III: Icons

Come brother dullness
tell me a tale
of young men horrified at sagging skin
of hair gone white
overnight
and women dumped in the rubbish bin.

Brother dullness has rat teeth
He gnaws small holes in hearts
These wet mouths sing
of dying things
trundled away in butcher cans.

Young death is coy
a slender boy
folded into a glossy page.
I call to him.
His venereal grin
mocks memory and age.

O daughters, where in all this hell,
my wife, my lover, where is she?
I struggle through a sea of mirrors to die
in my own heart's parody.