Mother

Standing aloof her aspect is
austere, detached; she stares
into the distance like
a captured slave, all hope
fled. On each shrivelled
breast hangs a dead child,
attached like limpets, cold and
desperate in despair, swinging as she
moves, like dead flies in a filthy
web. Regret tortures her spirit like some
daemon of the past, squatting  on her
bent shoulders, whispering into her
ear, grinning obscenely as it stares
mockingly into her eyes.
She tears impotently at her belly
with her fingernails
as though she can burrow a
pathway back to life,
but the demoniacal laughter grows
louder as her skin becomes a ploughed
field, sown only with the seeds of the
Dead.