It hardly seems surprising that
djinns and djinnis could have
apparated
to the ancients of this place,
the land of purity and dust,
dust that settles over everything
and can only be disturbed
by the clumsy hands of a foreigner;
the land of heat and steel, the vivid, shuddering life
struggling against it
slick with sweat, trying to interrupt the constant
cloud of insects – that plague, those whirring angels of death,
watching, making Nimrods out of all of us,
who are somehow unfazed
by the Empires that rise and fall here,
the kings, and The Queen, and a nameless slew of the criminal martyrs that came afterwards,
whether by birth, sword, bullet,
or big data,
to be worshiped and defaced in turn
all fooled into thinking Order
could ever subdue this land of tooth and claw and heat
or those born of it.
Not unlike the merchants
peddling their wares in stores
whose neon signs and fluorescent lights
are easy prey for the caustic dust,
who will not have her bitter lover the Wild be outdone,
by Man no less –
no, here, civilization is crammed just outside their fury
mouths are crammed with food
and bullet trains with people
and families with children,
perhaps in the hopes of survival
by sheer number.
The filthy rich and the filthy poor
all deluded into some idea
of permanence.
