The Subconscious Primevil

Kindle the embers lying deeply

submerged in the psyches

of those who see intruders

into their societies as threats

to be destroyed even those who

have lived at peace for millennia

under a covenant that recognizes

their presence as distant kin and

the overheated whirlwind of

suspicion turns to hatred bathed

in the molten primitivism of 

survival unleashing the primeval

urge to kill those posing as innocents

whom hate identifies as lethal threats

and a society whose disparate

tongues and faiths, tribes and clans

suddenly turns into a murderous

mob intent on destroying what

generations have built each

convinced theirs is the only 

entitlement approved on high

for is it not their faith for which

they are prepared to sacrifice

uncountable lives of infidels?

 

 

Ghosted Rooms

 

Ghosted Rooms

It is a long anxious journey
fraught with fears 
taking a loved little creature
suddenly assailed with
serious symptoms of
elderly ill health, hoping
for a relieving diagnosis
and a miracle drug for
restoration of life as
it has been and the
desperation to prolong it.
Visualizing the happy
return home, until arrival
at the vast complex
staffed by a phalanx of
smiling professionals briskly
taking command, ushering
process and procedure,
diagnosis and prognosis
resulting in a long, lonely
utterly bereft journey
home, to ghosted rooms.

 

 

Eluding the Jew-Hatred Tag

Times and social mores may have changed but 

there are some mass social pathologies that are 

timeless, simply expressed differently, wickedly 

rampant transparency gone the way of extinction 

lacking the subtlety of opaque suggestion yet still 

recognizable to anyone familiar with the tropes. 

Malicious humour can still find its home in classic

portrayals of long hooked noses and crepuscular

pallid faces, long tapering fingers lovingly counting 

out profit at the expense of the vulnerable fallen

victim to the crude money-lender trading souls

for shekels. A snigger here, a snicker or a guffaw

there, who cannot identify the creature? But that 

venomous humour does not find resonance among the 

refined who prefer to exhibit their so well informed

choices to uphold victims' rights by righteously

boycotting trade, academic and cultural contact

with the symbol of all that is wrong in the world. 

 

 

Legacy

It is no small thing to be recalled in posterity.

Throughout history, notables and those who

consider themselves such in their vanity

considered which of their in/famous acts

of public notoriety they might be celebrated

for, going out of their way to formulate new

and outrageous acts and statements counter to

societal acceptance with that old theatrical

adage in mind 'there is no such thing as bad

publicity' to adhere to the public mind. But

these are individuals, some great in the annals

of  history, most of no account. Uniquely there

is a people who in their collective presence

from antiquity to the present for whom the

great wide world feels nostalgia for the lapse

of their exotic presence; for that minuscule

minority of the world population distinguished

itself as a breed apart and beyond in every 

metric of meritorious or scandalous portion

in their humanity-share of existence. A people

whose very existence has always dangled on a

silken thread of extinction forever facing the

suspicion of 'other'; hounded and harassed

persecuted and murdered yet somehow hanging

on to that thread of existence. The absence from

countless geographies the world over fleeing

disentitlement and death created a vacuum

where they lived for hundreds and thousands

of years. Now the cleansed atmosphere lacks 

verve and invention; the persecutors mourn the

lapse that nature demurs to fill, Jews gone.

Perchance To Dream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The garden has settled comfortably
into its long seasonal sleep.
A rest well earned, after long, languid
months of unstinting devotion
to pleasuring itself in the grace
of brilliant beauty, dedicated bounty.
Of blooms and fruits; the structure
of the seasons of growth and production.

But there is no full lapse
during sleep. For the spirit
of the garden goes forth to impress
upon the slumbering that this is
but their intermission, before
resuming their splendidly vibrant,
fecund destiny. Nature’s design.

In time, they will rouse themselves
recall that infinite routine
practise to raise themselves
from the cold, dank ground
and proudly present in bold colours
and pastel hues, shaming the
bland grey of late winter, reluctant
to depart the scene of frozen dominance.

First the bulbs will thrust tentative
green shoots, suddenly transformed
to blazing colour, shapes, sizes.
Perennials then, those robust garden
stalwarts, will recall themselves to
riotous duty, sending up preparatory
greens, then rocketing into fragrant,
colourful and orderly ranks, spring
to summer, to mid-fall.

Senior members of the cast will
finally, reluctantly recall their repertory
of late-fall presence and allow themselves
to blaze forth in the primary tints of
the rainbow, reminding songbirds they
too must prepare to launch themselves
into that same old familiar routine.

Minor and major players dream
of those moments when their presence
echoes the season, their bright costumes
lavish displays; perfumed presence
delighting themselves and awing the
creatures of the Earth. Those dreams
so real they can imagine the urgency
to perform. And then, they do. 

 

 

Hushed, Mute Not Unconcerned

She is there for solace, a familiar place of 

comfort where she felt free and unencumbered 

striding along woodland  trails, her hair ruffled 

in the fall wind, her dog lingering here and there

then dashing to reach her side. You are there

to revel in the season transforming the forest 

into an artist's glowing palette, the landscape 

expressed in an abstract flow of tinted colour

the restfulness of the ambience soul-soothing 

and exquisitely aesthetic. She is speaking to you 

and you know she is also speaking of you when 

she comments how unfortunate it is when people 

deliberately distance from her as though in this 

time of COVID there is a viral contagion 

emanating from her presence. You blanch and 

quail in the dismay of one who sought to exercise 

due care not to bring distress to a woman in 

mourning injured by fate and others' tact in mounting 

a discreet avoidance of probing that open wound.

Knowing her loss was a juxtaposition of two

unavoidable conditions; one genetic the second

happenstance and recalling her detailed and

shocked explanation what more is there to say?

The Metaphor of the August Forest

It was a magnificent fall day in the forest. The 

ceiling of the world unblemished by the vaguest wisp 

of cloud, neither pleasant white nor grey-streaked 

black truculently threatening -- and the autumn sun 

claiming its sovereignty over all, warming the 

atmosphere and bringing diffused light to the perpetual 

dusk of the forest interior. Still, all was chaotic. 

Deciduous trees still clasped their dark green leaves 

yet the forest floor was steeped deep in a veritable 

kaleidoscope of colour, rejects from the forest canopy 

carpeting the woodland trails that all may trod upon them. 

As though not demeaning enough to the variant attributes 

of natural selection there for all to see dark-skinned 

pretenders shielding their true identity in the purity

of white-skinned bark not normally associated with 

their kind; a rebuke to nature affecting equality in

all her creatures, a sentiment which fails to penetrate

the subconscious superiority of white entitlement.