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. 

 

 

On This Winter Day

 

 

When a wide blue sky towers over

a winter day extreme cold prevails

irrespective of the beaming sun's

filtered fingers illuminating the forest

canopy finding its way through the

network of naked branches to glance

piercingly off snow packed on the

forest floor, as opposed to the relative

mildness that prevails on a pewter sky

day, shielding the sun. On this day

the sun shone, casting long shadows

in mid-afternoon. On such days even

a slight breeze lifts and turns paper-thin

foliage stubbornly clinging on those

immature oak, beech and hornbeam

standing their place among the fir

pine and hemlock in this woodland

where days of snow events were

punctuated with freezing rain, tamping

down the snowpack to a hard crust.

Down in the valley of the forested

ravine migration-averse robins alight

by the steadily streaming creek in

their search for food, and somewhere

above, chatter chickadees and a lone

nuthatch, birds of the boreal forest.

 

 

It Was a Very ? Year

 

It Was a Very ? Year

 

The year I was born my parents greeted

their first-born child, with three more

to follow at substantial intervals, all

to an immigrant family living in pride and

poverty, escapees from racial bigotry

social and institutional violence seeing

no possible future for themselves where

they were born. It was, coincidentally the

year that Nazi Germany denied the 

League of Nation having any business

interfering in the way it treated Jews. In

that year of 1936 Britain's King George

died, making way for the ascension of

Edward VIII; Hitler opened the 4th

Winter Olympics; 4 million French workers

went on strike; racists almost beat Leon Blum

to death; the Hindenburg had its first test

flight; Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles

Jews were warned of arrest should they

attempt to vote; Italy, Austria and Hungary

signed the pact of Rome; Britain, the U.S.

and France signed a naval accord; Italy

firebombed Harar, Ethiopia; Arab

highwaymen near Nablus killed three Jews;

Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa;

General Francisco Franco began the

Spanish civil war; The "Nazi Games" of

the 11th Olympic games opened in Berlin;

Benito Mussolini celebrated his "axis"

with Nazi Germany; A British Royal 

Commission investigated the underlying 

cause of anti-Jewish riots which the Arab 

Higher Committee boycotted; Japan and

Nazi Germany signed the Anti-Komintern

pact; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia

Kazakhstan and Kirghistan joined the USSR;

Edward VIII abdicated for Wallis Warfield 

Simpson; and humble me was born.

 

 

Here In Spirit

 

You are gone, but your indomitable spirit

defying even the Angel of Death lives on.

Unbidden, memories of you visit us daily.

Your loss and our grief daily replenished in

snapshots of your loving and beloved

presence in our lives. Your brother recalls

your being there yet knows you are now not. 

There is nothing, no one that can replace

you in our hearts, though yours stopped

beating through the daily cadence of our 

lives together sharing the joys and all the

tribulations that life brings for all too short

a time. Little did we realize in the moment

when we took such anxious care to shield

you from the vagaries of life's unexpected

threats that the most implacable enemy of

life would nonetheless enter at the time and

place of his greatest advantage taking you

from us. Time's essence has not mitigated

our loss and your memories do not yet 

compensate for your abrupt departure.

  

Inspired Language

The muse of literacy is not amused.

She is in fact beyond the state of bemused

quite beside herself in the face of the

unaware unwillingness of those who

embark upon that most common of shared

human expressions to exert themselves

not fastidiously, but deliberately and

with all due courtesy to language -- use

the words meant to convey their thoughts

and use them accurately, inclusive of the

specific order of the alphabet that identifies

those words, for the elegance of language

and communication demands no less.

I know all this and so would you if you

but heeded her rules through the simple

expedient of respect and admiration for

all that language allows. That which has

the effect of demeaning language in turn

identifies the abuser as one unworthy of

the gift of communication. A visual blight

and an assault on one's sensibilities when

a blissfully unaware mangler of prose

poses as one whose opinions are fraught

with meaning and substance, all flown off

in an embarrassment of sad association.

 

Waiting...

 

Waiting...

With the limitless patience of the faithful,
they wait, imperturbably confident and 
assured, the seers and the shamans, the
yogis, the sufis and the swamis, near
Chichen Itza.  Their followers worldwide
besotted with the spiritual chill of the
unknowable void of being will settle for
alternates.  Awaiting the spirals of
heavenly light promised to invade the heads
of believers, from their vast galactic journey,
they weep in fear and joy.  A cosmic dawn
arrives to gift the worthy with telepathy and
they will loose themselves from the
niggardly magnetic bonds of Earth, to
levitate and flee its constricting confines
set to implode.  Electrical vortexes
arrived from the galaxy's centre bid them
hither and they will respond, leaving fear,
embracing love, bathed in the light of
transformative cleansing of the soul.  For
they have discovered true salvation, fleeing 
the stagnating brutal influence of life as
we think we know it.  That is the revelation,
the cataclysmic upheaval that engages 
humanity, one with the golden light
of divine forgiveness, an arcane alchemy 
of  life bypassing death, the final frontier
to incandescent longevity.  If not immortality
then why not?  Thirteen and counting.
Look...at us, at them, the pathetic ones -
quivering with the misery of unrequited life.

