Exhibitionism's Grandeur

 

 

This child whose face is perpetually grimed

 

in a paroxysm of rage will never win a beauty

 

contest nor be credited with a sweet demeanor

 

but she has become immensely popular as one

 

with an aggrieved message to deliver in a

 

manner quite congruent with her pathology on

 

the autism spectrum of oppositional defiant

 

disorder, despising authority so redolent of

 

adolescent juveniles' resentment of adults'

 

positioning themselves as authoritarian in the

 

belief they have the right to regulate children's

 

behaviour. Children invest much in their gleeful

 

assertions that it is adults with their lack of vision

 
who have disrupted nature's unblemished accounts.

 
What a different world we now inhabit than might 

 
have been imagined a half-century ago when 

 
parents felt assured of the sex revelation of

 
their offspring at birth, to the very present 

 
when what you see is not necessarily what you

 
believe with gender dysphoria representing yet

 
another life-disruptive issue in the social order

 
pitting progressive authority against the mere

 
status of parenthood. Long years past people

 
were aware of quaintly rare anomalies such as 

 
hermaphroditism and homosexuality and the

 
attraction to transvestism as an entertaining

 
novelty, before an entire championship and

 
celebrated industry arose embracing the 

 
new reality of errant humanity's fascination

 
with the dazzling display of nature's occasional 

 
deviation from the boring irrelevant ordinary.

 

 

Arming The Faithful

 

In a world obsessed with the wonders

of high tech, give some thought to the

preoccupation of Islam's ventures in faith

introducing to the world the advances

that can be made in asymmetrical

warfare with the use of low-tech and

no-tech, simply ingeniously using tools

at hand beginning with tasking the devout

to prove the strength of their faith in jihad

with the ultimate sacrifice exalted in

the noble robes of martyrdom and heroism

to which end suicide vests become the

explosive devices of first choice followed

in haste by the simple medium of

improvised explosive devices as an

example, and for truly maximum impact

in the efficacy of holy wars astutely

diverting passenger jets as missiles

aiming to strike symbolic high-rise 

edifices housing thousands of those

unpliant non-believers as their just due

for insulting the Prophet. And during times

of high tension confronted by powerful

states whose enmity augers conventional

warfare their armaments well equipped

to extinguish the ambitions of conquest

full use of deadly missiles in planned

mass slaughter to send the world into

disbelief at the commission of war crimes

yet not seen as such by the perpetrators who

profess no responsibility for the carnage

and cast blame on those surreptitiously

assaulted by proxy militias on order

from none other than the sacred scripts

of a holy spirit whose disciples are legion.

 

 

Silently

 

Silently, cresting the blue bowl
of the sky, the snow goose
spreads wide its wings
loftily gliding in its
mundane ecstasy of flight
this mid-November day.

Well below, sturdy masts
of gnarled old pines stir in the
prevailing, insistent wind.
In the depths of the woods
stir creatures of the wild.

An owl, unperturbed or
deliberately unmindful of
anguished, irate shrieks of hawks
the racketing of mobbing crows.
He roosts, in a tree crook
master of surveillance
to swoop when he cares to
upon un-vigilant mice, hare,
voles and birds not of his
distinguished feather.

Oblivious to the riotous drama
woodpeckers clank lustily
on trunks of spruce, pine, fir.
The lunatic peal of the Pileated
rents the atmosphere.

Signalling arrival of dark
scudding clouds obliterating
the wavering, late-afternoon
sun. Soon, ice pellets strike
against the landscape.
The chattering of nuthatches
chickadees, waver, then still.

The lion of winter testing his
imminent arras. The season resists
damping winter's ardour. Sleet
turned to innocuous rain
thrilling the primeval moulds
mosses, lichens and ferns.

Look, there - on the forest floor
a body, swiftly decaying.
Its red breast and sadly
dishevelled feathers a mass
of compost to enrich the
leaf-dense, richly damp earth.
Tardy migration has its price.

