Hades Wants a Stapler and a Friend

In all these years, I still have not been able 

to find the beauty in a maggot filled mouth.

Death is death.

All the people trickling in through my gates,

the curling veins in their widened eyes bulge in the dark.

They’ve forgotten they’re dead.

I watch the procession,

but their eyes never focus on me.

the coins slipped under their tongues,

fall at my feet; spit covered.

A man passes me; a lunatic 

his lips stapled shut. 

I like to think that at least the mad 

are at home here.

I pop pomegranate seeds, 

like addicts down here 

used to pop painkillers,

and wish my mind would unravel 

like that of staple-lips.