Cool Stars

 

The most powerfully luminously bright
objects dwelling within the immensity
of the Universe are caught in the lens of
human-devised eyes on the sky, great
telescopes like the Hubble that traverse
the heavens and bring back to us the
wonder of their ineffable imagines. We
observe what we may, with awe and
compelling fascination, striving to
understand our place in this arcane web
of design so skilfully fabricated by Nature.

The swirling chemicals and gases that
formed our organic presence and brought
us to life, maturing mind over matter
eludes us yet and always shall. Nature's
purpose appears itself divine as expression
and formula owing to the neutrality of
serendipity in the heavenly realm of
opportunity, confluence, happenstance.

As she rests in benign satisfaction with her
splendid theatrical performance, the
foundation of an energizing 'it', that wakens
itself, becomes itself where there was a dark
vacuum, then distributes itself to inhabit nothing
making something of nowhere, stimulating
and producing variety and synthesis, we became.

Becoming, we look upward to the vastness
of our progenitor the dark heavens
pinprick-lit by countless bright orbs swirling
the universe in their numberless heavenly
bodies. Heat and light, energy and matter
conspire themselves into being and we must
know how, when and why, but cannot.

Small, cool red stars distinguish themselves
in the inexorably growing inventory, that
ineluctable recognition of plausible theory
welcoming the presence of what is deduced
not witnessed. Dark matter chooses to retreat
its magnetic appeal of trillions of evolving,
revolving, gravity-bound-and-captured
expendables. What cannot be seen can be
hypothesized into brilliant, yet dim existence.

Nature exercises her formulaic invention
in forms and elements, conditions and
suppositions that tease her restless creative
impulses. Those endless experiments in
existence and alternates where what was
is extinguished, amuses and entertains a
sublime presence we cannot begin to imagine. 

 

 

Did You Know?

 

Did you know
that the Sea cucumber
to deflect a pursuer
can regurgitate
its stomach?

And did you know
that female monkeys
to appease the males
in their belligerency
turn backside up
in coy invitation?

Did you know
that when you thunder
through the peace
of my existence
I offer myself
to placate the beast.

The Sea Cucumber
grows a new stomach
and survives. The
monkey raises the fruit
of her propitiatory act.

And did you know?
I am armed with love.

 

Sleep-Walking

This stiff-upper-lip voice
floating at me
through my radio
this upper-class British voice
that I alternately envy and deride
describing new research
into the incidence of
sleep-walking
and one of the symptoms
one of the ways you can tell
is by the victim's (?) GLAZED EYES.
Is that how?
Could be my life is one
whole sleep-walking experience.
And he goes on to say
it's a fallacy; they don't die of shock
if precipitately
brought out of their sleep-walking, and
goes on to give an example of some woman
who had an 'unfortunate'
tendency to sleep-walk
in the wee hours of the morning
- naked - and that's
how her husband invariably discovered her
walking the streets, naked.
"It distressed her husband enormously"
the voice said. Well yes, it would.
But women are like that
always dreaming of
walking the streets
through few of us do it
naked
and fewer yet
die of mortification when
precipitately brought to reality. 

Little Black Sprite

 

 

We cannot begin to know
nor to understand what haunts
this small black presence so familiar
yet so distanced from us by
biology, but linked to us
through long years of shared love.

She has become other than
what she once was, but then don't
we all, as we inevitably age well
past adulthood and into agedness?
Patterns once recognizable and
reliable have suddenly muted.

Gradually, and for prolonged periods
some presaging element we cannot
know overcomes her. She stands
motionless, head alert to some sound
we cannot detect, as though being
called somewhere we cannot go.

Obedient to this mysterious malady
that has expunged her memory she startles
and removes herself from our company.
Restlessly pacing from room to room
refusing to be placated and comforted
she remains aloof and we distracted.

Forgotten, it appears, routine and
etiquette, as she becomes submerged in
some mysterious alteration we can only
hazard as emerging dementia and we
are silent also, but in grief, believing
her to be preparing to leave us.

