Mirror Madness

I don’t look at mirrors
often or for long,
for when I do I always

fasten upon my eyes,
ostensibly windows
to the soul, yet when

I look more closely at
my self looking back,
there is the naked id,

wild and rapacious,
yammering to be free.
And in the background

of this stark insistence,
I see a long prehistory
of claw and need,

a collective memory
of ritual and rapine,
myth and madness,

seething back to
the bloody primeval.
I don’t look at mirrors

often or for long,
for when I do, I feel
that I could fall in.

Appeared in HWA Poetry Showcase