SITTING WITH THE DEMONIZED
[…] And history is the dailiness
of weapons prescribed upon our bodies…
…And history
Has no compassion that we can long for
Our beginning and no intention that we can know what’s ahead
And what’s behind
−Mahmoud Darwish
If only I could seat
with those demons
−one underground like in Hades,
−the other above the landscape of Mad Max
equally emaciated, one digging his grave
the other kissing the hand of a ‘savior’
handing flour at the point of a gun
One with 666 days of beard,
the other with his stunted growth as companion
Definitely not angels to be wrestled with
they incarnate non-transactional dreads
having turned into tortured flesh
the turbulence of history and lands
Floating above committees, assemblies
omissions, tribunals, flags and manufactured facts
flashing their presence at the gate
of reasons aplenty rising from the mist
they, the demonized, over and beyond the fog
of convenient narrations demand a hearing
the comfort of feeling the gentle stroke of agency
a release from the propagation of self-serving stories.
Pina Piccolo, 4 August 2025
Cover image: Hieronymus Bosch, The Last Judgement