it a lonelier feel somehow
And then the thing can be so bad so evil
Sends the mind reeling at the savagery
Inhuman acts in desolately beautiful place
A young woman her name was Avina
Saw her story in the morning paper
Then happened upon a friend of hers today
Guess her life wasn't easy wasn't clear wasn't all it should be messed up in bad stuff
Knew some bad people
Got her drugs from them owed them some money
Seven hundred and fifty dollars an 8-ball of dope her friend tells me
I don't even know what that is
Others said crystal meth
That stuff that turns humans into savage animals
One more proof
They wanted their money they lured her to a faked robbery
In our town 15 blocks away
They took her tied her up with plastic ties put her in a car trunk
Out into the open country to the south
About a mile from where I pass each week
They dowsed her with kerosene
They set her on fire left her in an old boat
What was that doing out there?
Burned her beyond recognition 95 percent 3rd degree
Somehow somehow she stays alive
Somehow she walks blackened figure plastic ties melted into her
A mile a mile the wonder of the human spirit
Collapses in a yard
Farm workers come upon what they think is a Halloween decoration
Some black ghostly thing
It is a person and still living
Until 2 days later you know like those tough episodes on ER
Heard the guys who did it got caught gonna do maximum time or more
Good I let God take care of them
My thoughts go to a person
I really don't care about the messed-up life part life can get pretty messed up
Mind just reels at the evil humans can do
One more time
And rejects the bullshit about some sort of innate goodness of us all
While someone like Avina is treated so
And human life now has an official exact price hurry while supplies last
Seven hundred and fifty dollars

O God help us deliver us from evil for Thine is the Kingdom

Would I have written this if she had just been stabbed or simply shot?
You know as in normal regular desensitized lower-the-bar evil?
Probably not and that is the perversity of it

May somehow her life be given value and preciousness even so
She had a name
Avina