This is it. The Villa Grimaldi.
Not the real one, of course.
That was destroyed, razed to the ground
by those who came after.
They could not touch the torturers
but they could blow their houses down.

Why will you never learn?
You cannot destroy the Villas Grimaldi.
They are timeless
and eternal.
The screams of the abused
hang wraith-like
above the ashes,
deprived even of their final home.

The blood of the beaten,
the sweat of the torturers,
the seed of the rapists
shame the ground still.
And as you are quietly erasing
one Villa Grimaldi,
someone, somewhere
is raising another,

bigger, better, more efficient.
Or taking an existing innocent abode,
unassuming and faceless
and transforming it into a torture house.
In Algeria; in Turkey; in East Timor,
in Sierra Leone.

I worked here once.
Poacher turned gamekeeper,
I lead the guided tours
for the morbidly curious.
Who better to show you around
than a former employee?
The portal is possibly its finest feature.
A Romanesque decorative doorway,
a hieroglyphic welcome to the underworld;
hope abandoned by all
who entered through this door.
An interface between reality and fantasy
Heaven and Hell. Many left,
though so few walked out.

The interior itself is undistinguished,
one room much like another now,
but in my time, well,
what a difference!
This room on the left, for instance,
sported a length of scaffolding bar
set into the wall and running
the length of the room.

We hung people from this bar
by arms, by hands, by feet.
Racked muscles till they sang,
pulled joints to dislocation.
Over on the right, here
is a room that housed a simple table.
Clients were tied to the board
whilst a variety of treatments
was administered. No,
we were not brutes!

A medical officer was present
at all times to ensure
no treatment was too extreme.
Sure, one or two took advantage
of the helpless victims;
could not resist dropping their pants
for a little free meat.
But that's human nature.

Now, everything is back to normal.
Freedom of speech, freedom of thought,
no imprisonment without charge,
no punishment without judgement.
The Land of the Free
Has other fish to fry as
fireweed screens the rubble
of our worst Villas Grimaldi

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