She is, after all, fully seventeen years.
A dishevelled-looking miniature
poodle mix whose years with us
illuminated the potential for shared joy;
humankind and domesticated animal.
We are not prepared for her to take
her leave of us, and emphatically tell

her so. It seems that our message
may have been heeded. She now seeks
comfort in our presence, finding solace
and companionship with us once again.
Recalling the imperatives that were
observed, and according to her sterling
physical health, banished the

dank evil spirits brooding at the
entry-way of her mind, her character.
She is slowly shedding the symptoms
of disorder, once more assuming her
vital role as care-taker of our sunny moods. 

 

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.

 

 

Going Back Where They Came From

 

When the parents react with amused contempt

at the panic in the target community when

their children face being confronted by other

students with the demeaning derogative of

humanly inferior ethnicity fit for a gas chamber 

to eliminate the world's undesirable human 

trash with the declaration that kids will be kids 

and they're just having a good time you can bet 

that they were patterned on the 'good time' their

parents were observed to have in discussions 

about the presence of Jews in the community and 

the unfairness of the misery of the Arab community 

in the Middle East suffering the indignity of 

having their land wrenched from their grasp 

treated as second-hand citizens, forced to live

under Jewish laws so patently unfair to non-Jews. 

Now, they sneer, their own Jewish community 

within the larger community in which they are a

 minority must suffer the tedium of Jewish complaints. 

It's just that siccing the police and the guardians of 

'anti-racism' on their kids for posting swastikas

is a step too far to tolerate and they won't have it.

  

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?

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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?

 

Is This Islamophobia?

 

Should the virtuous impulse to save lives

be conditional on good character? Who is to 

judge? When a society agrees to the necessity 

of offering refuge wholesale to people under 

threat of death during savage wars to embrace 

these refugees do they absorb more than meets 

the eye? Bringing with them heritage and traditions

religions and social cultures, tribal antipathies

that nurse historical grievances; do they leave 

these all behind to clasp the new values of those 

offering haven and a life of untold opportunities? 

When the absorbing society faces a situation 

of hostile baggage of racism and grudges along 

with ancestral hatreds that spread within their own

society down to immigrant offspring spurning 

the controls exerted toward student discipline  and

respect within the teaching arena opting instead to 

defy convention so unlike their parents' experience

instead threatening, intimidating, abusing others

violating trust, arriving armed with weapons yet

viewed by  woke authorities as underprivileged

therefore behaviour excusable endangering everyone

what then is the advantage and the measure

of need and demand balancing that rescue?

 

 

His 2025th Birthday

 

To his people of the tribe of Judah he was yet 

another rebellious young man viewed as an

emerging sage, a man unafraid to confront

those whose mercantile pursuits blotted the 

sacred purpose of the Temple. Little did they know 

this man would become a gift to the world at large

inspiring in his messages his dedication to

humanity, his compassion for the poor and the 

outcast. His birth 2025 years ago long a universal 

celebration of the divine in a profoundly profane 

world. Little did his people know that in this 

philosophical upstart lay the seeds of their future 

misery as the world embraced the divinity-blessed 

Yeshua while adopting the Imperial Roman

dismissal of his corporeal essence to release

his spirit to universal worship, in the process

relegating his kith and kin forevermore to the

bleak, dark dungeon of infamy and the endless 

malediction of religious fervor striking vengeance 

on the seed of Judea in pursuit of spiritual  malice.

 

 

Word of the Mashiah

 

When communicating with an

animal of limited understanding or

reason, expert opinion urges 

repetition. Repeat instructions

frequently enough and the message

will get through and one can hope for

compliance to follow. On the other hand

there are those of great knowledge

whose opinion is that repeating the

same message to no avail represents

the epitome of stubborn lost hope.

In the millennia that have passed

since the most elevated messages of

humanity were transmitted from their

maker through the kindly auspices

of his son-on-earth reverenced as the

voice of the Almighty whose supreme

sacrifice has enthralled the world in the

belief of the goodness resting in man

invoked but yet to emerge, surely it

takes the patience of a supreme being

to await the final disposition of the word. 

 

The Vacant Eyes of Malnutrition

 

It is their soft large eyes that hold us

captivating with that expression of inquiry

and curiosity of the world they are born to.

Their beautifully expressive eyes inviting

the beholder to see the world through

theirs, a world where children are adored

and nurtured, humanity's future generated

timelessly, existing from age to age the

most priceless gift that existence offers.

Look into these eyes, the eyes of these

children born to war, expressionless and

blank for they have no curiosity and know

only privation, their limbs hang lifeless

from lank torsos, their heads aslant as

though scrawny necks cannot support

the burden of a subnourished brain. The

product of conflict, of conflict's call to

arms where arable land lies grimly fallow

whose only crops now are land mines

awaiting the unwary footstep leaving all

in ruin, and famine rules that children be

deprived of all that young minds clamour

to be exposed to, not the harsh reality of

death delivered by combatants, death

stalking the unwary, the starving child.