Disentitling Others

 

We are a mystery to ourselves and to others. 

In this world there is ugly and there is beauty. 

We celebrate one and express revulsion

for the other. Physical characteristics that

illuminate our presence are not chosen but

inherited. Are attitudes of chronic delusional

hatred deeply ingrained in a psyche anchored

where the wearer of those expressions distancing

themselves from broader humanity use their

free agency to disperse their black, violent humors

victims of their own existential psychosis eager

to proliferate their miserable rage against those

they choose as victims -- or is society at large

complicit through the very nature of humanity

shunning harmony among harmless diversities

preferring to withdraw within narrow circles of

shared culture looking outward through the

lens of dysfunction seeing threats to their own

comfort in ventilating spleen against competitors

claiming entitlement through human rights?

 

 

Partners in Malice

 

What're the chances? From wildly dissimilar

backgrounds yet both accomplished thespians.

The prince has found his princess, the princess

her prince. Their congress has lit the spark of venal

vengeance against all those presumed to have 

transgressed against their sensibilities. Two 

wounded victims with the instincts of reptilian 

savagery together mounting a set piece of odious

revelations, tawdry and unsavoury enabling them to 

besmirch kith and kin to impose shame and suffering 

to equal their own as pathetic emotional juveniles 

flailing against the injustices simmering with violent 

resentment in their minds' inner sanctum sanctorum. 

As actors in a spurious drama of betrayal, cupidity 

has its place along with celebrity, both handsomely 

spurring the misfits to the 'tell-all' jungle of lost faith 

in the inner ego's promise. Nursing a hatred so

divisive they scornfully tell all, to reap the dividends. 

 

 

Visitor From Another World

 

 

Thoughts as ephemeral as gossamer

as transitory as a butterfly suddenly seen

and instantly gone, so long submerged

resurface from the inner sanctorum of

memory where the mind has neatly

stored them without consultation with

the owner abruptly taken back in time and

place with a startling clarity of vision and

recall. The subconscious photographic

details as concise and clear as the present

no need to grope through the years that

followed, perspective narrowed to a 

personal history ringing an evanescent

bell of joyful recognition. The younger

self could not possibly have imagined one

day far in the future a thought and a stage

would be recovered, returning from the

past on its long journey to the present. A

random visitor, just dropping casually by

making contact to say hi, remember me?

 

 

Revolution

 

A revolt has been brewing. Have you heard?

There's a new inquisition in the cathedral

of righteousness and a bloodthirsty mob

like hounds at a bloodsport rally are baying

for vengeance against the wealthy and the

powerful, the colonialists and the slavers

while society shaken to its core cringes in

guilt for acts their predecessors long years

back perpetrated on huddled masses of 

 Africans and Indigenous peoples, the poor

and the disadvantaged -- the guilty known by

the pale white shade of their skin. Guilty of

being White a damning classification meant

to identify all those whose ancestors viewed

themselves owners of land and humans both

meant to be worked to produce personal riches.

Among them Black slavers and Indigenous

warmongers forgiven and upheld as victims

though they pioneered these anti-humanity sins

of exploitation. Shake and shudder all you whom

BIPOC names and blames. Prepare your last

will and testament, quiver and beg forgiveness.

 

Pillars of Fire Consuming Human Flesh

 

Sho-ah, Holocaust, systematic slaughter of

Jews by Nazi Germany. Genocidal intent.

Genocide, intent to destroy an ethnic community.

Antisemitism, rank hostility against Jews. So

clearly defined anyone can understand the import

even an academic; say a professor at a military

college for example. Who also happens to have

Ukrainian ancestry and carries an identifying

name of Lubomyr. Lubomyr is enraged, utterly

splenetic with rage that a Holocaust memorial

fails to highlight the plight of Ukrainians who

were targets of fascist Germany along with Roma

homosexuals, political opponents and physically

and mentally disabled. They too died not only six

million Jews and it is high time that Ukrainians

losses were institutionally recognized. No word

from Lubomyr of the proud Ukrainian Azov 

Battalion auxiliary SS police unit happy to aid

in the extermination of Jews among whom even 

now there is talk of the Holocaust representing a

historical 'bright period' in human history with no

wish to appropriate the Holocaust for the greater

glory of memorializing Ukrainian victims of fascism.

 

 

The Timeless Curse

Like nature itself indifferent to the impact 

of its tempests wrought upon a world cringing 

when its spinning sphere belches its molten interior 

and heaves its mantle the malediction of humanity 

launched against its most enduring, potently creative

tribe ebbs and flows. One might assume that

those chosen to absorb those dagger-thrusts 

of limitless suspicion and violent hatred

from birth to death might become immune to

their outcast status yet with each tide of the moon 

that resurrects the fabrication of a people destined 

to endure a fate bruised by lethal assaults to 

diminish the number of those whose creative 

genius advances world knowledge and prosperity 

while advocating equal justice for all, the trauma 

resurfaces to nestle deep within the ancient

inherited subconscious wracked with the certainty 

it will never end. Capriciously, it does not.

 

Crime and Punishment

 

 

The good and the bad, love and hate

celebrity and notoriety, passion and

compassion they are opposites so closely 

aligned in human nature with the capacity 

to slide from one to the other unless carefully 

monitored one emotion leading to another 

in a confused mind where discipline never

lodged leaving society bemused and transfixed 

at its outcomes. How is it even possible 

that young girls remotely joined through the 

ether of communication conspire to meet on a

public street of a thriving metropolis their

intent to commit public mischief meant to

satisfy their own curiosity about themselves.

In the process three 13 year-olds happy in

the presence of three 14-year-olds thrilled

that two 16-year-olds would notice their

presence swarm, pounce, punch, kick and

stab a homeless man, moving in for the kill 

in lock-step with death each time he manages 

to fend off their wild advances. The girls are 

indulging in an experiment to discover more 

about themselves in a sordid sisterhood of 

bored enquiry that will inform them how 

powerful their combined control can be over 

life and death. What demons drove them on this 

blighted journey of discovery?  What vision

carried  them to this brave new world?