Neighbours

Within a certain house,

There is a basement; this dark hell breathes of blood.

   A dried paste covers walls and the floors,

  Made for paintings, decorates doors.

   Dying fetuses that lie upon the ferruled children,

   Rusty metal fragments drilled to the top of heads,

   Sticky liquid consumptions of stomach juices,

   Drip along the shattered dead.

Faces have suffered from erosion,

Decomposing, missing parts, butchered features,

And many have been scattered by internal explosions.

These are the bodies of young mothers, their children,

The bodies of woman who have not yet gave birth.

These are the guinea pigs of men with lost souls,

And hearts that are dead from no warmth but the cold.

  Young boys castrated with the old replaced,

  And the breast of the dead sewn on to a face.

  Intestines wrap around teenagers necks,

      And men and their wives have stakes in their chest.

Bile drips below toeless feet along the river of the young

Among teeth and their gums,