Viral Pandemic

 

It lurks, an unsuspected menace

patiently awaiting opportunity

for this pathogen is a rapacious threat

its endurance and communicability

a fearsome feat of nature's strange

random endowments to her creatures

both minuscule and gargantuan

whether harmless or endowed with an

appetite to consume other life forms

on the path to realizing its dedicated

existence. From its original host

patiently waiting ... waiting ...

then striking and striking again

and yet again ... its unqualified

malevolence striking terror into

the minds of observers whose

medical training informs them of

its potential as a raving and present

risk to survival of its hapless

victims, sending the clarion call

of enhanced vigilance and urgent

calls to isolate and examine its very

nature the better to arm themselves

with a discovery capable of disarming

the beast's intention of calamitous

global destruction of humanity.

 

 

Your Truth

 

What could be as headily liberating

as the freedom to speak, to release

from the prison of your mind how

you feel, what you think, your

unsolicited but urgently needed

expressions of belief, your solutions

to problems that you know exist yet

are rarely discussed, the details of what

you know so that others may too and

from your generosity of sharing may

join you in your private campaigns

or laud your courage in airing such

sentiments, perhaps even assemble a

cadre of like-minded stalwarts in a

campaign to air the musty corridors

of certainty and introduce nuances of

disbelief challenging and exciting. So

no need to clasp silently those thoughts

and misgivings lest you betray your

enmity to the smug civility of the social

contract for the greater virtue of free

speech calls. You are not truly racist

when you parry-and-thrust verbally

over critiquing the criminality of

Zionism, the penchant of Blacks to

disrupt the serenity of the white race

the slovenly habits of Asians and others

whose culture and errant habituation

sounds the clarion of disruption to the

norms. And when you scathingly consider

feminism a symbol of man-hating

bitches focused on empowering women

while emasculating men. And nor do

women have a monopoly on gender

for any man bent on upsetting their

referential superiority has but to declare 

himself an absolute her for society to 

humbly genuflect for this, you see, is the

grand power of free speech utterances.

 

 

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.

 

The Setting Sun

 

Today's is a hostile wind rousting

and howling through the naked tree

tops of the winter forest canopy.

At this season when half the world

is in mourning for the death of nature's

green growth and the other half of the

world celebrates its luxuriant blooms

memory grows dim in recalling the

brilliant colour that winter has banished

from the landscape, arrogating its reign

preferential in its exquisite presentation

of white, silver and black abolishing

the rainbow-array of dazzling shades

so luminous they inspire birds to sing

paeans to the growing seasons. The

bitter cold, with its knife-edge sharpness

the wind volunteers absorbs the glitter

of snow enthralling as the landscape

becomes. Until nature bestows day's

end with the glorious vision of the

setting sun's rays penetrating the dense

forest, setting dark trees aflame prefacing

the entrance of a short day's dusk.

 

 

Shoah .... Desolation

 

Theirs was the voice of anguish and fear

echoing spiritual disbelief and confusion

in the agony of yet another rejection

murmuring softly their trust betrayed yet

their proud existence as equals in humanity

before finally turning for compassion

abroad for hope was not yet lost though

the soul was gravely wounded. Their

obedience to a succession of rules meant

to disenfranchise and strip their humanity

a gradual exercise in humiliation finally

attaining the greater purpose in a precision

clockwork of organized cleansing toward 

the goal of national perfection and conquest 

where expunging the impure and inferior

was the first order of business to restructure

a world free of Jews. A voice unheard

calling to a disinterested audience oblivious 

with its deliberation of non-involvement

revealing a vile shared pathology. A lifetime

later the genocidal perpetrators profess

profound regret, their global audience

applauds and the sinister venom of hatred

that fuelled that genocide is once again

abroad in the resurgent world community.

 

 

In The Pre-Dusk Woods

 

In the final analysis the peculiar event

may come down simply to suggestibility

as in how susceptible you may be to unseen

but suspected creatures stalking you for

purposes known not only to its own natural

predation heritage but narratives dispensed by

others of personal worrying confrontations 

as well as news that such attacks have had

devastating consequences for those whose

devoted canine companions have sensed

danger and sprung to their humans' defense

sacrificing themselves to the jaws and claws

of creatures of the wild acting on compulsion

of their own survival. You are nervous and

wary, tramping through the icy winter forest

trails impressed on the deep snow leading off

paths into the density of the snowbound interior

where evening dusk is yet to creep its presence.

With you are two small dependent leashed

dogs who suddenly begin a hysterical chorus

of barks at the approach of a large and well

behaved dog and a woman with whom you

exchange cordial greetings and advise her

of the daytime presence of coyotes in the

wooded ravine you are both traversing. The

dogs leap and frolic then become suddenly stiff

while a movement off the side, furtive, quiet

captures your eye as you think you see a

tall, lean, grey creature sidling behind a

copse of trees,startled by the fuss; another

on the opposite side, as you incredulously

convince yourself that what you see is what

is occurring then and there. And suddenly not.

 

 

Heritage, Tradition, Culture

 

There is much reason to look back in time

with awe at the peak of civilizational, artistic

philosophical, scientific and inventive genius

of a multitudinous people of the ancient past

when the Middle Kingdom presided over

the East as an example of what the human

mind could aspire toward and the aesthetic

appeal of perfection in art when exquisite

scrolls brushed philosophical formulae for a

millennium of outstanding achievements in all

fields of human endeavour. Today we look back

with veneration at the fine creative intelligence

the invaluable lessons, the artifacts of grace and

beauty, and marvel. Archeology had dusted

away the accumulated detritus of time to

reveal peerless porcelains and jades, strategic

military formulae, terracotta armies, a great

wall able to withstand siege, administrative

genius based on merit alone and infinitely

more, revealing that ancient place of history

so at odds with its current iteration where

tradition and heritage are scorned in favour

of a brave new world of government monopoly

with an irresistible drive to mercantile power

and political conquest bypassing the values

of yore exemplified by thriving open markets

to feed the limitless population in varied

metropolises catering to China's vast appetite

to consume all that nature has given life to.