It's not particularly brilliantly titled, but ah well. A poetic study of all the characters.

It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood.

The Lord knows that it will, or he would

If he existed,

The barber says.

He's quoting wiser men

He's hiding all his terrible knowledge

Behind his tight white smile.

The lady with blood black hair is smiling

Smiling and wandering in lands she barely knows

Stumbling confidently in desert places

She knows herself

She holds the world in thrall.

Her confidence will be her own mistake

As she grinds the meat and smiles.

The lady in the alley way is dreaming too

Her yellow hair all tangled in garbage

She smells the smoke but cannot trust her throat

To bring forth what her mind is screaming

She clutches a bundle of rags

And murmurs words of love.

The man untainted walks a line thin and invisible

He doesn't know the danger in the depths

He laughs and loves his lady

And he trusts his elder mentor

Even as the blood collects on the old man's sleeves.

The loveliest of our deathly nontet

The root of their obsessions and sweat filled dreams

Listens to bird song at the window

And ignores the yearning, tortured moans of her fathers.

She's stroking all the hatred

That she's holding to her breast.

The troll beneath the bridge, white wigged and robed in black

Cries for the lovely women of his temptations

And passes judgement for all, although he does not know himself.

He tries forgetting all between a woman's thighs

Forgetting all his shame

Ashamed of all his women, his paradoxical wound and antidote.

And in the lighter places waits his lackey

A man made up of fat and grease

Who knows that he believes in himself

Who knows that all men are the same.

He does the Devil's work

And bides his time.

Out in the streets a man is hawking wares

With every breath blessing his own depravity

He holds his servants to their task

And knows his moral code:

"What works is right and moral,

'Till you're caught out."

The last of all of them, the youngest of the nontet

Is the white faced boy, tender in his new skin

Curled like a paper shaving by his chosen mother

Ignoring the fangs and claws

Behind her lovely face.

He watches for the danger in the dark.

The last of them observes from outside

Other dimensions, where the lost are found.

He watches as the silver razors fly,

And sometimes whispers his name,

"Benjamin."