Rest Easy

Flash: Some things in life are simple

after all. Take umbrage at the presence of

human rights abusers staking their territory

on this planet? Remember that old adage

of a tree falling in the forest? Invoke it

and practise not 'being there'. Should a

national entity make its mark by persecution

imprisonment, withholding the necessities

of life for its population in search of

control never bothering to resist the final

inclination of state murder, is it really any

of  your business? Moral censure makes no

inroad on cultures of psychopathy where

rewards are the obvious old attractions

spurring humanity to the solitudes of master

and slave. Pay no attention from afar. Misery

is the human condition. If you know nothing

of it, after all, it isn't happening. Is it?

Taking Note...Between Continents

The pouting, petulant little man

whose modest and all-knowing

demeanor is the envy of the world

has gone off on another tempest of

irritated pride, baffled that his powers

of persuasion have once again been

shrugged away by a world too long

accustomed to his more experienced

mentor's quiet diplomacy in world-class

issues of national boundaries, business

acumen, human rights and forthright

stealth-acquisitions of science, technology

industry, military and cultural realms

supplanting  the orderliness of global

relations. Taking  his cue from Xi, Kim

is no laggard in the field of international

relations whereby the shock value of

unconstrained exhibitions of volatile

temper-tantrums augmented by the

authority of ballistic missiles, nuclear

threats and hypersonic weaponry in the

possession of outlier ideological nations

has the world sitting up and noticing...

Compromise

Compromise

Well yes, we're fairly pleased
with the little fellows. Mind
they do have a robust sense of
entitlement but it is leavened with
an air of fairness though they're
not entirely averse to compromise
as in they feel it is fair to their
aspirations that we concede and
compromise. So they agree to
suffer the ignominy of our
offering them dog food, never
mind its sterling quality, as long
as we also render unto the master
race their just due. They have
magnanimously negotiated their
just due in exchange for agreeing
to keep household peace, and we 
are duly grateful. Therefore choice
tidbits of whatever we presume to
eat openly in their presence must
be apportioned; to each his due
in this progressive household. And
all, they assure us, is forgiven.

 

Boys Will Be Men

Boys will pack their social pathologies to 

accompany them to adulthood to that time in 

the future when they will become leaders of 

their communities, of their nations following 

the practise run of their adolescence when 

competing for the highest, furthest, most daring 

and dangerous exploits against their peers eager 

to coup the adoration of the younger, less ambitious 

among them even resorting to bringing out their

big gun brothers to intimidate challengers.

Primed for action after mastering the social arts

of braggadocio, threat and deceit, destined to 

lead their trusting peers they now shout across 

national borders while developing larger, more 

destructive military weaponry certain their 

advanced technology superior to the others' 

affirms their claims to power where remaining

Earthbound limits their scope entering the prospect 

of colonizing nearby planets gaining traction in 

the weaponization of space on their way to the 

final destined lap of conquering the universe.

 

There is no Escape

 

In China a catastrophic dearth of

females has ensued from the one-child

policy of the Cultural Revolution 

leaving countless males of marriageable

age without a spouse in a society that

favours boy babies over girls. Now 

that Chinese women are in high demand

they should be placed on a pedestal

of the future in a country whose birth

rate has plummeted. Yet men beat their

wives and when separation occurs and

custodial decisions leave their issue 

with its mother, even ill-thought-of

girl babies are now prized from their

mothers' arms in a conflict of custody

where police deny that a father could

possibly abduct his very own child.

 

 

 

Fear of Mortality

 

Two hard objects clash uncompromising 

and furiously raging one against the other

immovable, their intimate universe reeling in 

the impact, their union suddenly friable after 

navigating four decades of marriage. Molten

anger radiates each citing the other's obtuse

unwillingness to be reasonable though to be 

objectively fair neither has seen the subject 

of their divisive decisions from the perspective 

of the other. They reflect on a future determined 

by encroaching years and diminished time

visualized as each foresees remaining years 

distancing them considering separation yet 

hesitating to despoil assets both have acquired 

in their past harmony of spirit.Their subconscious 

unrecognized resistance of creeping age and 

declining faculties confuses their reasoning

... it is humanity's end-fate that disturbs and 

frightens them not the miscalculation of each 

demanding the other surrender previously 

respected personal agency when she devotedly

followed his wanderlust and now he rejects her 

unease in abandoning city-centric comforts.

 

 

Yours, Humbly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If a professor of semiotics can casually

undertake to regale his faithful readers

with the tedious mental maunderings 

of a brilliant mind captured by its own

inescapable self-adoration in a

Narcissus-like embrace of himself

why not I, a humble scribbler

no savant, but a lover of words 

and the fabulous, myself? 

Enraptured by, captured by a frenzy 

of fantastic thought, I too will 

declaim and fill pages reflecting that 

which delights my fancy, tickles the 

funnybone of my humorous muse.

From the exquisite sublime to the 

dregs of the banal. He dredges his 

prodigious mind of both in an exegesis 

of boastful excess. I trudge through 

laboured mindset to extract the elated 

stores it harbours in its deepest recesses

confounding extraction and elaboration 

with my dross, here on offer.