On 25th January 2016 Gulio Regini disappeared?
And nine days later as if by magic reappeared.
Words like disappeared seem so stupid somehow
as if the torturers and killers didn’t know then and now
who I was, where I was, and what they’d done to me
over those long hours of those nine days and nights.
Now in the silence I am able to speak about me and them.
Three times you broke my bones, and tore the nails
from my feet and my hands. And please forgive me
I confess I fully lost count of the number of times
you burnt me with cigarettes. Did you forget?
And you punctured my body with stab wounds.
And how could I overlook the sparks and electrodes
on my genitals, after all I was a man among you men,
and then you severed my spine with that final blow
and so my life was taken. Another stupid phrase…
But the torturers and executioners have many lives.
So many lives, far too many for me to easily describe.
Imagine them with their wives and their children,
all that sweat, blood and gore, my blood washed
and cleansed, as they handle their daughters, sons,
mothers too. The intimate way they touch their wives.
Are they clean and free of all, no, all that stains them?
How do they forget what it felt like holding me down?
Of the sound of rasped breathing, the smell of my sweat
as they strapped me and held me down. It’s forgotten?
Let’s agree not to call them monsters and demons
shall we…