 

 

Unquestioned Faith

 

William Blake

What a conundrum it is that the human psyche 

finds no rest within its spirit in the absence of

the recognition of faith in a spiritual and heavenly

instructor whose divine guidance resonates in

the human soul with gratitude that such an 

all-powerful spirit, one whose nature it is to

permit the existence of all that is and to grant

humanity exceptional stewardship of all

creation as the centre of the universal being

of all that is and will ever be, favoured as they

are with the instruction to worship none other 

for all are false posing as prophets claiming

kinship with the almighty one, of whom there

is none other. Peace and loving kindness the 

primary observation of this tender god in whose

name and thunderously pious injunctions to

follow and bear witness bringing others to his

celestial knee, in the process striking the terror 

of anger in no wise suppressed should human

actions displease the spirit in whose name peace

and loving kindness is proffered to all, even the

misguided, choosing to abstain from serving

god's will, who for their unfortunate choice must 

vacate life, for what the holy spirit has created 

that same spirit can uncreate, with the avid

helpfulness of those of unquestioned verities.

 

 

Our Selves

 

Suspended in the primal aqueous
security of our mothers' wombs
we take presence in the genetic soup
that forms us, absorb our mothers'
plaintive whispers of accented fear
experience beyond memory the pain
and anguish that will mark our days.

Leavened by primordial nature's
ever-evolving displays of being
and the opportunities we are enjoined
to grasp, complementing destinies
fulfilling souls' desires. In the process
finding elusive pleasures. Discovering
possibilities, clasping them close
and in a lifetime hurling ourselves
into the future, the reality of life.

Neatly side-stepping when we may
the imperial realities of all existence that
inform and forewarn us, even while
we studiously look elsewhere
preferentially remain oblivious
to that long and steady journey
an imperative we cannot deny.

But then, why linger on the distant
inevitability when we can take comfort
in the meaningful present. Impressions are
what form our memory, our being
clasped close to the heart of who we are.
While we are here, the who and what we
are is what must consume our being. 

 

A Tale of Two Walls

 

Unexpectedly, spectacular in its bitter resolve
to remain there, squatting mercilessly
as the symbol of irreconcilability
it suddenly, miraculously imploded on itself
collapsing, leaving a host of dazzled,
confused, triumphant prisoners
to emerge, the light of freedom realized
settling into consciousness like the
heavens themselves revealed. Free at last.

Echoes of another, earlier release
from brutal bondage barely recognized,
memories of the living dead released
from death camps. How precise is this irony
that the murderously irenic-averse
population complicit with the annihilation
of the pestilential Jews among them
suffered themselves a dim shadow of the
relentlessly mortal agony of official genocide.

The cleansing of the community,
the nation, the continent and ultimately
the world, of the existence of predatory
power-assertive, controlling Jews.
Shakespeare would have thrilled to
this moral dilemma, the bleak humour,
the black destiny, the upheaval
and the clever disposal of so many
throwaway lives, from infants to
three-legged doddering babblers.

Yet another anniversary; that which presaged
the cruel turmoil, the incessant slaughter
signified by shards of gleaming glass, goes
yet unacknowledged. There are the usual
preliminary dark clouds gathering on the
endless horizon of man's inhumanity to its own.
Another Kristallnacht abetted by the demonic
slander that soils the atmosphere. Perish
the very thought! But all the symptoms, the
signposts point unerringly there.

The dissenters - all those whose livid hatred
of surviving world Jewry become now citizens
of their very own land, their sovereign country -
speak of their own truth; their resurgent bigotry
has found its very own theme to augment
The Protocols, with another wall of desperation.
This one separating not a single nation with
polarizing ideologies, but two separate nations
one of which designs to obliterate the other
while proclaiming itself the sad victim, the
other the evil damned-by-acclamation occupier.

 

 

The Yearning Widow

 

Little do they yet know

she has long since freed her spirit

from the confines of her body

in her grieving yearning to join him

who preceded her and left a

yawning chasm of desolation

her mind could not overcome.

They who love her and for whom

her bleak future, blank stare and

refusal to live in his abysmal absence

resolve to resuscitate in her a will

to live through the poignant memory

of what was, little comprehend the

depth of the irresolvable vacuum 

and futility of their focus on life for one

who has lived and now will not.